RaveLos Angeles Review of BooksThe experimental, fragmentary style—and lack of an explicit narrative—is a way of writing about the pandemic without really talking about it ... Clever ... With its fragmentation, plotlessness, and playful exchange of fact and fiction—expressed as a paean to academic research in the age of Google and the pandemic—is a masterful antidote.
Joe Sacco
RaveThe Times Literary Supplement (UK)It seems appropriate, then, that Sacco draws this opening section without frames, blending personal narrative, history and mythology ... His intensely detailed pages – a characteristic of his oeuvre – remind us that he is as much a representational artist as a cartoonist. Here he pays meticulous attention to the details of dress, the camp, the animals ... Initially, Paying the Land was intended to focus on the contentious issue of resource extraction and fracking, examining the pressures on First Nations people in their negotiations with oil companies and the Canadian government. It became a much broader story about the particular challenges facing one specific group, the Dene people, and the legacies of colonialism ... Having trained as a journalist, Sacco conducts intensive research for all his books ... This different interview process behind Paying the Land is reflected in the quieter role played by Joe compared to much of his earlier work ... Sacco’s measured, predominantly realist artwork throughout reflects this attempt to let the Dene people speak for themselves, working in tandem with the historical and sociopolitical context that he deftly interweaves ... Sacco’s depiction of resource extraction, especially fracking, is nuanced, highly sensitive journalism, demonstrating the ambiguities of this destructive but lucrative business ... His combination of authorial and narrative skill and artistic talent still marks him out from many of the cartoonists who have followed in his footsteps ... It is a tribute to Sacco’s artistic skill and narrative organization that a section on the complex legal history of land ownership in the Northwest Territories is entirely engrossing.
