Sacco talks more about the work in this video for publisher W.

And that’s what the Great War was to me, letting myself go in that direction. I’ve spent a lot of time doing journalism, and I still am interested in it, but I think the artist side of me wants to sort of come out now. I would read and get images in my head, and it was just a matter of putting them down. 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. I did a lot of image research and I actually had to read a lot of books, because sometimes prose takes you where photography never went. It was a relief not to think about words, and to do a different kind of research. On a visceral level, it was just a pleasure to think only in terms of drawing. on July 1, 1916, whistles blew to launch the British assault. In The Great War, acclaimed cartoon journalist Joe Sacco depicts the. Joe Sacco's 'The Great War: July 1, 1916: The First Day of the Battle of the Somme.' (Courtesy) At 7:30 a.m. So it seemed like a very simple idea, and to be honest, I just wanted to draw. 1 accordion folded leaf : illustrations 22 x 29 cm + booklet. The Great War Adjust Share by Joe Sacco This article is only available as a PDF to subscribers. It just came to my mind that I could show soldiers marching up to the front, going to the trenches, going over the top, and then returning after they’ve been wounded, back through the lines to the casualty-clearing station behind the front.

William the Conqueror in France is getting ready for the invasion they’re building the boats they’re crossing the English Channel then there’s the Battle of Hastings, and you basically read it left to right. But immediately I thought of the Bayeux Tapestry… which has a narrative. When we first talked about my drawing a panorama of the Western front, the idea seemed static. Joe Sacco talks to The New Yorker about his new accordion book The Great War, which folds out to create a twenty-four-foot-long panorama of the Battle of the Somme:

The Great War by Joe Sacco