Joe Sacco is a Maltese-American cartoonist and journalist. He is best known for his comics journalism, which includes notable works such as Palestine (1996) and Footnotes in Gaza (2009), focusing on Israeli–Palestinian relations. He also explored the Bosnian War in his graphic novels Safe Area Goražde (2000) and The Fixer (2003). In 2020, Sacco released Paying the Land, published by Henry Holt and Company.

Born in Malta on October 2, 1960, Sacco moved with his family to Australia at the age of one, where he spent his early childhood until 1972, when they relocated to Los Angeles. He developed his interest in journalism while working on the Sunset High School newspaper in Beaverton, Oregon, and later graduated from the University of Oregon with a B.A. in journalism in 1981.