The Underground War in Gaza, written and illustrated by comic book artist Joe Sacco, was the result of New York Times Magazine story editor Paul Tough’s fascination with Sacco’s book Safe Area Gorazde: The War in Eastern Bosnia 1992-1995, which Tough called the best example of comic-book reporting he’d ever seen. Sacco had recently spent several months in the Palestinian town of Rafah, and together they decided that he’d try to report a story from there for the magazine. We liked the idea of including a comic-book reporter in our pages. But it was a lot more than just the novelty: Joe was the only Western reporter who had spent so much time in Rafah and who understood the unique dynamics of the conflict there. His report was balanced and sensitive to both sides, but at the same time was emotional and impassioned.

One other reason we were glad to be able to present his report as a graphic article, rather than a pure-text article: a lot of the nuances of the Rafah story are about the way the town is laid out—it's on the border with Egypt, and there’s this one strip along the border that is especially hotly disputed. The fact that Joe was able to diagram that area in his article made it especially clear and vivid. His drawing style is clear and the images are beautifully rendered. The pages are a compelling read, and a graphic relief from the usual format of text on the left, art on the right.

This year it seems as if there is a tendency to choose projects that have words in them, or thought balloons. This is true even if the words are symbols, are implied, or are conspicuously not there.

Comic–book style journalism works great; the drawings are terrific, the design clean and easy to follow.