Posted in: Comics, Comics Publishers, Current News, Fantagraphics | Tagged: joe sacco, palestine
Recently, Fantagraphics announced that they were going to send Joe Sacco’s Palestine back to print after increased attention and demand.
Article Summary
Fantagraphics reprints Joe Sacco’s graphic memoir ‘Palestine’ due to high demand.
Publishers Gary Groth and Eric Reynolds issue a statement on the Gaza conflict.
They demand a ceasefire, humanitarian aid, and an end to the apartheid regime.
Discussion ensues among comic creators about Fantagraphics’ stance and actions.
Recently, Fantagraphics announced that they were going to send the graphic memoir Palestine back to new printings after increased attention and demand for the book. They even went on NPR with author Joe Sacco to talk about the demand for a 30+-year-old graphic novel, which saw Joe Sacco live and travel through Palestine and record his experiences, the life of Palestinians and Israelis.
Some people on social media accused Fantagraphics of war profiteering, making money from the current situation in Israel and Gaza without making any kind of statement on the situation. Others have stated that Fantagraphics publishing Palestine for three decades, initially at a time when no one else would, is as much a statement as anythuing else.
But yesterday, Fantagraphics publisher and associate publisher, Gary Groth and Eric Reynolds posted a statement on their blog.
In 1993, Fantagraphics began publishing Palestine, Joe Sacco’s landmark work of graphic journalism, a first-person chronicle that gave voice to the voiceless and dispossessed people who were living and suffering in Gaza, the West Bank, and East Jerusalem — the Palestinian territories.
Considering that we have believed in the deeply humanistic perspective of this book, that we have considered it our responsibility to keep it available to the public continuously in 25 printings in 31 years, and that we have boundless respect for its author, we consider it a moral imperative to make our position on the current “Israel-Hamas/Gaza war” publicly known.
We want to state clearly and emphatically that we stand with the innocent people of Gaza. At the same time, we emphatically condemn the massacre of innocent Israeli civilians by Hamas on October 7 as a war crime and acknowledge with deep regret the grief and trauma Jewish people are enduring in its aftermath; but this barbarous act does not warrant Israel to commit its own war crime and to inflict exponentially greater grief and trauma in return.
Finally, as citizens of the United States, it is both emotionally agonizing and morally objectionable to watch our nation’s complicity in the ongoing genocide of Gaza. We respectfully submit that:
There should be an immediate ceasefire
Israel should immediately allow humanitarian aid into Gaza
Israel must end its apartheid regime
Israel must stop looking the other way as West Bank settlers murder Palestinians
Israel’s illegal West Bank settlements must be dismantled
Negotiations in good faith must begin toward a two- or single-state solution in which both Israelis and Palestinians share the same sovereign rights.
Israeli and Hamas prisoners/hostages should be released
Those who speak out on behalf of Palestinians should not be silenced, retaliated against, or smeared as antisemitic
Slippery new terms like “humanitarian expulsion” and “voluntary migration” should be denounced for what they are — oxymoronic euphemisms for ethnic cleansing
War crimes should be investigated and vigorously pursued by the International Criminal Court and the International Court of Justice“Before the terrifying prospects now available to humanity, we see even more clearly that peace is the only goal worth struggling for. This is no longer a prayer but a demand to be made by all peoples to their governments — a demand to choose definitively between hell and reason.” — Albert Camus, Combat, 1945
[This statement does not necessarily reflect the opinions of our staff or our authors, who are entirely free to agree or disagree and to make their own beliefs known.]
Gary GrothPublisher, Fantagraphics Books
Eric Reynolds,Associate Publisher, Fantagraphics Books
There were positive notes in response from a number of comic creators.
Ramon Villalobos: Good shit. Shout out to fantagraphics.
Dave Scheidt: Thank you, Fantagraphics.
Alex Hoffman: It is insane to me that @fantagraphics would need to make this statement. The fact that they’ve kept Sacco’s PALESTINE continuously in print isn’t enough evidence of their position?
Well, mostly…
Arpad Okay: frankly the folks making it about fantagraphics being an altruistic institution to help PALESTINE the book instead of sharing the article to help palestine the place should be embarrassed. eris edizioni made their naji al-ali book a free pdf anyone can download. is PALESTINE something that you can digitally access through the library? because if the only way you can read it is to purchase it through fanta, then we’re not really discussing the importance of access
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