A Cartoonist Sketches the Outline of Bosnia's Pain (original) (raw)

World|A Cartoonist Sketches the Outline of Bosnia's Pain

https://www.nytimes.com/1997/06/01/world/a-cartoonist-sketches-the-outline-of-bosnia-s-pain.html

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June 1, 1997

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June 1, 1997

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In September 1995, as the war in Bosnia was winding to a close, an unassuming cartoonist from Malta with thick, round glasses and a worn charcoal-gray leather jacket climbed off a bus in the center of the devastated Bosnian capital.

The cartoonist, Joe Sacco, chronically short of money and living out of a knapsack, rented a small room for $150 a month. For the next five months he hitched rides, ate at cheap street-corner stands, met a wide assortment of characters, asked innumerable questions, did quick sketches and snapped rolls of film.

In the evenings he drank in gritty bars with Sarajevo's bored and restless youth, many of whom had fought in the war. He tagged along behind freelance reporters. And, most important, he listened, watched and took copious notes.

''The things a journalist has to do, such as get the facts right, I do,'' said Mr. Sacco, in a telephone interview from New York. ''I interview people and take notes or tape their conversations. I build a story when I work.''

The first results of his five-month stay in Bosnia appeared this year in an anthology of comics called ''Zero Zero,'' published by Fantagraphics Books in Seattle. His 11-page strip, ''Christmas With Karadzic,'' was a searing and amusing look at the motley collection of reporters, war profiteers, criminals, soldiers and hapless civilians trapped in a war zone.

''Christmas With Karadzic'' chronicles a trip Mr. Sacco made with two freelance reporters, including one identified only as Kasey, to track down the Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic, who has been indicted on charges of war crimes, in the Serb stronghold of Pale. At one point, Kasey, determined to get the sound of gunfire on his tape recorder, races through the Pale streets trying to find someone who will unleash a few rounds.

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