Part of Series
The conclusion to a masterful graphic novel trilogy that follows Berlin citizens as Nazism rises The third and final act of Jason Lutes’s historical fiction about the Weimar Republic begins with Hitler arriving in Berlin. With the National Socialist party now controlling Parliament, the citizenry becomes even more divided. Lutes steps back from the larger political upheaval, using the intertwining lives of a small group of Germans to zero in on the rise of fascism and how swiftly it can replace democracy. The idle rich, the naïve bourgeoisie, and the struggling lower classes: all seek meaning in the warring political factions dividing their nation. He especially focuses on the Brauns—a working-class family torn apart by a political system that doesn’t care about them. Lovers couple and uncouple; families and friends share rituals and laughter; most of Berlin’s citizens go about their day with little sense of the larger threat to their existence. Meanwhile, the journalist Kurt Severing and the artist Marthe Muller watch in horror as their society begins a dizzying descent into extremism.
Author
Jason Lutes was born in New Jersey in 1967 and grew up reading American superhero and western comics until a trip to France at age nine introduced him to the world of "bandes dessinées." In the late 1970s he discovered Heavy Metal magazine and the tabletop role-playing game Dungeons & Dragons, both of which proved major influences on his creative development. Lutes graduated from the Rhode Island School of Design with a BFA in Illustration in 1991. While at RISD, among the many new comics he encountered were Art Spiegelman's RAW magazine and Chester Brown's Yummy Fur, which together inspired him to start publishing minicomics under the imprint "Penny Dreadful." Upon graduation in 1991, he moved to Seattle, where he spent several years working as a dishwasher and assistant art director at Fantagraphics Books. His "big break" came in 1993, when he began drawing a weekly comics page called "Jar of Fools" for The Stranger, Seattle's alternative paper. By 1995 he had become the paper's art director, but upon collecting and self-publishing Jar of Fools in 1996, he left The Stranger and made the leap to becoming a full-time cartoonist. In the handful of productive years following that decision, Lutes began the comic book series Berlin, an ongoing 22-chapter story set in the twilight years of the Weimar Republic. The first eight chapters are collected in Berlin: City of Stones, and chapters nine through sixteen are collected in Berlin: City of Smoke. Lutes currently lives in Vermont with his partner and two children, where he teaches comics at the Center for Cartoon Studies and works on City of Light, the final installment of his Berlin trilogy, whenever he can find the time. He still tries to play Dungeons & Dragons once a week with friends.
