I Killed Adolf Hitler

A contract killer goes back in time to kill Hitler...and fails spectacularly.

For his latest graphic novel (the third in color, the ninth to be published by Fantagraphics) Jason posits a strange, violent world in which contract killers can be hired to rub out pests, be they dysfunctional relatives, abusive co-workers, loud neighbors, or just annoyances in general — and as you might imagine, their services are in heavy demand.

One such killer is given the unique job of traveling back in time to kill Adolf Hitler in 1939...but things go wrong, Hitler overpowers the would-be assassin and sends himself to the present, leaving the killer stranded in the past.

The killer eventually finds his way back into the present by simply waiting the decades out as he ages, and teams up with his now much-younger girlfriend to track down the missing fascist dictator...at which point the book veers further into Jason territory, as the cartoonist's minimalist, wickedly dry sense of humor slows down the story to a crawl: for long patches absolutely nothing happens, but nobody can make nothing happening as riotously entertaining as Jason does...and finally, when the reader isn't paying attention, he brings it together with a shocking, perfectly logical and yet completely unexpected climax which also solves a mystery from the very beginning of the book the reader had forgotten about.

As always, I Killed Adolf Hitler is rendered in Jason's crisp deadpan neo-clear-line style, once again augmented by lovely, understated coloring.

"Between the opening note of perverse sexuality and the touching tribute to the permanence of true love at the end, murder, time travel and alternate futures fill in the second act of this astonishing graphic novel. Such a tale could only be penned by Jason, the Norwegian cartoonist who mixes outr fantasy with deadpan romanticism. As in all his books, this one is populated exclusively by a cast of lanky anthropomorphic animals. The setting is a world where hit man is just another job; the hero has a dissatisfied girlfriend and a boring job knocking off people who are merely annoying — a too loud neighbor, an overbearing boss. But as usual in Jason's work, the story soon veers off in an unexpected direction when the protagonist is hired to go back in time to kill Adolf Hitler via a time machine that takes 50 years to fully charge. He only has one chance, but messes up, allowing Hitler to come to the present day. The story — perhaps inspired by the French time travel film La Jete — takes on even more unusual twists from there, before reaching a surprising and completely satisfying denouement that solves both the hero's relationship problems and World War II. Jason continues to be one of the best cartoonists working anywhere." Publishers Weekly (Starred Review) (Copyright Reed Business Information, Inc.)

"Not so much a jeu desprit as a jeu de-spritz. Whee!" Booklist

"When I read Jason for the first time, I was just as excited and devastated as the first time I read the poems of Emily Dickinson and Walt Whitman. Jason's work is poetry. Beautiful and frightening. Redemptive and hopeless. He is the Kafka and Keats of the comic world." Sherman Alexie

With this unfettered imagination and perversely warm nihilism, Jason comes across like a comic-book Kurt Vonnegut, but more focused, sophisticated, reserved, chilling.  Each new book is like a paragraph in humanity's compulsively readable collective suicide note.

2008 Eisner Award Winner: Best U.S. Edition of International Material; 2008 Harvey Award Nominee: Best Single Issue or Story: A hitman is hired to travel back in time to kill Hitler in 1939... but things go very wrong. Hitler escapes to the present, leaving the killer stranded in the past. This surprising thriller unfolds with Jason's wickedly dry humor.

Jason hails from Oslo, Norway, but currently resides in the south of France. The Harvey and Eisner Award-winner continues to create new books at a breakneck pace--his books include Werewolves of Montpellier; Low Moon; Pocket Full of Rain and Other Stories; Hey, Wait...; Sshhhh!; The Iron Wagon; What I Did (collecting the previous three volumes); I Killed Adolf Hitler; The Last Musketeer; The Left Bank Gang; Why Are You Doing This?; The Living and the Dead; Meow, Baby!; You Can't Get There from Here; Tell Me Something; and Almost Silent (collecting the previous four volumes) and (with Fabien Vehlmann) Isle of 100,000 Graves.