You know how someone says of a book, "I couldn't put it down"? Sometimes it's hyperbole, and sometimes they're talking about this book. After all the tell-all books and the innumerable TV movies and mini-series, this simple comic book manages to capture something new of Marilyn/Norma Jean Baker. Her soul. An incredibly compelling fictional biography of one of America's most familiar icons, Marilyn Monroe.

An incredibly compelling fictional biography of one of America's most familiar icons, Marilyn Monroe. Kathryn Hyatt, in telling this story in the comics medium, creates an atmosphere not possible in a prose biography. Here Marilyn speaks for herself--to her psychoanalyst, to a reporter--and ultimately to the reader of this book. Beginning where her unstable mother leaves off, Marilyn begins to dream of fame in early childhood. The reader follows Monroe's rise to stardom, progressing through the lower depths of Hollywood into the hard realities of stardom. Seen through the prism of Marilyn's inner world, her achievements and failures take on a new complexity and poignancy. 

The author, Kathryn Hyatt , February 10, 2000
Marilyn for the Millennium
I was standing in my kitchen making toast and thinking about shopping for school clothes, when the news of Marilyn Monroe's suicide came over the radio. That moment, exactly where I stood, the August morning light, are fixed in my memory like a polaroid. I was shocked. How could anyone so alive be dead? It hardly mattered that I had never met the woman. By the time I was twelve, Marilyn Monre already had a grip on my imagination. As I was growing up, I would rediscover Marilyn Monroe every few years. I eagerly consumed each revived film, discovered photograph, and new book. Marilyn seemed to grow in depth and complexity as I did. When I became an artist, a woman artist at that, my empathy for Marilyn grew. I became dissatisfied with the way she was portrayed in the media. The glitzy artificial icon, the simpering self-destructing addict, the sexual adventuress, the victum of a dozen different conspiracy theories--all distort, oversimplify and deprive her of her humanity. "My" Marilyn was flawed, funny, brave, troubled, but most of all hard to pin down. I appreciate that about Marilyn. She frustrates all efforts to have the final say, to own her. She still insists on being her own person.

Frank Miller's epic retelling of history's supreme moment of battlefield valor is a glorious hardcover volume--each oversize page encompasses what was originally a double-page spread, greatly enhancing the graphic and narrative power of this immortal tale of heroic sacrifice. Story and art by living comics legend Frank Miller, painted by Lynn Varley.

Ken Kurson, Money Magazine
...The black-and-white morality of comics makes the ideal canvas.

Harvey Pekar
...Accounts of the lives of sometimes rich and frequently unscrupulous hit the mark with their irony and sharp observations.

From the Publisher
Josh Neufeld has been drawing comics since he was four years old. With his friend of almost 20 years, Dean Haspiel, Josh co-created Keyhole, where Josh does stories about his travel experiences in Southeast Asia and Central Europe. Keyhole has run for six issues with two different publishers. Josh has contributed artwork to Harvey Pekar's American Splendor (Dark Horse), the SPX anthologies, The Big Book of Urban Legends (DC/Paradox Press), and Duplex Planet Illustrated (Fantagraphics), among others. He resides in Brooklyn and makes a living mixing freelance illustration with web design.

About the Authors
Josh Neufeld has been drawing comics since he was four years old. With his friend of almost 20 years, Dean Haspiel, Josh co-created Keyhole, where Josh does stories about his travel experiences in Southeast Asia and Central Europe. Keyhole has run for six issues with two different publishers. Josh has contributed artwork to Harvey Pekar's American Splendor (Dark Horse), the SPX anthologies, The Big Book of Urban Legends (DC/Paradox Press), and Duplex Planet Illustrated (Fantagraphics), among others. He resides in Brooklyn and makes a living mixing freelance illustration with web design. Rob Walker is a freelance journalist and the Moneybox columnist for Slate.com. His writing -- on such subjects as money culture, advertising, music, and sequential artists ­ has appeared in many magazines and newspapers. Walker has worked as an editor for the New York Times Magazine, Money, and The American Lawyer, among other publications. He is a graduate of the University of Tex! as at Austin, where he had his first experience making comics by co-creating, with Erin Mayes, an experimental strip that ran in The Daily Texan in 1990. A native of Texas, Walker now lives in New Orleans.

The Journal of Palestinian Studies
"Palestine deserves a place among the very best of documentary."

The Comics Journal #166, Frank Stack, February 1994
"I may as well get right to the point. Buy and read Joe Sacco's...Palestine."

Fantagraphics Books is pleased to present, for the first time, a single-volume collection of this 288-page landmark of journalism and the artform of comics. Interest in Sacoo has never been higher than with the release of his critically acclaimed book, Safe Area Gorazde.

Based on several months of research and an extended visit to the West Bank and Gaza Strip in the early 1990s (where he conducted over 100 interviews with Palestinians and Jews), Palestine was the first major comics work of political and historical nonfiction by Sacco, who has often been called the first comic book journalist.

Sacco's insightful reportage takes place at the front lines, where busy marketplaces are spoiled by shootings and tear gas, soldiers beat civilians with reckless abandon, and roadblocks go up before reporters can leave. Sacco interviewed and encountered prisoners, refugees, protesters, wounded children, farmers who had lost their land, and families who had been torn apart by the Palestinian conflict.

In 1996, the Before Columbus Foundation awarded Palestine the seventeenth annual American Book Award, stating that the author should be recognized for his "outstanding contribution to American literature," while his publisher, Fantagraphics, is "to be honored for their commitment to quality and their willingness to take risks that accompany publishing outstanding books and authors that may not prove 'cost-effective' in the short run."

This new edition of Palestine also features a new introduction from renowned author, critic, and historian Edward Said, author of Peace and Its Discontents and The Question of Palestine and one of the world's most respected authorities on the Middle Eastern conflict.

About the Author
Joe Sacco lives in Queens, New York. In April, he received a 2001 Guggenheim Fellowship to work on his next project.