 Hi, this is Chichou again. Welcome to another comic book reading session. Now, what I'm in the process of doing right now is putting together set number three of reading comics and I've picked out some fantastic books to read to you guys. And this book is one of the books that we're gonna take a look at in that lot. But I wanted to do, you know, a follow-up or I guess a preview of this book because what I did was this was, I just recently picked this up a couple of weeks ago and we did a video where we're reading the first 20 pages of this book. Sort of, this is sort of a comic book size, comic books, you know, 20 pages to 30 pages or something, one issue. So we read the first 20 pages of this and it was absolutely fantastic and I really couldn't put it down so I just finished it yesterday. Every opportunity I got I basically really didn't read anything else. I just picked up this one and read this one and there are a couple of pieces that I wanted to share with you from this because it's absolutely fantastic. It really blew me away. And just to give you a little lowdown on Joe Sacco, Joe Sacco is a comic book journalist. He basically is considered to be, you know, the grandfather and the person who gave birth to comic book journalism. And the way I came across The Fixer and other stories and The Fixer is, or anyway, this graphic novel is a compilation of three stories. It's got The Fixer, Shoba and Christmas with Karadzevic. And I came across this book when I was in a comic book store a few weeks ago, actually it was, I guess, a couple of months ago at the beginning of summer really. And, you know, I was talking with a comic book store owner and was picking up my weekly pull list. And we started talking about Joe Sacco and he told me a story about Joe Sacco that blew me away. And there's another person there that, you know, got into the conversation and that usually what happens at comic book stores once you start talking about an artist or a comic book or a storyline. If someone's interested, they usually join the conversation and it can be intense, it could be awesome, it could be not so good. This conversation between three of us was absolutely fantastic and it introduced me to The Fixer. And, you know, I ended up ordering a back order and then I grabbed this book. So in this third session, we do read the first 20 pages here. Okay. Now, after I did that video, I couldn't put this book down and I kept on reading, kept on reading, kept on reading. And, you know, I finished the book yesterday and I read the notes and, you know, just a couple of pages of notes that he has here and it's absolutely magnificent. But I wanted to read, you know, a couple of shorter segments to you, not 20 pages but like four pages, three to five pages in two different places. The reason being is the first one we're going to do, that little read absolutely blew me away because I really got immersed in this book and what happens with comic books in general if you're reading them, especially graphic novels like this. For me anyway, I usually start off reading slow and I take a look at the pictures and that's what I do in general throughout the whole book. But I really don't get the flow of the read for a comic book right off the bat because every artist, every creator, every writer has a certain feel to the way they're like sharing their stories and Josako's is very unique. So I sort of got the feel of how Josako was presenting the information further down the book and it started, you know, pulling me in and I found myself being lost in the story and the story of these characters. And what basically happened was I forgot I was reading a comic book journal, a journalistic piece of work that it was about real life events, right? And there was a moment where I reached where I sort of did a double take and I went no way this is for real, right? Because all of a sudden I remember that this was real events and this book is about the siege on Sarajevo. So the Yugoslav and the war in Yugoslavia, the civil war, the Bosnian civil war, I guess whatever you want to call it, was a huge event on the world stage This graphic novel covers that war in a perspective that if you just follow the news and read the economics and politics of things, you wouldn't have received because this is first-hand stories from people that lived it, right? So when I was reading this, because this is a comic book form, I forgot about that until I reached a certain point where a story, where a little short segment, four pages I read and I just did a double take and I'm going to read that to you right now, okay? Now we've read up to page 21 in the previous video in the third comic book session that we're doing, okay? So after that we got a nice feel of what was being done and the main character in this first story is Naveen, which is this guy and he's a Sarajevo and that Josako and this is Josako right here and he draws himself in his comic book so we read up to here and Naveen is called, you know, he's acting as the fixer, he's showing Josako around, telling the stories and introducing them to people so Soko can interview them, right? As them walking through Sarajevo, interview them and, you know, do his