I only really got into comics when I started going out with a guy that was into comics. He took me to Orbital and to Gosh and to Dave’s comics in Brighton and to the Alternative Press Fair and to Thought Bubble – which are all quite different comics experiences – but I was - shamefully, because I knew nothing about comics until that point – amazed that this entire world existed that I had, until that point, never even encountered.

The first comic I bought was Joe Sacco’s Palestine.

I’d worked as a journalist. The Gaza War had only recently ended and tensions were still high. I was interested in the Middle East. And I was fascinated to see how Sacco had used the medium.

It was a brilliant purchase. The way Sacco is able to immerse you in a situation, to connote people’s feelings and actions and convey their stories and to, throughout, attempt to play the role of active observer was unlike anything I’d ever seen or read before. It would have been unlikely for me to read 285 pages of text on the Occupied Territories in 1991-1992, but a comic that allowed me to see and to hear without all the restrictions of the media and the generally accepted standard of features reporting and the tendency to use on sound-bite like quotes from real people with real experiences, well, that, it was fair to say, was thoroughly engaging.

I’ve pondered the notion of comics as journalism ever since. It’s a difficult one.

Journalists file stories hours, moments after events have happened and the process of creating a comic is a lot more labour intensive. 

While comics could definitely mislead or present only what the creator wants you to be presented with, they have an opportunity to be more engaging, more accessible and more insightful than any simple prose journalism. Edward Said puts it well:

“Sacco’s art has the power to detain us, to keep us from impatiently wandering off in order to follow a catch-phrase or a lamentably predictable narrative of triumph and fulfillment.”

Matt Bors’  Afghanistan series is an excellent contemporary example. And Cartoon Movement in general – their editorial cartoons and comics journalism – is pretty top notch.

And all this means that I’m pretty chuffed my latest project with Tom Humberstone - the students series – could, if you’re that way inclined, be classed as comics journalism.