Synopses & Reviews
When bombs are falling and western journalism is the only game left in town "fixers" are the people who sell war correspondents the human tragedy and moral outrage that makes news editors happy.
Its dangerous, a little amoral and a lot desperate.
Award-winning comix-journalist Joe Sacco goes behind the scene of war correspondence to reveal the anatomy of the big scoop. He begins by returning us to the dying days of Balkan conflict and introduces us to his own fixer; a man looking to squeeze the last bit of profit from Bosnia before the reconstruction begins. Thanks to a complex relationship with the fixer Joe discovers the crimes of opportunistic warlords and gangsters who run the countryside in times of war. But the west is interested in a different spin on the stories coming out of Bosnia. Almost ten years later, Joe meets up with his fixer and sees how the new Bosnian government has "dealt" with these criminals and Joe ponders who is holding the reins of power these days...
Review
"[T]ightly wound, humane and suspenseful....Sacco's finely wrought, expressively rendered b&w drawings perfectly capture the emotional character of Sarajevo....This superlative and important story is easily one of the best comics nonfiction works of the year." Publishers Weekly (Starred Review)
Review
"[In The Fixer] Sacco demonstrates that the narrative arts, including comics, can gather up complicated social truths with a gradual patience that often eludes the camera." Jeet Heer, The Boston Globe
Review
"[H]is most refined work....The Fixer continues one of the most creative and unique visions in the arts today....He brings alive the life and world of a funny, friendly, dangerous, mysterious person who seems a pure product of his place..." Andrew D. Arnold, Time.comix
Review
"Sacco draws all the situations...with the same graphic, unflinching accuracy. He does not embellish the violence in an action comic style, nor does he soften the grotesqueries with blurred vision. His gory details are vivid, disturbing, and utterly real." M. William Helfrich, The Portland Mercury
Review
"Sacco's beautifully rendered black-and-white drawings and crisp writing prove that comic books can be as powerful a medium as film or the printed word." The Willamette Week (Portland, OR)
Review
"Sacco's meticulous drawings, combined with detailed, personal accounts of his 'subjects' (the word feels too sterile to describe his three-dimensional renderings), provide the kind of human, emotional context so lacking in traditional media reports. Newspaper articles and even television broadcasts may excel at describing the bare facts of a situation the number of people killed and wounded, the number of houses burned but they tend to fail at conveying atmosphere, nuance, meaning." Christopher Farah, Salon.com
Synopsis
When bombs are falling and western journalism is the only game left in town, local "fixers" sell war correspondents the human tragedy and moral outrage that makes news editors back home happy. American Book Award winner Sacco goes behind the scene of war correspondence to reveal the anatomy of the big scoop.
Synopsis
Investigating the peace. When bombs are falling and western journalism is the only game left in town, "fixers" are the people who sell war correspondents the human tragedy and moral outrage that makes news editors happy. American Book Award-winning commix-journalist Joe Sacco introduces us to his own fixer: a man looking to squeeze the last bit of profit from Bosnia before the reconstruction begins. Thanks to the fixer Sacco uncovers the story of warlords and gangsters running the countryside in wartime. Ten years later Sacco returns to Bosnia to look for his fixer. What he finds makes him wonder, who won the war? And who won the peace?
About the Author
Joe Sacco was born in Malta in 1960. Raised in the USA, Sacco graduated with a degree in journalism at the University of Oregon in 1981. For almost twenty years Joe has been a journalist/cartoonist/editor. He is also a consummate traveler, always on the move following stories, especially in Europe and the Middle East.