Synopses & Reviews
Berlin: City of Stones presents the first part of Jason Lutes' captivating trilogy, set in the twilight years of Germany's Weimar Republic. Kurt Severing, a journalist, and Marthe Muller, an art student, are the central figures in a broad cast of characters intertwined with the historical events unfolding around them.
City of Stones covers eight months in Berlin, from September 1928 to May Day, 1929, meticulously documenting the hopes and struggles of its inhabitants as their future is darkened by a glowing shadow.
Born in New Jersey in 1967, Jason Lutes is an American cartoonist whose work includes the ongoing Berlin trilogy and the graphic novel Jar of Fools. He is a graduate of the Rhode Island School of Design and a former art director at The Stranger. Berlin: City of Stones, the first part of Jason Lutes' captivating trilogy, is a graphic novel set in the twilight years of Germany's Weimar Republic. Hurt Severing, a journalist, and Marthe Müller, an art student, are the central figures in a broad cast of characters intertwined with the pivotal historical events unfolding around them. The book covers eight months in Berlin, from September 1928 to May Day 1929, meticulously documenting the hopes and struggles of its inhabitants as their future is darkened by a growing shadow.
"A comic of impressive scope. One of the appealing things about Berlin is Lutes' love of the comic medium. His story is full of novel combinations of text and pictures, shuttling (a la Wings of Desire) between impassive bird's-eye cityscapes and dairy-like internal monologues.”San Francisco Chronicle Book Review "A comic of impressive scope. One of the appealing things about Berlin is Lutes' love of the comic medium. His story is full of novel combinations of text and pictures, shuttling (a la Wings of Desire) between impassive bird's-eye cityscapes and dairy-like internal monologues."San Francisco Chronicle Book Review "[Berlin] will be the longest, most sophisticated work of historical fiction in the [graphic novel] medium. Lutes has a natural, clean, European drawing style, much like Hergé's Tintin . . . This book has the density of the best novels."Time "This black-and-white historical narrative, written and illustrated by Lutes, collects eight volumes of his ongoing comic book set in Berlin during the late '20s. It's a multilayered tale of love and politics at the beginning of the Nazi era, as Lutes follows the stories of three characters: a 20ish art student from the provinces, a textile worker, and a young Jewish radical. Their lives intersect in only the subtlest waysLutes depicts them crossing paths at some great public events, such as the May Day march that closes this part of his [trilogy]. And Lutes plays with perspective in a visual sense as well, jumping from point-of-view frames to overhead angles, including one from a dirigible flying above in honor of the Kaiser. At street level, Lutes integrates his historical research smoothly, and cleverly evokes the sounds and smells of a city alive with public debate and private turmoil. The competing political factions include communists, socialists, democrats, nationalists, and fascists, and all of Lutes's characters get swept up by events. Marthe, the beautiful art student, settles in with Kurt, the cynical and detached journalist; Gudrun, the factory worker, loses her job, and her nasty husband (to the Nazi party), then joins a communist cooperative with her young daughters; Schwartz, a teenager enamored with the memory of Rosa Luxembourg, balances his incipient politics with his religion at home and his passion for Houdini. The lesser figures seem fully realized as well, from the despotic art instructor to the reluctant street policeman. Cosmopolitan Berlin on the brink of disaster: Lutes captures the time and place with a historian's precision and a cinematographer's skill. His shifts from close-ups to fades work perfectly in his thin-line style, a crossbreed of dense-scene European comics and more simple comics styles on this side of the Atlantic. An original project worth watching as it shapes up to something that may be quite magnificent."Kirkus Reviews
Review
"[A] comic of impressive scope. One of the most appealing things about Berlin is Lutes' love of the comics medium. His story is full of novel combinations of text and pictures, shuffling (a' la Wings of Desire) between impressive bird's-eye cityscapes and diary-like internal monologues." San Francisco Chronicle Book Review
Review
"[Berlin] will be the longest, most sophisticated work of historical fiction in the medium. Lutes has a natural, clean, European drawing style, much like Herge's Tintin....[T]his book has the density of the best novels." Time Magazine
Review
"Lutes captures the time and place with a historian's precision and a cinematographer's skill....An original project worth watching as it shapes up to something that may be quite magnificent." Kirkus Reviews
Review
"Where Art Spiegelman's Maus defined the comics version of World War II, and Joe Sacco's Palestine examined the postwar Jewish state, Berlin acts as a kind of fictional prequel. Like his well-regarded predecessors, Lutes easily avoids the expositional traps that can swallow up historical fiction." Evan Sult, The Stranger (Seattle)
Synopsis
Top cartoonist Jason Lutes has written and drawn this intriguing and evocative story set against the backdrop of Berlin during the twilight years of the Weimar Republic. The story begins in 1928 and follows the intimate relationship between a journalist and artist as events surrounding them continue to unravel over the course of the next five years. Lutes' drawings, characterized by an almost gentle, clear-line approach, are accessible to the non-traditional comics reader and they are complimented by his innovative and innate sense of storytelling. Berlin, Book One is the first part of a 600 page trilogy and promises to be one of the most ambitious and topical graphic novels since Art Spiegelman's Pulitzer Prize-winning Maus.
Synopsis
Berlin: City of Stones presents the first part of Jason Lutes's captivating trilogy, set in the twilight years of Germany's Weimar Republic. Kurt Severing, a journalist, and Marthe Muller, an art student, are the central figures in a broad cast of characters intertwined with the historical events unfolding around them. City of Stones covers eight months in Berlin, from September 1928 to May Day, 1929, meticulously documenting the hopes and struggles of its inhabitants as their future is darkened by a growing shadow.
Synopsis
City of Stones covers eight months in Berlin, from September 1928 to May Day, 1929, meticulously documenting the hopes and struggles of its inhabitants as their future is darkened by a growing shadow.
Synopsis
Berlin: City of Stones presents the first part of Jason Lutes' captivating trilogy, set in the twilight years of Germany's Weimar Republic. Kurt Severing, a journalist, and Marthe Muller, an art student, are the central figures in a broad cast of characters intertwined with the historical events unfolding around them.
City of Stones covers eight months in Berlin, from September 1928 to May Day, 1929, meticulously documenting the hopes and struggles of its inhabitants as their future is darkened by a glowing shadow.