Pfft. Comic books. We're talking nerds, spandex, publisher, year of publication, and in ubergeek territory we're talking release date. Oh, and if you guess wrongly at one of these or any other details in reference to said book, expect the scorn of one who felt it to such a degree that 47% of their schooling life was spent hiding in a library or a D&D chatroom.

Which brings us to the question, what's the difference between a geek and a nerd?
Geeks get it done.

It doesn't actually bring us to that question - I just think it's a great line. And if I was somebody who liked comic books, I would use that as a springboard to talk about the best comic lines, the best releases, the diamonds amongst the crud, etc.

But I don't like comic books, which is why I have an assortment of graphic novels. Graphic novels, generally, don't have ads on the back, don't have promotional offers for sea monkeys, and don't require that you purchase every other release in the series to understand the subplot. They also uphold the failed promise of too much comic art to exceed the possibility of a novel by the addition of art.

One writer in particular has pioneered a genre, the unlikely sounding but exceptional form of 'comic journalism'. His name is Joe Sacco. He does not deal in fantasy, oversized breasts, and medical marvels. He deals frequently in some of the hardest realities of our world.

The method is intriguing and the results are amazing. Take, for example, Palestine. Sacco, like only a handful of war correspondents spent time in the occupied territories - months, in fact. He lived with the victims of war, occupation, and evacuation. In travelling, living, and speaking with everyday people, families, and soldiers, he found a level of humanity, suffering, and anecdote entirely neglected by the 2 minute news grab.

He would record interviews and casual conversations as they took place, then convert the most astonishing and revealing of those exchanges into dialogue for the illustrated panels he would create later. The images he reconstructs from his photos range from crowded, chaotic, and detailed street scenes, to extreme close ups of the storytellers top lip, an eye, an ear.

He used the same technique to get deep inside the real story of Yugoslavia's collapse in Safe Area: Gorazde. Both of these books are astonishing, both add to the reader's understanding of humanity and history, and both are at least as powerful and as essential as any purely written-word

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