In an interview with Hillary Chute, shortly after the publication of
Footnotes in Gaza (2009), Joe Sacco describes his impression of the
insistence of the past on the present: “It’s almost as if history
bleeds. In people’s minds, one bit of history bleeds into another bit
of history. … And it gives you this idea … that history hasn’t really
stopped.” His words here call to mind the work of another comics
creator, Art Spiegelman, whose Maus: A Survivor’s Tale volume I (1986)
is subtitled “My Father Bleeds History.” The suggestion is that the
process of drawing out the past is a bloodletting, a “slow, painful
effusion of history” (“The Shadow of a Past Time” 203), but this
choice of words also points to a quality particular to comics form,
that of the potential for the immediacy of past, present and future in
panel-based graphic representation. Comics are uniquely placed to play
with representations of the passing of time, often engaging directly
with issues of history, memory and trauma through their formal
elements. Maus I and II (1991) and Sacco’s Safe Area Goražde: The War
in Eastern Bosnia, 1992-95 (2000) are two works that represent a
narrative based on second-hand memory, framing their narratives by the
process involved in recording history. For Sacco and Spiegelman
history is a fluid construct, leaking into and mixing with the
present, and this is addressed consciously in their formal choices on
the page. This paper will explore the ways in which both writers
approach the issue of representing time, using Maus and Safe Area
Goražde to draw comparisons in their use of comics form, and arguing
for the unique advantages of the form in representing the flexibility
of temporal space.