The Great War July 1, 1916: The First Day of the Battle of the Somme. It is an illustrated panorama with an essay by Adam Hochschild. "Sacco's work [is] the best argument around for comics as a journalistic medium". (GQ). Launched on July 1, 1916, the Battle of the Somme has come to epitomize the madness of the First World War. Almost 20,000 British soldiers were killed and another 40,000 were wounded that first day, and there were more than one million casualties by the time the offensive halted a few months later. In The Great War, acclaimed cartoonist Joe Sacco depicts the events of that day in an extraordinary, 24-foot-long wordless panorama: from the riding exercises of General Douglas Haig to the massive artillery positions and marshalling areas behind the trench lines, to the legions of British soldiers going 'over the top' and being cut down in No-Man's-Land, to the tens of thousands of wounded soldiers retreating and the dead being buried en masse. Printed on fine accordion-fold paper and packaged in a deluxe hardcover slipcase with a 16-page accompanying booklet, The Great War is a landmark work in Sacco's illustrious career, and makes visceral one of the bloodiest days in history.