Joe Sacco

Joe Sacco (; born October 2, 1960) is a Maltese-American cartoonist and journalist. His work documenting Palestinian life in Gaza and the West Bank was awarded the National Book Award in 1996 and was compiled in the graphic narrative Palestine. His other notable monographs include Footnotes in Gaza (2009) which won a Ridenhour Book Prize on October 2, 1960. His father Leonard was an engineer and his mother Carmen was a teacher. At the age of one, he moved with his family to Melbourne, Australia, While journalism was his primary focus, this was also the period of time in which he developed his penchant for humor and satire. He graduated from Sunset High in 1978.

Sacco earned his BA in journalism from the University of Oregon in 1981 in three years. He was greatly frustrated with the journalist work that he found at the time, later saying, "[I couldn't find] a job writing very hard-hitting, interesting pieces that would really make some sort of difference."

He began working for a local publisher writing guidebooks.

Eventually returning to the United States, by 1985 Sacco had founded a satirical, alternative comics magazine called Portland Permanent Press in Portland, Oregon. This job provided the opportunity for him to create and edit another satire: the comics anthology Centrifugal Bumble-Puppy

The Gulf War segment of Yahoo drew Sacco into a study of Middle Eastern politics, and he traveled to the Occupied Palestinian territories to research his first long work. Palestine came about as a landmark of journalism and the art form of comics. It was based on several months of research and an extended visit to the West Bank and Gaza Strip in the early 1990s. Palestine won the American Book Award in 1996

Sacco next travelled to Sarajevo and Goražde near the end of the Bosnian War, and produced a series of reports in the same style as Palestine: the comics Safe Area Goražde, The Fixer, and the stories collected in War's End; the financing for which was aided by his winning of the Guggenheim Fellowship in April 2001. Safe Area Goražde won the Eisner Award for Best Original Graphic Novel in 2001.

He has also contributed short pieces of graphic reportage to a variety of magazines, on subjects ranging from war crimes to blues, and was a frequent illustrator of Harvey Pekar's American Splendor. In 2005 he wrote and drew two eight-page comics depicting events in Iraq published in The Guardian. He also contributed a 16-page piece in April 2007's issue of Harper's Magazine, entitled "Down! Up! You're in the Iraqi Army Now".

In 2009, his Footnotes in Gaza was published, which investigates two forgotten massacres that took place in Khan Younis and Rafah in November 1956. In June 2012, he collaborated with journalist Chris Hedges, on Days of Destruction, Days of Revolt, a book about poverty in the United States.

In 2014, Sacco published Bumf Vol. 1, a collection of satirical comics about American politics, war, and history. Sacco contributed illustrations and a comics chapter titled "Bitumen or Bust" to Global Warming and the Sweetness of Life: A Tar Sands Tale (2018) by Matt Hern and Am Johal. Sacco's work Paying the Land (2020) is also about climate change and the indigenous Dene community of Northwest Canada who, he says, were subject to cultural genocide by means of compulsory residential schooling, treaties, and colonialism.

In 2024, Sacco published a series of comics on the Gaza War in The Comics Journal that were collected and published by Fantagraphics later that year as The War on Gaza. Sacco's book The Once and Future Riot (2025) is about the 2013 Muzaffarnagar riots.

Sacco lives in Portland, Oregon. followed by the 2001 Eisner Award for Best Original Graphic Novel, and 2001 Eagle Award for Best Original Graphic Novel, and 2001 Harvey Award nomination for Best Writer and Best Graphic Album of Original Work.

The Palestine collection won the 2002 Firecracker Alternative Book Award for Outstanding Graphic Novel.

His Footnotes in Gaza was nominated for the 2009 Los Angeles Times Book Prize Graphic Novel award. It received the 2010 Ridenhour Book Prize and the 2012 Oregon Book Award. He won the Eisner Award for Best Writer/Artist–Nonfiction in 2010. In 2014, his graphic novel collection Journalism received the Pacific Northwest College of Art Graphic Literature Award in 2014 from the Oregon Book Awards.

Joe Sacco was awarded the degree of Doctor of Literature (Honoris Causa) by the University of Malta on November 17, 2023. In 2025, Joe Sacco's The War on Gaza received the Eisner Award for Best Single Issue/One Shot.