| Summary: | The article examines how Joe Sacco's war comics Palestine (1993) and Footnotes in Gaza (2009) engender virtual dark tourism experience for its readers through the Occupied Territories using the unique possibilities of the graphic medium such as sequential arrangement of panels, cartographic representation, sonic effects, focalization, shifting perspectives, and recurring visual motifs, among others. Espousing the identity of a Western tourist in search of stories of collective suffering and depravity, Sacco navigates the refugee settlements of West Bank and Gaza Strip to illustrate the anxious everyday existence of Palestinian residents, which is often disregarded by mainstream media narratives. Appropriating the multimodality and visual language of the comics medium, Joe Sacco, this paper argues, turns his readers into fellow dark tourists on his journeys across the contested lands of West Asia in order to witness and experience the woes of the marginalized and oft misrepresented Palestinians under occupation. Furthermore, the study underscores how the graphic medium can be a potent tool to emulate the experientiality of a dark tour.
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