ESSENTIAL: BERLIN: CITY OF STONES
BY JAMIE S. RICH

---

Berlin, Book 1: City of Stones
By Jason Lutes
Drawn & Quarterly
$15.95
JAN011949

It was many years ago that Berlin #1 came out. It debuted at a San Diego ComicCon, and I was eagerly awaiting it as the first major work of Jason Lutes since Jar of Fools. I don't recall if Jason and I had ever spoken at all before that. I may have called him on behalf of Diana Schutz when she was recommending Fools in the pages of Grendel; Schreck and I may have already been talking to Ed Brubaker about running The Fall in Dark Horse Presents. I dunno, you do this comics crap long enough, it all becomes one big Vonnegut-style piece of jell-o.

The important thing is, we had never met face-to-face before, so I was able to sneak up to the Black Eye table as a fan and actually buy the damn thing. Once you get used to people dropping free comics on you, it becomes a sort of thrill to actually buy one you really, really want (and before any of you out there decide to make me pay next time, you better ask yourself, "Does he really, really want this?"). Besides, it was Con, so all I had to do was fudge a couple of receipts, and Dark Horse paid for it.

And again, it gets fuzzy, so I'm not positive if I introduced myself to Jason there or not. I think he was at least at the table. You don't forget that. He's a cutie.

And so, that night, in my hotel room, I read the comic.

Now, that's a pretty big detail. No one ever reads comics at conventions. I mean, fans do, because for them, the objects in their bags are hard-won, well-sought acquisitions, and they want to revel in the thrill of purchase. But for pros, it's a different story. After hours of standing at a table and being a living, breathing comics-selling machine, who wants to spend his off-time looking at more words and pictures? I have only ever done this one other time, and that was to read Scott Morse's Visitations, a book he had forced on me at a Wondercon. I wanted to repay his kindness, and found that, given the quality of the graphic novel, I was deeply in debt. (But that's the subject of another ESSENTIAL column, as is the fact that I was sharing a room with Ariel Schrag, who was reading Renée French's Corny's Fetish at the same time-talk about your "what's wrong with this picture?" comic book scenarios!)

(Yeah, yeah, I know. Tangents obscure the point, but they fill column inches.)

I'm sitting in my hotel room. I've given away all the Aliens vs. Predator posters I can possibly give away, my dogs are barking, and the bar beckoning, but I've got to read Berlin #1.

Boy, what a good idea that was. I wasn't in San Diego anymore. I wasn't in the cheapass hotel the company always put me up in, I wasn't at a comics convention, I wasn't anything I had been just minutes before cracking the cover.

No, I was in Berlin, Germany, September 1928. I was meeting Kurt, the journalist worn by experience, and Marthe, the young woman who had moved to the city to become an artist. They were falling in love, and I was falling in love.

In truth, Marthe is the perfect lead character. She has never been to Berlin before, and neither has the reader...a journey of mutual discovery! And what a time to be coming into the city. Politics electrify the streets as the communist movement begins to take hold, as workers clash with soldiers over who has more right to do their jobs. Science is advancing. The 20th century is really stepping into its own spot in history, and Lutes is putting us right there.

Being a master storyteller, however, Lutes doesn't let history get the better of him. History is nothing but a string of events without the people who lived them, and the people who really, deeply lived them are rarely the ones who are memorialized. The denizens of history books are usually those who experienced extraordinary circumstances and not the true everyday reality of the time. They aren't the reporter or the art student mentioned above, nor are they the struggling mother trying to feed her children who sees communism as a possible solution to her problems, or the traffic cop who keeps the city running. All the better for us, as the people Lutes chooses to portray are better windows into what really went down. Their lives are lives we can understand in ways that we never can when it comes to your typical heroes and villains. You know, like are you ever going to know how Charles Lindburgh felt? Probably not, but you might have an inkling of what it was like for the guy who cooked him dinner the day he landed.

Pretty heady and exciting stuff, all of it. I was riveted the way you are when something completely new comes along and rips the socks from your feet. Little did I know at the time that Lutes would be able to sustain that feeling over the course of the series. Over the next several years, as Jason would squeeze out the first eight issues-the ones that comprise this book, which itself is just the first in a trilogy-he would continue to amaze me, and every time asked, I would say Berlin was my favorite comic. I might tack on a more frequently released title, like Usagi Yojimbo or Skeleton Key, but they'd always be coupled with Berlin.

And though that tells you about the book and my reaction to it overall, it doesn't actually complete my ComicCon anecdote. The preceding paragraphs are all build-up, nothin' but bluster. Because this next thing, this is the thing I really want to tell you.

You know how life is populated by defining moments? Like the time you found out your dad didn't really know everything, or witnessed someone doing something and realized that's what you wanted to do with your life. Books have those moments, as well. All art does. It may be the particular piece that confirms for you that a particular painter may be an artist of great depth, or a scene in a film that makes all the scenes before and after it make total sense.

Berlin #1 had one of those moments, and it was from there that I was absolutely sure that City of Stones was going to be one of the best examples of graphic literature to ever be printed in black ink. It happens on page 23 of this collection. Kurt returns to his office, and one of the women who works there asks him if he thinks the object of her desire realizes how much she loves him, to which Kurt replies, dryly and sure of himself, "Does the North Wind notice a weather vane?"

That line slays me to this day. Such emotion, such unaffected cynicism-it says more in eight words than most graphic novels say over the complete course of their pages.

The following morning, I immediately sought out Jason to tell him I loved the book. I also told him my favorite line. He seemed a bit surprised, almost as if he expected the truth in that line to bear out in relation to the book, that no one would notice what a fine piece of work it is.

Don't be that stupid guy who doesn't see what's right under his nose. Go get a copy of Berlin: City of Stones. It's about time you woke up to how much you can love comics.

---

Berlin: City of Stones is from Drawn and Quarterly for $15.95. It's order code is JAN011949 and should be available at finer stores everywhere. Finer stores may be found at www.the-master-list.com

---
DOWNLOAD CURRENT ISSUE:
---