job basically, right? So what we're going to do is flip through and find that segment where the story occurs that I want to read to you and here's the parts, okay? Now just to give you a heads up, this little segment goes from this panel to here, okay? So it's four pages plus a panel. Now this little short segment is called the strange case of Yuka Prazina, okay? The strange case of Yuka Prazina and for me when I read this, when I got to the end, that's when it clicked to me actually when I got to the white horse is where I went, what? and I realized that I was reading real accounts so I ended up looking up Yuka Prazina online and there's an extensive wiki page about him and there's videos on him and I thought this was an exaggerated story and when I saw the videos I realized that this guy was, well, he was a main character in The Siege on Cere Aval, okay? And if you look up the videos on him, the ranking, you know, it's spilt up almost evenly with 50% of the people liking it and 50% not liking it, right? And it really depends on your perspective. Now just to give you a little background in the previous pages to this, you know, we get introduced to Yuka and we find out that he was a petty criminal that basically became a warlord in Cere Aval and he protected the region of Cere Aval from basically Cere Aval what happened was, you know, there's a lot of different factions involved so I'm not gonna talk about the different factions but basically Cere Aval was surrounded and was being bombarded, right? So there was a siege on Cere Aval and what happened was out of necessity, criminals, gangsters took control of certain regions and protected those regions, right? from massacres but in the process they end up committing massacres So Yuka is a controversial figure. He's considered a war criminal by some hero by others I think more so a war criminal because he had to do so horrendous things, I believe and you can look that up but basically that's sort of what's happened up to this point and there are other war criminals or warlords that Sako covers and he talks about or heroes So when I started looking up the videos on the site it just blew me away it's a character that back in the 1990s, early 1990s when the Bosnian Civil War or the breakup of Yugoslavia happened and I was following the news that but we really never in the West we really never got a feel of what was going on on the ground, right? Soundbites and propaganda mainly in the West of the perspective that was the perspective of the governments involved in this region of what they wanted us to know, right? and it was incredibly enlightening reading this graphic novel So enough of that intro, let's read this little segment and while we're reading it, keep in mind this guy is for real, right? These events are for real Now, the strange case of Yucca Prasina the marriage made out of necessity between the Bosnian government and the strongmen is straining, soon it reaches a major crisis and the person telling us the story, the hand that you see here is this guy, Naveen, right? He's the fixer, he's the guy who's showing Josako around and introducing him to people, you know, giving the lowdown on Josako what happened in Bosnia and this is taking place in the mid 1990s, right? and this took place I guess in the early 1990s, okay? So the marriage made out of necessity between the Bosnian government and the strongmen is straining, soon it reaches a major crisis Yucca felt important, he felt untouchable he probably saw himself as some sort of, how should I put it, lone writer who can do whatever he pleases Yucca's personal, heroic and TV appearances have transformed one-time petty crook into an icon Yucca is highly regarded, even by educated Sarajevans because the fact that someone, anyone would have the guts to stand up and fight was really appreciated according to Vildana Selim Bogovic, a journalist for Danny and I'm sorry if I'm brutalizing these names, hard to pronounce for me, right? and Danny, Sokko's got a little footnote here Danny is one of the well-respected magazines in Sarajevo the government cannot ignore Yucca and his 3,000 well-armed men it names some commander of a reserve special police force and that's Yucca right there and he walks around the clutch and he's got a huge limp and if you check out the videos online, you'll see him the government also allows Yucca to sit in a cabinet meeting he clashes with General Sefer Halalovic, Bosnia's senior army officer with Halalovic, Yucca was like, who the fuck are you to give me orders? I am police, you are army but there is a law that in case of war, the army is superior to the police Yucca refused to accept that fact when his police superior cannot handle him, Yucca shifted to the army which tries to appease him with the command of special units but he publicly derives the high command and starts calling himself a general when his wife is badly wounded, Yucca is put on a UN flight with her out of Sarajevo the idea was to remove him from Sarajevo because he was at odds with every other commander and it was better to send him somewhere where there were fear commanders and fear egos in October 1992, after a short time elsewhere in Europe Yucca returns