Encyclopedia of Comic Books and Graphic Novels

(vip2019) #1
EDUCATIONAL COMICS 167

combining caricature, illustration, maps, and diagrams to clearly communicate the details
of such tragedies as Th e Murder of Abraham Lincoln (2005).
Joe Sacco combined his loves for journalism and comics in comics-format books of
foreign reporting that have earned wide recognition. Sacco’s book Palestine was origi-
nally serialized in comic book format by Fantagraphics from 1993 to 2001. Over the
course of this series, he refi ned his cartoony style into one that provided tremendous,
convincingly realistic detail about how places looked. He also found ways to arrange
words on his pages to achieve originality and attractiveness without sacrifi cing read-
ability. Th e fi rst collected volume of Palestine won an American Book Award in 1996.
Fantagraphics also published Sacco’s Safe Area Goražde: Th e War in Eastern Bosnia
1992 –1995, in which Sacco reported on his experiences in that area.
Historian Paul Buhle, perhaps the only academic cheerleader that the underground
comix movement had during its peak years, has edited, written or instigated a vari-
ety of progressive graphic novel projects, with a special emphasis on commemorating
those who have fought for their ideals. Buhle edited A Dangerous Woman, a graphic
biography of Emma Goldman, drawn by Sharon Rudahl, co-edited Wobblies!: A
Graphic History of the Industrial Workers of the World (2005) and edited Th e Beats:
A Graphic History (2009), and Students for a Democratic Society: A Graphic History
(2009), mostly written by Harvey Pekar and mostly drawn by Gary Dumm. Buhle
also co-wrote and edited Studs Terkel’s Working: A Graphic Adaptation (2009), and
worked on and introduced A People’s History of American Empire: A Graphic Adapta-
tion (2008), by Howard Zinn and drawn by Mike Konopacki.
Jim Ottaviani, a former nuclear engineer, has developed a specialty in writing comics
about science history. Th ese have included Two-Fisted Science: Stories About Scientists
(1997) illustrated by various artists, and Dignifying Science: Stories about Women Sci-
entists (1999), which was drawn by 11 women cartoonists, including some who have
also worked on his other titles, Donna Barr, Colleen Doran, Linda Medley, and Anne
Timmons. His fi rst collaborator was comic book artist Steve Lieber. Topics of his other
comics include the physicists, paleontologists, primatologists, and, most recently, in
T-Minus: Th e Race to the Moon (2009), those engineers and astronauts who made the
moon landing possible.

Organizations


Because educational cartooning typically exists in connection with other activities,
encompasses such a wide variety of projects, and confronts so few specifi c challenges,
no organization appears to be devoted exclusively and comprehensively to educational
comics. Organizations do exist for people who create, publish, teach, or study educa-
tional comics, but only as part of a wider mission in which other kinds of cartooning
have a greater role. Th e groups that exist around the educational use of comics work to
recruit new cartoonists to the fi eld or off er to provide art services.
Leif Packalén’s “World Comics,” based in Finland, promotes the use of comics for de-
velopment education in the Global South. Rather than focusing on professionally-drawn
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