284 HISTORY IN COMICS
storytelling and familial inheritance, illustrations depicting human beings as animals—
Jews as mice, Nazis as cats, the Polish as pigs, Americans as dogs—demonstrates some
of the depersonalizing eff ects of rabid nationalism and war.
Transnational politics have increasingly become a central topic in historical comics.
Joe Sacco’s Palestine (1996) focuses on the West Bank and Gaza Strip confl icts.
Writing himself into the comic as a participant-observer, Sacco recounts his experi-
ences while visiting the Gaza Strip and the West Bank. Th ough initially distanced from
traumatic events in the region and the people aff ected, by the end of the book Sacco
becomes familiar with the Palestinians and their story, even joining in some of their
subversive activities. Broad social and political issues come to shape individual lives in
many historical comics.
Jessica Abel’s La Perdida (2006) follows the adventures of Carla, an American
woman who attempts to reclaim her Mexican heritage by tracking down the Mexican
father who abandoned her as a child. Th ough she lives in Mexico City for two years
and learns to speak Spanish, she never fi nds her father and, instead, becomes entangled
in a kidnapping scheme that forces her to fl ee the country. Acknowledging that she
cannot change herself merely by changing her location, Carla returns to the United
States, haunted by her past. Just as she never quite perceives what is really going on
with her supposed friends in Mexico, her family history and that of Mexico remain in
many ways a mystery to her. Although Abel lived in Mexico City for two years, she has
noted that the book is not strictly autobiographical.
Harvey Pekar (writer), Gary Dumm (art), and Paul Buhle (editor) collaborate in
Students for a Democratic Society: A Graphic History (2008) to recount the student
activism of the 1950s and 1960s. While the fi rst section of the book, “SDS High-
lights” written by Pekar, attempts a comprehensive overview of the SDS and its various
factions, the second section, “Local Scenes,” presents a collection of personal stories
written primarily by former SDS members about their immediate experiences in the
movement. Th e numerous perspectives contained across the book’s 27 chapters mir-
rors the diversity and confl icting opinions that informed the creation and led to the
dissolution of the SDS as a non-hierarchical collective for political activism.
In A People’s History of American Empire (2008) Mike Konopacki and Buhle join
Howard Zinn in converting the latter’s A People’s History of the United States to com-
ics form. Indictments of imperialism and aggressive warfare throughout the history
of the United States are presented by a combination of historical facts, frequently
unmentioned in American history classes and individual biographies, including that
of Zinn. Th e book begins with Zinn questioning the possible reasons for the Sep-
tember 11 attacks on the United States, and continues to depict his own personal
history as he uncovers potential causes in the lesser-known facts of U.S. history,
especially the U.S. treatment of American Indians and invasions of foreign nations in
the Pacifi c and Central America. As a populist history, this work combines questions
of contemporary relevance with a personal accessibility to reach, and educate, a wide
audience.
