Jason Lutes, Berlin #13 (Drawn & Quarterly, 2007), $3.95; Jason Lutes and Nick Bertozzi, Houdini: The Handcuff King (Center for Cartoon Studies, 2007)

by Jared Gardner

Elsewhere in this issue, I complain in all kinds of petty ways about the tardiness of a certain Paul Hornshemeier. So when it is time to turn my critical gaze on Jason Lutes, who has gone a full twenty months between issues of his ongoing masterpiece, Berlin (and who at this rate will fulfill his promised trilogy of volumes sometime in my grandchildren’s dotage), an attentive reader might expect me to be in a white hot rage. But consistency is the green goblin of little minds, as some wise sage once proclaimed, and I must confess that in this case my devotion runs so deep that I am willing to be left waiting in the cold rain for many years to come just for a chance to spend 24 pages in Lutes’ Berlin. And like all abusive lovers, Lutes knows when to bring me a little present, like his recent volume on Houdini, for which he provided the script and Nick Bertozzi the watery lines. How can I stay mad at this man?

For those who haven’t been reading Berlin…well, start reading it immediately, beginning with Berlin: City of Stones, which collects the first eight issues. Berlin tells the story of the city between the ways, its transformation from a place of vibrant debate and possibility into the world capital of fear and hate. Lutes tells the story through a huge cast of characters from all walks of life, centering especially on two: a cynical journalist and a young art student. As they respond differently to the changing events and the possibilities of the vibrant city, a generation comes to life and a city, literally, tells its own story. Now just over halfway done with its projected 24 issues, I can pronounce with great clairvoyance that, once completed, this will be the most important graphic narrative of our generation.

I say that despite the fact that the most recent issue in some ways was the closest to a weak note that Lutes has played over the several years he has been working on this series. I use the musical metaphor advisedly, since Lutes represents music graphically better than anyone I have encountered. But here Lutes lets the issue become a bit talky, and the whole bogs down in a lengthy dinner meeting of progressive journalists who talk on and on into the night going nowhere. But of course, that is precisely the point. Events in Berlin have gone from bad to worse, as the markets have crashed and desperation is beginning to take hold of all but the most starry-eyed dreamers. Our journalist, Severing, has split from our artist, Marthe, and they have followed very different paths into the heart of darkness opening up before them all. Severing and his comrades have taken recourse in words, hoping to talk and write themselves into a solution. Marthe, liberated from the provincialism of her small-town upbringing and from the patronizing attentions of Severing, has found herself in a hidden world of pleasures and possibilities in the hidden passageways of the city. Neither will escape the coming storm, we know (like the Titanic, the final chapter has of course already been written), and Lutes is remarkably neutral as to whether one has chosen the right path.