ABSTRACT
The box containing Joe Sacco’s wordless panorama The Great War (2013) also contains a booklet of mainly textual explanations, thus giving a twist to what many consider to be one of the basic characteristics of comics, the co-presence of word and image on the page or in the panel. While formally not a comic, The Great War utilises many key aspects of comics reading. The chapter focusses on how The Great War is read, and examines the reading experience that physically immerses the reader in the trenches and in a world of bodily pain.
This chapter analyses the strategies aimed at the reader’s bodily involvement during the process of reading and the role of haptic characteristics in visual composition. It is argued that these are not only ways in which Sacco thematises violence against and the pain of the human body, but that Sacco’s strategies also result in a more bodily reading experience. The violent deaths that we see elicit a very bodily response and a performance of our vulnerability as readers. This bodily response manifests itself also in relation to the ways the body is meant to be actively engaged in the cultural products Sacco’s printed miniature panorama alludes to, namely, accordion-shaped books in children’s literature and the gigantic panoramas of the 19th century.
