Joe Sacco's Safe Area Gorazde, published by Fantagraphics Books, garnered a glowing review in the weekly New York Times Book Review (12/24/00).  Reviewer David Rieff, Balkans expert and author of Slaughterhouse: Bosnia and the failure of the West, called Safe Area Gorazde, 'the best dramatic evocation of the Bosnian catastrophe...a work that improbably manages to combine rare insight into what the war in Bosnia felt like on the ground with a mature and nuanced political and historical understanding of the conflict.'

The full page review of Safe Area Gorazde, which also includes a reproduction of four panels from the book, appears on page five, the best possible positioning in the tabloid-size Book Review, which accompanies the popular Sunday edition of the New York Times.  The Sunday Times, which is printed nationwide in numerous regional editions, is considered the best possible exposure for trade books, and a glowing review usually translates into thousands of additional sales.  Just two weeks previously David Eggers, editor of McSweeney, reviewed new graphic novels by Chris Ware, Daniel Clowes, and Linda Barry in the same prominent slot in the Book Review.  All of this signals a new openness on the part of the literary establishment to take the comics medium seriously.   For example in his review of Safe Area Gorazde, Rieff remarks that: '... the comic book form reveals itself to have advantages that neither novels nor nonfiction prose can command.  There is a cinematic immediacy here.'  All this is good news for retailers who sell comics, since there are more highbrow comics available now (from classics like Little Nemo, Watchmen, and Maus to brilliant contemporary works like Jimmy Corrigan and Berlin) than ever before.  The problem has been (and still remains) a prejudice against the comics medium, which has pervaded the American literary establishment and the vast majority of the book-buying public. The recent spate of positive reviews in the New York Times signals a change in attitude, which, as it filters down, should result in steady sales of challenging comics to an increasingly large audience.

Retailers, especially those in college towns, can take advantage of this changing trend by displaying these books and accompanying reviews in their windows.  Call 1-800-nytimes to find out how many subscribers in your area get the Sunday Times.  This is a major opportunity to lure non-traditional customers to your store -- and don't forget to display other works by Sacco (available from Fantagraphics Books), who has also applied his in-depth personal reporting to the Arab-Israeli conflict (Palestine).