Joe Sacco, well known for his Fantagraphics books Safe Area Gorazde and Palestine, which tell real-world stories in comics form, passed another milestone for comics journalism last Sunday when 'The Underground War in Gaza,' his story about Palestinian tunnels and Isreali bulldozers was published in the New York Times Magazine.   The relatively long description of the piece on the Table of Contents page quotes Sacco.  'Some people think that the medium isn't up to these very serious subject,' he says, 'but I think it allows me to take the reader to a time and place directly.' 

 

Although this isn't the first national magazine to publish Sacco's accounts (he had a four-page story in Time in 2001, see 'Joe Sacco Does Four-Page Comic in Time Magazine'), the imprimatur for comics journalism of the New York Times arguably adds a new level of legitimacy and prestige to the medium.