It's news to most of us that rock and roll cartoonist is a job option, but that's exactly what Sacco did before hitting the (relative) big time with his graphic journalism masterpieces like Safe Area Gorazde. In this ragtag mix tape of Sacco's early work, he turns his impressionistic eye on the grunge, grit, passion and foolhardiness of the music world. -Publisher's Weekly

Having already established his reputation as the world's leading comics journalist, Sacco (Safe Area Gorazde) is now making a serious case to be considered one of the world's top journalists, period. His newest undertaking is a bracing quest to uncover the truth about what happened in two Gaza Strip towns in 1956, when aftershocks from the Sinai campaign may have resulted in the massacre of hundreds of Palestinian civilians by the Israeli military. -Publisher's Weekly

Before he received due acclaim and an American Book Award for his comics-format journalism from Palestine (collected in Palestine, 2001) and Bosnia (Safe Area Goradze, 2000), Sacco toiled in alternative comics for a decade. The fruits of that labor are collected here. Much of this early work is minor, though entertaining, including short satirical pieces, a lengthy chronicle of Sacco's days as roadie and resident cartoonist for a rock band touring Europe, and cynical reflections on his unhappy stint working in a public library. -Gordon Flagg Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

Fantagraphics Books is pleased to present, for the first time, a single-volume collection of this 288-page landmark of journalism and the artform of comics. Interest in Sacoo has never been higher than with the release of his critically acclaimed book, Safe Area Gorazde. Based on several months of research and an extended visit to the West Bank and Gaza Strip in the early 1990s (where he conducted over 100 interviews with Palestinians and Jews), Palestine was the first major comics work of political and historical nonfiction by Sacco, who has often been called the first comic book journalist. Sacco's insightful reportage takes place at the front lines, where busy marketplaces are spoiled by shootings and tear gas, soldiers beat civilians with reckless abandon, and roadblocks go up before reporters can leave. Sacco interviewed and encountered prisoners, refugees, protesters, wounded children, farmers who had lost their land, and families who had been torn apart by the Palestinian conflict.

Brilliant....Joe Sacco shows how much that is crucial to our lives a book can hold. -- New York Times book Review, Margo Jefferson

Intrepid reporter and comics artist Sacco returns to Bosnia and Sarajevo to chronicle Neven, a "fixer" who leads Western reporters to stories, dispensing information and literally guiding them through the fascinating, dangerous landscape of post-war Sarajevo and Bosnia. -Publisher's Weekly

In the first story, "Christmas with Karadzic," Sacco goes to great, often uproarious lengths to get an interview with the notorious Bosnian war criminal Radovan Karadzic as the leader attends Christmas services. The story climaxes with Sacco observing Karadzic, noting, "I feel nothing intimidating about his presence, nothing extraordinary about this man indicted by the International War Crimes Tribunal... a man I have despised with all my heart for years." Rather than reporting the usual facts about Karadzic, Sacco shows him at his most mundane and, consequently, most revealing. -Publisher's Weekly