Paying the Land

Urgent and compelling... This is Sacco getting to grips with the story of America itself, the story that America tells itself... Tremendously heartfelt...refreshingly honest...always thoughtful and engaging... We are nothing if not greedy for new Sacco work. * Bookmunch * Paying the Land is Sacco's first full-length work of comics journalism in a decade, and it reminds us of why he is credited as a pioneer of the genre. His combination of authorial and narrative skill and artistic talent still marks him to from many of the cartoonists who have followed in his footsteps. His ability to move between genres and tones, often in consecutive frames, seems to cut across cultures, as his global popularity attests. Comics is a particularly effective mode for Paying the Land, enabling the reader to visualise an unfamiliar landscape and lifestyle. Sacco's artistic ability is particularly striking here, especially in his intensely detailed group scenes. The white page allows him to demonstrate the vast snowy expanses of the land, and to show how it dwarfs human beings. -- Alice Kelly * Times Literary Supplement * A powerful depiction of the painful history of the Northwestern Territory's indigenous people... [Joe Sacco's] comics have earned him comparisons to Hogarth, Art Spiegelman and Robert Crumb... [Paying the Land has] an astonishing sense of place. You can smell rock, pine and snow, feel it in your bones. -- Aida Edemariam * Guardian *Book of the Week* *