Until the third season "Babylon Berlin" it's still a long time: May 2019 it should be turned off. What should one do there, in the meantime? For Christmas, I still "Berlin 1931" recommended, which admittedly not quite the same score. But now something has fallen into my hands, so - I'm quite stunned: It means, even shorter: "Berlin". And is almost stronger than the TV series. I do not even like the style.

Author Jason Lutes draws black and white, very ligne claire , one thinks of Charles Burns, and then in the movements always something wooden has. If you look in, for example, "The Wet Fish", Arne Jyssch's comic version of Volker Kutscher's bestseller, you'll soon find the more elegant action scenes, the more modern image splits.

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Arne Jysch, Volker Kutscher:
The wet fish

Carlsen Verlag; 224 pages; 20 Euros

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At Lutes, on the other hand, these funny hergé-like, old-fashioned rings are always used by racing people or moving cars, with whom I've never been able to make friends. Poor conditions so, and yet Lutes has convinced me, even more than the quite decent Jysch. Why?

Maybe because at some point I realized that I did not really need Gereon Rath. Because I found the first "Babylon" relay stronger than the second. Since Charlotte still lives in miserable conditions, works during the day in the police service and smuggles in the evening in this amazing nightlife, in which everything, but also everything is not only possible, but also tried. Imagine: The free movement of the Internet, but analog - the people at that time have really made, not just clicked. A city over which an unrestrained modern age is coming in, a dizzying flood of possibilities, millions of people between challenge and overburdening.

And that's exactly what this dazzling, appealing-disgusting Charlotte world tells Jason Lutes, over 500 pages long. No wonder he started far ahead of Volker Kutscher (Kutscher, who wrote an admirable preface to the complete edition, makes no secret of it).

Since 1996, Lutes has published the epic by turns. (Read an interview with him from 2004.) His narrative spans the years 1928-1933, but unlike Kutscher he chooses an almost "Lindenstraßen" -like range of people. Of course, in the beginning he quickly meets the art student Marthe Müller, the journalist Kurt Severing. But he always leaves both of them so easily that they are both little by little identified as the main characters. The proletarian family of Gudrun and Otto, the Jewish family Schwartz, the homeless Pavel, the lesbian Anna, the old policeman Lemke and, and, and.

Berlin Blood May

Nevertheless, the dance does not lead to losing the thread: The scenes usually work without knowing the protagonists, which is why the characters can be introduced casually. In between there are historical events (yes, here also the Berlin Blood May) and people, artists and politicians.

private / Carlsen

Jason Lutes

Fortunately, Lutes makes the real events smooth and elegant. Like the run-down Nazi who does not pay his rent. The landlady, herself not very rich, has communist contacts to collect the rent - but the man is then shot. Later, one experiences Joseph Goebbels, who uses a funeral to make the deceased a martyr: The deceased is called Horst Wessel. Only when I googled I noticed: Wessel was just that shot rental renter.

Poverty, jazz, Hitler, nothing moves Lutes too far into his picture-book, everything is in it and mixes in his hands to a swirl-like composition, in which the society, which is intoxicated by its openness, gradually sinks into chaos. People do not know what they have to lose, they seek the security of the past and choose for the future in the two utopias that have not yet been refuted by practice - fascism and communism. How the reason between these two fronts is worn down and grinded, no chance and without support in state and society, can and could read many times - but Jason Lutes makes it felt.

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Jason Lutes:
Berlin

total output

Carlsen Verlag; 608 pages; 46 euros

Order at Amazon. Order from Thalia.

It is astonishing how European the work of the American is. Lutes tells patiently, while rougher, edged than you know it from the US comic. This is not "Stauffenberg" with Tom Cruise, not even like "Schindler's List", more like a western after a hard-wash by Sergio Leone. The German translation has the additional advantage of being able to be even more authentic, but at the same time softer and coarser at the same time, with its Berlin dialect inserted in places.

Well. I did not make the edgy two-kilo-tome in one day, but in three, it was as hard to put out of my hand as a bag of potato chips. If you do not care that you roughly know how the story ends, if you do not need the Kutscher Crime Seasoning - get in touch!