In Italy and Japan cartoonists have shown solidarity with Palestine by lending their support to an art tribute. Creators of original characters are taking a symbolic stand, honoring the Palestinian cartoonist Naji al-Ali and his political cartoon Handala. Handala is a child with his back to the reader, hands clasped behind him, bearing witness. In late 2023, the first draw-in was an Italian group of artists, formed by Francesca Ghermandi and indie publisher Eris Edizioni. In January, a second group from Japan is calling for peace, formed by Tokushige Kawakatsu, Mariko Matsushita and Zohre Miha.
Naji al-Ali was a Palestinian cartoonist whose career as a satirist started as a political prisoner. Al-Ali is best known for Handala, a personification of the Palestinian struggle. Handala has turned his back to the world because the paths they offer him are all without Palestinian agency. Bearing witness, often to terrible things, Handala faces what we turn away from. One can only hope his dreams will supplant what he’s seen.
Today, cartoonists are calling for an immediate ceasefire in Palestine, whose people have been subject to a genocidal onslaught of constant, unspeakable war crimes since October of 2023.
A statement from the With Handala organizers out of Japan:
“As Israel’s aggression against Palestine intensifies, people around the world are wondering what we can and should do.
“In Italy, 80 cartoonists drew the backs of their own cartoon characters in a campaign to ‘demand an immediate ceasefire on all fronts, without flags and united with the Handala.’
“‘Handala’ is a symbol of Palestinian resistance drawn by Palestinian artist Naji al-Ali, and is still depicted in various places in Palestine. ‘Handala’ means ‘suffering’ in Arabic.
“The back of Handala still continues to appeal for resistance and liberation.
“Many people in Japan are also thinking about what we can do. They are taking various actions such as demonstrations, boycotts, signing petitions, and standing for ceasefire.
“Seeing this campaign in Italy, we planned this project in the hope that we could create an appeal with the cooperation of cartoonists in Japan, along with Handala, to appeal for the back of their own characters.”
And a statement from Eris Edizioni (automatically translated, sorry), after their “first pacifist happening in the comic world” calling for a ceasefire in Palestine was published in the newspaper il Fatto Quotidiano:
“We know it’s a small drop in the sea, but such a wide, felt and participated position has never been seen, hoping it can be widened even further, but hoping it won’t be needed in the future.”
Eris Edizioni are an independent publisher of comics, illustrated fiction, and nonfiction. They have a retrospective on Naji al-Ali and his work from 2013 they’ve made available as a free PDF. While the Italian cartoonists Eris publishes are largely unknown in the United States, culture is moving in the other direction. Eris also publishes Italian editions of underground American cartoonists’ work, like Anders Nilsen. The Italian works they put out show a marvelous range, from sparse psychedelic Andrea de Franco’s Ultima Goccia to hypercolor melodrama The Cyan’s Anthem by Lucia Biagi.
Kawakatsu is a cartoonist, Matsushita a painter, and Miha photographer. Untied to a publishing house, the net cast by the group of artists working out of Japan was much wider, with many more artists lending their support. The result is a spread, from underground artists like MISSISSIPPI from Glacier Bay Books and Yukihiro Tada (whose Go! Go! TAKO-YAKI KUN was one of the Beat’s Underrated Manga Gems of 2023), to Toranosuke Shimada who did the brilliant Robo Sapiens and Kamome Shirahama who is well known for the mainstream/cult favorite series Witch Hat Atelier.
Action in the American scene is polarized along the same lines as every other issue. The Cartoonist Cooperative has been running an e-SIMs campaign. Cut off from all telecommunications services, e-SIMs are essential for getting information in and out of Palestine, for any kind of functioning connection to exist both within and to the world. The Beat believes in the Cartoonist Cooperative.
A cynic could easily see an American wave of standing with Handala without any organization behind it being treated as an art challenge (and thought of as direct action) by the thousands of eager independent illustrators out there. #WithHandala is already a thing. But there needs to be more to it than Handala DTIYS.
Characters need social capital to have impact. Seeing my favorite artists’ OCs is nice, confirmation they’re real ones. However, I am the Criterion Closet comic books guy, and the cultural shift needs to happen on the Saturday morning cartoons level. The appeal of micropress publications is the former, the universal found in the individual. Proof that anyone has the power of an icon.
The scene is without the kind of IP clout a drawing campaign needs– which is a good thing. And what the Cooperative is already doing is making real a difference, now, needed now.
So where are the icons? The Direct Market on the other side of the imaginary line is disturbingly quiet. Sunflower Seeds was on ZOOP not two months after the invasion of the Ukraine in 2022, a benefit anthology for refugees. The creators who populated that book and their peers are the ones who are culturally recognized as allowed to use the Big Two big guns, they could conceivably portray someone like (famed philanthropist) Batman in a Handala pose and have it mean something.
The other publishers of the direct market are also heavily invested in character-based comics right now. So: actual opportunity for the “indie” publishers to stand out from the corporate ones. A magical moment in time where Sonic the Hedgehog and Spawn could upstage the Avengers for a good reason instead of a lucrative one. Where are the Lumberjanes or Clementine? Whither thou, Ghus?
Fantagraphics is bringing Joe Sacco’s Palestine back into print, though they also just launched a line of clothes for fans and fam (and their babies and pets) where the slogan is “Fuck You, I’m with Fantagraphics,” a sentiment that makes me wonder about the balance between advocacy and opportunity influencing their support.
Dog Man is a cop so I wasn’t holding out for him, but I expected more from blossoming artist Cat Kid. It’s a bummer to see educational publishers as silent on the topic of Palestine as the ones defined by a market, but everything about this situation sucks. It’s worth noting that other countries have more institutional respect for the arts, and consider comics to be a part of the art world. Artists involved in these draw-ins are speaking up in countries where people are more inclined to listen to them. Meanwhile, though they’ve had to create a space for themselves outside the establishment, there is meaningful work being done by the pan-American comics world for Palestine, go support it.
I belive Joe Sacco might have been instrumental in producing an English-language compilation of Handala cartoons, earlier.
International cartoonists stand with savage thug murderers of women, children, and old people. Cowardly murderers, rapists and kidnappers, but not of able bodied men, only the weakest among society. You want peace in the middle east, international cartoonists? Provide the Palestinian people a responsible government who devote their time and resources into providing a sustainable infrastructure for their people, and not use aide money earmarked for humanitarian purposes to murder innocent people. Or maybe stop believing their choreographed propaganda when they launch missiles from mosques and schools and residential areas where their victims have no choice but to use force to take those missiles out and there is inevitable collateral damage that the Palestinians then use in their fake propaganda claiming their victims are targeting children and other civilians. Palestinians use their own people, the weakest among their own society, as cannon fodder and human shields. International cartoonists stand with the aggressors; theocratic fascists who deny their own people the most basic rights, and discriminate against and brutalize women who seek equal rights, and their LGBTQ community; and stand against the only liberal democracy in the middle-east.
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