World Famous Comics: Berlin Book Two: City of Smoke (Berlin)
Berlin Book Two: City of Smoke (Berlin)
By: Jason Lutes Publisher: Drawn and Quarterly Average Rating: Binding: Paperback Label: Drawn and Quarterly Number of Items: 1 Number of Pages: 200 Publication Date: September 16, 2008 Release Date: August 19, 2008
The second installment of the epic historical trilogy
The second volume of Jason Lutes’s historical epic finds the people of Weimar Berlin searching for answers after the lethal May Day demonstration of 1929. Tension builds along with the dividing wall between communists and nationalists, Jews and Gentiles, as the dawn of the Second World War draws closer. Meanwhile, the nightlife of Berlin heats up as many attempt to distract themselves from the political upheavals within the city. The American jazz band Cocoa Kids arrives and quickly becomes a fixture. The lives of the characters within Lutes’s epic weave together to create a seamless portrait of this transitory city. Marthe Muller follows her lover Kurt Severing as he interviews participants in the May Day demonstration, but she moonlights in the city’s lesbian nightlife.Severing acts as a window through which the political shifts within the city and its participants can be seen. As with Berlin Book One: City
It's getting better In Berlin, City of Smoke, Jason Lutes picks up where the first book, City of Stones, left off - after the events of May 1929. The storytelling has improved, both in terms of the narrative and the actual art itself. It's a bit more cohesive and streamlined - the work of a master at his craft, honing his skills even further. Not that the first book wasn't good .. far from it! It's just that this one's better.
The character art work has gotten noticeably better - characters are more consistent and fluid in their movements and especially in their facial expressions. It's always great to see an artist at the top of their game - in any field - and this second edition of the Berlin trilogy is Lutes' best work so far.
I won't give away anything from the story itself but will say it gets more interesting and a little easier to follow. This is a fascinating piece of work, both with the historical content and in the story itself. Lutes' has much to say about the many facets of the human condition and does it in a such a finessed way .. he doesn't hit you over the head with anything, he lets the story come first and weaves in the "sub messages" lightly, just like a writer of good prose would do.
Like the best comic storytelling, it's an easy first read that rewards repeated reading. Highly recommended - at the price listed on Amazon, this is a steal. And a gorgeously depicted Josephine Baker even makes an appearance .. what more do you want?
Things fall apart I've eagerly awaited the appearance of Jason Lute second volume of Berlin. Now that it's appeared, I realize that it was well worth waiting for. But it also seems to me that there's a bit of a decline in the meticulous craftsmanship that characterized the first volume.
The story line continues in expected ways from an historical perspective, but in quite unexpected ways from the perspective of the characters. The most searing change is in the relationship between Kurt Severing, the increasingly disillusioned pacifist, leftist, and political journalist, and his young love Marthe Muller, whom he introduces to the cultural life of Berlin.
What happens to Marthe and Kurt seems to parallel what's happening to the Weimar Republic in general: things fall apart. Much of City of Smoke follows the breakdown of the Republic: the increasing violence between fascists and communists, the virulence of anti-Semitism, the suppression of intellectuals. Jazz, lesbianism, homosexuality, and a general sense of fin de siecle are some of the themes that Lutes explores.
Two shortcomings, while not at all fatal to Lutes' project, make the second volume of Berlin less wonderful than the first. At times, in order to add some historical detail to his story, Lutes becomes overly didactic (especially pp. 120-124). A weightier problem is the occasional sloppiness with which the panels are drawn. The artistry in Berlin, City of Stones was breathtaking. Here, occasionally, it seems cartoonish--for example, Lutes draws conventionally cartoonish clouds of anger above characters' heads instead of letting the anger showing on their faces tell the story (see, for instance, bottom panel on p. 173). In other places, the drawing lacks perspective and strikes one as preliminary sketches that were never completed (see, for example, the panels on p. 35).
Still, Jason Lutes' is creating a masterwork with his Berlin saga, and I now await the third volume as eagerly as I did the second.
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