(THIS ARTICLE IS MACHINE TRANSLATED by Google from Norwegian)
Is it time to get comics into the curriculum in journalism? Or is it the students at the School of Arts and Crafts that should get journalism on the curriculum? The comic book is in any case about to establish itself as its own journalistic form of expression, and believe this is not the hardest to master as well? As a cartoon journalist, you must not only be able to draw og tell a story, you also have to master the journalistic craft and dig up a story that is good enough to defend the long time it takes to complete the reporting.
The comic book documentary is somewhere between the documentary film, the gonzore portage and the radio documentary. The journalist often plays a visible role himself, and often comes closer to people and events because he (most comic book journalists are so far men) does not depend on fixing everything on film. As in the radio documentary, the cartoonist does not depend on anyone but himself, but in addition he can visualize both what he has seen himself and others' visual impressions through his drawings.
Here at home, the phenomenon has been visible through Martin Kellerman's interviews with pop stars such as 50 Cent and Leila K in the booklet Rocky, as well as last year's book Olaf G – Steffen Kverneland and Lars Fiske's mix of rabulistic travelogue and reverent portrait of the artist Olaf Gulbransson. In North America, serial journalism is stronger. Magazines like Details og Reason release to serial creators as journalists, while people such as American Joe Sacco and Canadian Guy Delisle for the time are working on extensive serial portrayals from Chechnya, the Gaza Strip, North Korea and Burma.
The cartoon's ass
Joe Sacco is comic book journalist Åsne Seierstad; an accomplished and fearless freelancer who seeks out war zones around the world and rolls into good reviews and prestigious awards. As a serial creator, he does not earn much, he cannot afford to live in the "war hotels" with the other journalists, but rather stays at home with local residents. Here he often lives for a few months, and in his journalistic work he is usually more interested in the history behind the big headlines than the traditional daily news work.
Do you buy the latest issue of the Norwegian magazine Agent X9, you will find a Sacco-drawn series about Pol Pot, but this is just a trifle compared to his main work. In the books Palestine og Safe Area Gorazde – The War in Eastern Bosnia 1992-95 he alternates between depictions of dramatic acts of war and everyday life in wartime. When he arrives in Bosnia, it is the girls 'longing for Levi's 501 and the boys' thirst for news from the American basketball league that strikes him first, and these everyday vignettes become an effective contrast as Sacco eventually takes the reader deep into the horrors of war.
In addition to his descriptions of what it is like to live in the shadow of a war, Sacco has also developed a meta-aspect of his series. He makes war journalism about making war journalism, and it is often as fascinating as the more traditional reports. In the book The Fixer he portrays Neven, a guy who nourished himself by helping foreign journalists in Bosnia in the 1990 century. Sacco describes Neven at the top of his career and seven years later, when the gunpowder has settled down and the journalists have moved on.
Humble self-image
In this year's book, War's End – Profiles From Bosnia 1995-96, Sacco unites his two main journalistic trends. These are not new series, but a two stories previously published in booklet form. "Šoba" was Sacco's first single portrait of the people behind the war in Bosnia, by an artist and musician from Sarajevo struggling with the aftermath of the soldier's life. Sacco alternates in a familiar way between recounting Šoba's gruesome stories from the front with daily life in Sarajevo, and how Šoba uses the war and her own reputation to establish herself as a small king in her hometown. He is given more opportunities to get away, but the fear of losing his hero status will remain. Sacco describes better than most how people manage to maintain a fairly "normal" life no matter how extreme the situation is, and "Šoba" is no exception.
In "Christmas With Karadzic" metacco journalist Sacco is on his way again, taking us on a news hunt with two hard-boiled radio reporters from NBC and CBS. The trio goes to Pale to track down Radovan Karadzic in Christmas 1995, and when they are granted against all odds a brief interview before the Christmas service, Sacco immediately withdraws in the crowd. This is not his arena. He is not concerned with big politics, government leaders and the big lines. Rather, he is disappointed that he does not feel something at the sight of this hated war criminal, who stands out as a well-dressed, eloquent and fairly normal man. Well at home with his Serbian host family in Sarajevo, Sacco sees himself dodging the camera lens in the TV reporting from the worship service, while realizing that Pale's reporting trip was the most enjoyable Christmas he has had in a long time. He is so mercilessly honest in his descriptions of his own cowardice, ambiguity about his own journalistic role and all his scruples and back thoughts about what he does, and in Palestine He describes, among other things, the refugee camps in the occupied areas as a Disneyland for reporters in search of action, distress and human destinies. It is this insight into journalists' working methods in war, combined with a down-to-earth and humble attitude towards his own work that makes Sacco unique. Both in the comics and journalism.
In the shadow
Most other comic book journalism attempts fade in the shadow of Joe Sacco's comics, but there is no doubt that he has influenced generations of comic book creators. We see the results in both veterans like Will Eisner and freshmen like Simon Gärdenfors.
87 year old Eisner just finished the prestige project The plot before he died in January this year. In his very personal portrayals of life in New York, he has always been preoccupied with the situation of the Jews in the United States, and his debut as a cartoonist was dedicated to a personal project that has plagued and intrigued him for years. With The plot Eisner embarks on the tenuous scam story behind the book Zion's protocols appear, which throughout the 1900 century has been an important weapon for anti-Zionists around the world.
This is a simplified and well-told presentation of how the book was written, as well as the serious ripple effects of the forgery. Of course, this is a simplified presentation, but the question is whether it is simplified nok? Eisner tackles with footnotes, literature, and excerpts, and at times it shows that his eagerness to be a thorough journalist stands in the way of his telling abilities. In addition, when the book is quite so inexpensive, it is in danger of reaching only those who do not need to read it. "Zion's Protocols" still lives across much of the world today, and I tend to think that Eisner should have created an even simpler and less costly version of the story. Something that could have been handed out as a booklet or pamphlet, in response to the students at the University of San Diego. When Eisner meets them, they hand out flyers that encourage them to read Zion's protocols appear, because it reveals Jewish plans for world domination. Eisner even tries to explain to the students that the book is a fake, but they refuse to believe him. A young Muslim student tells the others not to care about Eisner. "He's just a Jew," she says. Eisner stands the extinguisher again, and The plot is a dignified but sad point in the career of one of the 1900's most significant series creators.
Simon Gärdenfors is no Will Eisner, but belongs to a large forest of Swedes who make comics based on their own lives. And with his second book, Deceive me!, he has made Sweden's first journalistic book in cartoon form. It is a clear continuation of the autobiographical style of the book debut Tourist, but where Gärdenfors has previously based on what happens to him in everyday life, he here commits good, old-fashioned outreach journalism. He has long been preoccupied with lies and deception, and therefore he will get to the bottom of the phenomenon of liars. What drives them? Are they sick? Do they have psychopathic traits? Why can't they stick to the truth?
Gärdenfors talks about his own relationship to lies, and interviews old acquaintances with a liberal relationship with the truth, seeking out experts and quoting from professional books. The idea is good, but unfortunately the result is somewhat stagnant and unresolved. Deceive me! is perhaps journalism, but the result is characterized by Gärdenfors being a beginner in the field. Although several of the chapters work separately, the whole is characterized by too many casual interviews and talking heads. Where Joe Sacco makes it seem natural, shows Deceive me! first and foremost how difficult it is to create journalism in comic book format.
