Two lovely full-page panels dominate Berlin's first issue: an elevated shot of the train carrying Kurt and Marthe toward Berlin and, later on, a bird's eye view of the city's downtown core. Kurt and Marthe talk together on the train, wander through Berlin's streets, and finally arrive at separate destinations: Severing at the offices of his employer, the daily paper Die Weltbuhne, and Muller at the home of Herr Wolzendorf, an ex-soldier who formerly served under her father's command. Kurt Severing is a journalist returning to the city from a clandestine visit to an airfield where military planes are being tested, in direct violation of the Treaty of Versailles, which prohibits Germany from maintaining an air force Marthe Muller is an artist from the small city of Koln, who might simply be traveling for pleasure, though Lutes hints that she is more likely fleeing an incident in her past involving her father, a major in the German army. Two strangers, man and woman, meet on a train bound for Berlin.
Berlin is not set in the present day, but in Germany, circa 1928. Jar of Fools was set in rainy Seattle much of that book took place in the dark beneath elevated portions of the I-5, where the characters' invisibility from the traffic overhead served as a reflection on their marginal lives.
Geography and psychology are interchangeable for Lutes - the places in which his characters find themselves are invariably related to their lives and emotional conditions. If its companion volume, or, for that matter, Berlin fails to reach it, it's as important to acknowledge that early success as it is to note that, while Berlin still falls short of Lutes' personal best, it's nonetheless a competently conceived and executed read. The indifferent response to Jar's second volume seemed to indicate a falling-off, or relaxation of the formidable cartooning skills Lutes brought to bear in the first volume, which still stands as a benchmark of Lutes' achievement. While Jar's first volume evoked widespread, and well-deserved, critical acclaim, the second volume was met with puzzling (and for Lutes, undoubtedly frustrating) silence. This review by Christopher Brayshaw was originally published in The Comics Journal #187 (May 1996).īERLIN IS JASON LUTES' follow-up to his unmistakably ambitious two-volume graphic novel, Jar of Fools. From the TCJ Archives Jason Lutes’ Berlin #1
0 kommentar(er)
