Comics reportage or comics journalism is a genre that uses the medium of comics to report journalistically on current or historical world events. Joe Sacco first described his work, published from 1993 onwards, as comics journalism Palestine. He is thus considered a pioneer of the genre, even if earlier works by other artists can also be counted as such in retrospect. One of these forerunners is Keiji Nakazawa, whose autobiographical Barefoot through Hiroshima (1972) deals with his experiences during the dropping of the atomic bomb in 1945.

Even though the author of the journalistic comic emphasises selected highlights of his research, there is no dramaturgical plot as in a graphic novel. Instead, the comic artist stages exemplary moments using photographs or from memory and illustrates descriptions and quotations. The drawings reinforce the impression of an eyewitness account. The illustrator can only offer topicality in short episodes, which are increasingly appearing online in newspapers such as the Guardian. For the more comprehensive book form, this particular form of journalism usually takes several years. Drawing a reportage requires selection, emphasis and subjective stylistic representation. In return, however, this medium makes it particularly clear that all other forms of reporting that are generally assumed to be objective are also subject to these processes. A photograph conveys more authentic observations, but also suggests authenticity to a greater extent. In its image-text correspondence, the comic reportage appears like the translation of a video reportage into an artistic form. This makes it easier to read as a new medium.
Criticism comes primarily from the field of classical journalism, as the artistic drawing style is not a journalistic element, but rather has its predecessors in political caricature. On the other hand, one reason for the medium's popularity is that it is easier to convey psychologically alien, traumatic or culturally different moments, as the visual shock of photographs is attenuated in drawings. Perhaps this is why a frequently recurring theme is the everyday life of the population in foreign cultures or international conflict zones.

In The Photographer, Emmanuel Guibert illustrates photographs from a travelogue by photographer Didier Lefèvre, which were taken in 1986 during the Soviet war against the mujahideen in Afghanistan. By combining comics and photography, he creates a narrative style worth seeing. In his four volumes Shenzhen, Pyongyang, Notes from Burma and Notes from Jerusalem, Guy Delisle reports on his everyday life as an animator in the respective countries. In simple drawings and with laconic humour, he transports the reader into the everyday life of the country. An example of a less journalistic and more artistic style is Steve Mumford's Baghdad Journal, in which everyday life in occupied Iraq is captured in realistic watercolours. Dan Archer gives a brief introduction to comic journalism in the form of a comic here.

Click here for a review of Joe Sacco's Palestine and Marjane Satrapi's Persepolis.