Comics journalism

, published in The Verdict magazine, 30 Jan. 1899.|"The Menace of the Hour" by George Luks, published in The Verdict magazine, 30 Jan. 1899. Antecedents to comics journalism included printmakers like Currier and Ives, who illustrated American Civil War battles; political cartoonists like Thomas Nast; and George Luks, who was dubbed a "war artist" for his work from the front lines of the Spanish–American War. Crumb had done an earlier, similar "sketchbook report" on Harlem, which was also published in Help! Kurtzman also hired Jack Davis and Arnold Roth to do light-hearted journalistic comics for Help! starting with his 1991 series Palestine. Cartoonist Art Spiegelman was comics editor of Details in the mid-1990s; in 1997 — modeling himself after Harvey Kurtzman — Spiegelman began assigning comics journalism pieces to a number of his cartoonist associates, including Sacco, Peter Kuper, Ben Katchor, Peter Bagge, Charles Burns, Kaz, Kim Deitch, and Jay Lynch. The magazine published these works of journalism in comics form throughout 1998 and 1999, helping to legitimize the form in popular perception. Other digital magazines which focused on comics journalism during this period included Darryl Holliday & Erik Rodriguez' The Illustrated Press and Josh Kramer's The Cartoon Picayune. Jen Sorensen was editor of the "Graphic Culture" section of Splinter News (formerly Fusion) from 2014 to 2018, while Matt Bors edited the online comics collection The Nib from 2014 to 2023. Both sites published comics journalism pieces. In May 2016, The New York Times put comics journalism front-and-center for the first time with "Inside Death Row," by Patrick Chappatte (with Anne-Frédérique Widmann), a five-part series about the death penalty in the United States. In 2017, it published "Welcome to the New World," by Jake Halpern and Michael Sloan, chronicling a Syrian refugee family settling in the United States. The series ran in the print Sunday Review edition from January to September 2017 and won the Pulitzer Prize for Editorial Cartooning in 2018. In November 2019 the book Libia, about the war in Libya, written by Francesca Mannocchi and drawn by Gianluca Costantini, was published in Italy; it was translated and published in France in 2020. In 2022, in a sign of tacit approval of the form of comics journalism, the Pulitzer Prize committee changed the name of the Pulitzer Prize for Editorial Cartooning (which had been in place since 1922) to the Pulitzer Prize for Illustrated Reporting and Commentary. The 2022 award went to a work of comics journalism about the persecution of Uyghurs in China published by Insider. == Techniques ==

As with traditional journalism, there are no rules per se about comics journalism, and there are a wide variety of practices. Some practitioners, like Joe Sacco and Susie Cagle, have a background in journalism, while others were trained first as cartoonists. One feature that unites all forms of comics journalism is a reliance on witness interviews and other primary sources. Among the techniques he uses to protect his subjects — who are often survivors of conflict zones in the Middle East and the former Yugoslavia — are to change their names and use his art to anonymize their faces. In a February 2005 article on comics journalism for Columbia Journalism Review, Kristian Williams introduced, explained, and defended comics journalism: == Comics journalists ==

• Dan Archer • Steve Brodner • Susie Cagle • Carlo Gubitosa • Wendy MacNaughton • Marisa Acocella Marchetto • Josh Neufeld • Ted Rall • Leonard Rifas • Joe Sacco • Orijit Sen • Jen Sorensen • Seth Tobocman • Sam Wallman • Chip Zdarsky == Magazines of comics journalism ==

Active • Cartoon Movement, platform for works of graphic journalism and editorial cartoons • Drawing the Times, international platform for graphic journalism • La Revue Dessinée, French quarterly of comics journalism. Published since 2013 by Éditions du Seuil. • La Revue Dessinée Italia, the Italian version of the French magazine Le Revue Dessinée • Revista Badaró, Brazilian magazine and website dedicated to comics journalism. Defunct • The Cartoon Picayune, American anthology of comics journalism and nonfiction comics, published from 2011 to 2017. Founded and edited by Josh Kramer. • The Illustrated Press, Chicago-based outlet founded by Darryl Holliday. Active from 2011 to 2015. • Mamma!, Italian printed magazine of comics journalism, editorial cartoons, data journalism, and photojournalism. Founded by Carlo Gubitosa and published by cultural association Altrinformazione from 2009 to 2013. • Symbolia, American digital magazine of comics journalism. Published from 2013 to 2015. to 2019, and independently member-supported from 2019 to 2023. It is defunct as of September 2023. ==See also==