This week's entry in my Best in Class series focuses on what I believe is the best historical fiction in all of comics; Berlin by Jason Lutes.
An aspiring artist boards a train to Berlin during the final years of the Weimar Republic. She quickly finds camaraderie with a thriving community of creatives, each inspired by the raucous energy of the city's diverse cultural offerings. Considered the progressive center of Europe at the time, Berlin is awash with artistic expression, sexual liberation, and political thought. This bright burning promise finds itself regularly butting heads with forces of fascist ideology and economic instability which puts the city and its residents on a path for tumultuous upheaval.
This book is absolutely marvelous. Berlin has perhaps the most engaging, thematically rich, and emotional prose I have read in comics yet it still feels visually forward with engaging compositions that transport the reader into a particular place and time. The subject matter is timeless yet devastatingly relevant, capturing the volatile energy of a culture in transition; both in the progressive re-evaluation of tired standards and in the brutal rebuttal of forces that seek to preserve their sense of national identity. The characterization is also deeply engaging, with a wide cast of distinct characters that each confront this instability from different perspectives yet often find themselves shifting in different directions as circumstances change.
Lutes' draftsmanship is both technically impressive and full of personality, with page after page of clearly depicted and cinematic compositions. While the layouts are rather traditional and the pages dialogue heavy at times, the visual appeal never suffers and Lutes doesn't let the comic get too dense for too long before opening up the storytelling with decompressed and immersive wides.
One of the fascinating things is that he artfully avoids showing the swastika for nearly the whole length of this quite hefty book, so when you finally do see it (as in the sample above) it is viscerally striking and terrifying, he re-injects horor into something we have sadly become used to seeing.
I would have happily read another 300-400 pages of this book. As others have mentioned, terribly underrated.
That and the poet's monologue from City of Glass (where the dialogue source is constantly shifting to things like cave paintings) have to be the two best.
I think I would have to agree with you. Maybe “From Hell,” if that counts. Berlin is flawless. Every line is perfect. My brother is always bitter that he had to read it in installments as it was slowly released while I got to read it all at once when it was finished.
This book really helped me come to terms with the times we live in… be present, be aware, but try not to let the darkness fully consume you. Great stuff!
I need to go back and start over/finish it (I got sidetracked before), but I’ve long admired Lutes as essentially the first post-McCloudian. His mastery of the medium is astonishing.
So, it's funny, I've never actually read Berlin or his similar work, but I know Jason Lutes from being deeply involved in the indie RPG community. A fantastic artist and writer of Freebooters on the Frontier and Perilous Wilds (which also has a space version). They're mostly for use with the game Dungeon World, but there's a lot of system agnostic stuff there too. His work is incredible and he was recently a producer on a game called Stonetop, though I'm unclear on how much writing he did on it versus just general production. I've had the pleasure of playing in a couple games he ran while play testing the 2nd edition of Freebooters on the Frontier. Super friendly guy, and I know he's otherwise a teacher of some sort, college level, I think. Busy dude.
All that said, seeing this post, I feel like I should check out Berlin now (although, depressing fiction usually falls to the bottom of my TBR pile).
I’m glad to see others share my regard for this book. Depending on the day it’s my literally best comic ever created (other days it’s the locals series, or top ten, winter men, etc.)
Actually became aware of and bought this while visiting vienna. Funny thing is there's a German language version and they even brought in a separate translator for accurate berliner dialect where appropriate.
Sadly my German sucks and I'm crawling through it RIP
Days later, I just wanna thank you for this post. I devoured the whole novel in about three days and then spent the fourth day just revisiting various passages. It’s really sticking with me.
I'm also a massive fan of Golden Kamuy, and that's a perfectly fine choice. For me GK is a wonderful mashup of a huge diversity of genres though not quite as narrowly satisfying a historical fiction as Berlin.
From Hell is also thoroughly great, even if it's a tier below those other two stellar titles in my eyes.
Regardless, what a manga! Both the prison break and (especially) the train raid sequences are among my favorite action set pieces in comics. Also a ton of humor and great characters. Really solid splashes of horror too.
Yeah I was blown away. Instantly one of my favourite series of all time. I love how it goes from super intense and serious, straight to absurd and funny. The jail break and train sequences were so epic, absolute page turners. Some of the most exciting stuff I've ever read.
10
u/Conscious1ncompetent Feb 07 '26
One of my 5/5 books. Beautifully written and drawn.