to Bosnia claiming he will break the siege of Sarajevo he brings with him a white horse on which he plans to ride triumphantly into the city the only overland way out of Sarajevo is to run over the UN controlled runway which is under Serb guns and reach Mount Igman, the gateway to free Bosnia Yucca all but seizes the base on Igman from his own army beating off some of the officers stationed there with several score hard followers, Yucca now controls the route out of Sarajevo he sets up roadblocks in the size who can and who cannot pass he exacts tribute for safe passage, gold supplies, ammunition he steals from everyone, soldiers, civilians, the UN he is now in full mutiny, the king of Igman taking orders from no one in a brief military action in early 1993, the Bosnian army manages to arrest many of his supporters Yucca is forced off the mountain Yucca and a few dozen diehard throw in their lot with the HVO, the Bosnian Karat army in the bore within a war that erupts between the Bosnian Karats and Bosnian government in 1993 Yucca's shrinking gang reportedly aids in the cleansing of Muslims from Mostar shortly thereafter, Yucca leaves the Balkans in December 1993, he trackers find his body at Rastov near Lij, Belgium he has been shot twice in the head personally, I would like it not to be true I can't vouch one way or another, but I don't think he was so stupid to let himself be killed because he was street wise, he was a kid from the streets maybe he finally got smart and decided to lay off and that's Naveen and the next page, you know, continues on goes into another time, 1995 and goes on with another story and wow, most of the videos, when I looked this up Yucca, Yucca Prazina, when I looked this up online I read the wiki page and I looked up the videos and unfortunately, most of the videos are not in English so I couldn't understand what he was saying there were some translations most of the dialogue, you know, I don't know the language I don't know if it's Bosnian, Serbian, Yugoslavian I don't know what language they're speaking but I was hypnotized by this I sat down and watched a few videos of just this character because I've been reading about him and his antics and how he got to where he was and, you know, how war plays out and it was very enlightening and it gave me a totally different perspective on what I knew about the Bosnian civil war the breakup of Yugoslavia now another, so that part was from, you know, the fixer the first story compilation that Joe Sokko put together and I believe it was either published originally drawn and quarterly or phantographics I know Palestine was published by phantographics but I'm not sure about this one, it does say it here was originally published as a self-titled edition the fixer was originally published as a self-titled separate edition, 2003, drawn and quarterly and I believe it was individual issues that came out on this I'm not so sure now what we're gonna do is we're gonna jump to the next story Soba, and I'm just gonna flip through this and maybe read a couple pages for you so the fixer is the main chunk of the story here and it was fantastic, it blew me away okay and the next, you know, he's got sort of an intermission, I guess until he gets to Soba and black is the right color to be for the separation and Soba or Shoba, I believe this is pronounced Shoba and I look this guy up too and again everybody, everyone in this book is for Rhea and Shoba was an artist, a musician in Sarajevo that got pulled into the war and in the first page here tells us why he got pulled into the war after this war started, I realized anything's possible at the beginning, I didn't know what was happening I stayed two months in the basement I took heroin, pills, hashish, grass everything I could get to forget for a moment what was happening around me when the alcohol ran out, I volunteered at that moment I felt my family wasn't in a dangerous position if the Chetniks came into the city they killed my father, raped my sister they killed us all or put us in concentration camps and there was a lot of atrocities committed during that war so he was an artist out of necessity, out of self-preservation his family's self-preservation after sort of a destructives trying to forget everything ended up joining, volunteering for the war and the story continues here it goes from the beginning and with Shoba telling us how things were at the beginning and how he felt and what happened and the chaos just comes out in Josako's work and he loves doing splash pages like this he usually draws himself in them so it's like sort of trying to do a fine Waldo page here so I looked around and followed the dialogue and you find there's Shoba right there and there's Josako, it's just his one and a half eyes and nose showing so I can't give praise enough to his work and it goes through and shares some of the stories of what happened to Shoba what was happening with some of the other characters in this war zone and this one is extremely intriguing as well you know basically I am giving spoilers so if you want to read this and not have any spoilers please stop the video right now go pick up the fixer and read it if you enjoy this but it