Karl Furlong
Nov 20, 2021
Rebecca Shehee is standing to the side of a four-foot tall black and white image. Shehee’s eyes have welled up and her breathing has become slightly labored. The image Shehee is studying captures a moment at a Black Lives Matter rally from the summer of 2020. A young woman holds a microphone, she has an expression of sorrow on her face, and the accompanying caption reads in part “I want them to feel our pain and do something with it.”
Sarah Mirk and Thi Bui are the artists that collaborated on this piece. The panel is on display at The Art of the News: Comics Journalism exhibit currently showing at the Jordan Schnitzer Museum of Art. Mirk is a journalist from Portland, Oregon and her preferred medium is comics.
“Comics are a way of paying attention to the world and telling stories and documenting both your life and the lives of others,” Mirk said.
Comics journalism uses visual graphics to convey important information. In its most recognizable form, comics journalists use a single pane to highlight current events. However, more and more comics journalists are publishing book-length works. One of Mirk’s most recent works is Guantanamo Voices: True Accounts from the World’s Most Infamous Prison. It is a 208-page award-winning book telling the stories of prisoners and other people associated with the prison.
Kate Kelp-Stebbins is the curator of The Art of the News exhibit and spent over three years putting it together. She believes the market for comics journalism is growing.
“I think you have more places that are willing and excited to actually publish comics journalism, because they’re no longer tied to a more staid or traditional publishing format,” Kelp-Stebbins said.
The ICv2 and Comichron Sales Report for 2020 puts annual comic book sales at $1.28 billion, an all-time high. The industry trade magazine attributes the growth to strong sales of graphic novels.
The interest in comics journalism has been on the rise for the past 10 years. Andréa Gilroy owns Books with Pictures, a comic bookstore in downtown Eugene. Gilroy has seen an increase in demand for the books of some of the more popular comics journalists.
Gilroy explained that when a popular author like Joe Sacco finishes a book “he’s interviewed on NPR, and he’s reviewed in the New York Times, and the LA Review of Books. And people will come into my store, and the book’s gonna be there.”
Sacco is one of eight artists featured at The Art of the News exhibition. Sacco is a graduate of the journalism program at UO and started publishing his comics in 1990. Sacco is the only graphic novelist to win the Ridenhour Book Prize, awarded annually to “those who persevere in acts of truth-telling that protect the public interest, promote social justice or illuminate a more just vision of society.”
When asked what makes comics journalism unique, Kelp-Stebbins said “one of our other artists [at the exhibit] Ben Passmore said that this is the medium that’s the closest to seeing through someone else’s eyes. And I find that to be a really compelling description of why comics journalism is so unique.”
Mirk feels that traditional forms of journalism don’t connect with the audience she wants to engage.
Mirk said, “I think comics can reach out to new audiences and get people to read and feel empathy for a topic that they wouldn’t otherwise seek out.”