basically goes through a story where he's having post-traumatic stress disorder he's in a war zone and he can't handle just sitting around the trenches in minus 20 degrees degrees right so when I got out of the hospital I couldn't sit in the trenches again you can't imagine how it is in the winter you must sit in negative 20 degrees all day and all night non-stop the shells are exploding around you I volunteered for landmine duty I volunteered for landmines so he couldn't take sitting in trenches so he volunteered to clear landmines and remember this is an artist that got pulled into a war that was going stir crazy traumatic disorder couldn't sit in the trenches which bombs blowing all around them losing friends so what's the way for how does he deal with it he volunteers for the most dangerous job in the military which is clearing landmines wow and it shows him doing some of the work and what he was going through it takes you to places where they're dealing with what's happening to them and he introduces new characters what's one of the other main characters or like a secondary character A's back recently returned from Bhabic or Doboj or Senski from places with names names one learns overnight when armies crash through when armies crash through armies and a whole war pivots turns and swings the other way I love life this moment this song this schnapps and the front line and the front line it breathes he says so this is Josaku asking the question and the front line it breathes he says it inhales and exhales brings him to the Chetnecks brings the Chetnecks to him Shoba over there chatting it up with young ladies the ladies are young at club Obola you're the they're the crop of girls too young to have been sent out of Sarajevo in 1992 when the war began they're 1920 now the glorious pinnacle and Shoba is Shoba needing no introduction he is the planter of landmines the sculptor the painter the rock star the disciple of Korto Maltese Capenal who used to stride into places with pistol at the ready under his long coat and they go out this guy tells a story they go out in nighttime in Sarajevo just bomb to smithereens and they go into a building and there's curfew and they enter a club and suddenly so let's read this walking I love the city I defend the city that's A, the other character there's Sako and Shoba and the ladies walking along into, up, through and suddenly Shoba he's surrounded acuity he's putting on incredible moves working on her dancing, trashing bumping, grinding travolting in a way an ordinary chick to her knees not heard though the planter of landmines who had had who had to hang on to the roots of trees during the artillery barrage and zya zoch zoch can barely get a wiggle out of her bottom now now A lands his ass the great fighter and the planter of landmines are introducing coordinated dance moves and playing the homo erotic card to get her messy but no dice the boys take off their long coats Shoba even strips off strips off his 1972 Pierre Cardin shirt it's getting serious now but where is little miss bubblegum yeha Shoba found a second wind and not just the wind he's pulled the tornado out of his hat and she she always gets like this when she's drunk at parties Shoba got a handful now this little twister could be blowing all night but what time is it? Jesus, it's way past police hour and I realize these kids are going to be here all night on the streets they can get stopped and arrested they're in this party for the duration till four or five whenever the curfew ends and then reality hits again right or the war so those are just a little bit of a teaser a little bit of an extra from this book I won't give you anymore of the story it's fantastic thank you for Josako for putting this together thank you and Josako does thank those people who shared their stories with them thank you to those people for sharing their stories because this is the only way we get to feel what some of these atrocities were like hope that they don't happen again or work towards making sure they don't happen again okay so this was just a little bit of extra reading just a follow up on the fixer and other war stories and we do end up reading the first twenty pages of this in set number three okay and there's a lot of other goodies coming your way in that set and once I finish putting all together all the videos I'll put together the introduction to that set showing you some of the books that we did end up reading showing you some of the books that I didn't end up reading because what I do for these reading sessions I go through some of my collection and pull out books that I would like to read or re-read and put them in either a short box or a long box this was a long box actually put them together in a long box and I go through and the ones I feel like reading you know I come here I set up the camera and set up the space here and read those comics and you know share them with you and if you do like these readings and if you do like these books support these artists support these creators either donate to them or go out there and buy the books that you like okay because they put their heart and soul into it that's it for now I'll see you guys in the next video