Berlin

Lutes was awarded the Inkpot Award in 2018, coinciding with the completion of the work, and Berlin itself was awarded the Vermont Book Award in 2019.

• Title — Berlin: City of Stones • Schedule — Irregular • Limited — Y • Publisher — Black Eye Productions, Drawn & Quarterly • Date — April 1996 – March 2018 • Issues — 22 • Historical — y • Writers — Jason Lutes • Artists — Jason Lutes • Tpb — Book One: City of Stones • Isbn — 1-896597-29-7 • Tpb1 — Book Two: City of Smoke • Isbn1 — 978-1-897299-53-1 • Tpb2 — Book Three: City of Light • Isbn2 — 978-1-896597-29-4 • Subcat — Drawn & Quarterly • Sort — Berlin (comics)

The first eight issues were compiled into a book titled Berlin: City of Stones, published in 2000. It starts with Marthe Müller, an art student, arriving in Berlin. One story arc details the start of her life in Berlin, focusing on her relationship to journalist Kurt Severing. A second storyline describes a working-class family which breaks up due to differing political views, the mother, Gudrun, eventually joining the communists with her daughters Elga and Silvia, while the father takes his son Heinz to the Nazis. The book ends with the massacre of 1 May 1929, the International Workers' Day (known in German as Blutmai).

Issues 9–16 have been compiled into Berlin Book Two: City of Smoke, published in 2008. In this second volume, the relationship between Marthe and Kurt disintegrates, partly due to the influence of Kurt's former lover, the socialite Margarethe. Marthe develops a lesbian relationship with her fellow art student Anna. Gudrun's daughter Silvia struggles to survive in the streets of Berlin, partly with the help of a Jewish junk collector. Another major subplot involves a group of African-American jazz musicians who perform at a Berlin nightclub, but slowly begin to believe they are being ripped-off by their local manager. The volume concludes with the electoral victory of the Nazi Party in September 1930.

The final volume was published by Drawn and Quarterly in 2018, and comprises issues 17–22. The title of this final part is Berlin: City of Light. With the Nazi party now in power, the tensions between the factions erupt all over the country. The Communists prepare themselves for being attacked by the police and the followers of Hitler. Marthe and Anne are now living together, while Severing plunges into depression after his editor is arrested by the government. As the situation around them becomes increasingly violent, the characters slowly give up trying to change their own destiny and start planning for the future.

• Rolling Stone listed the series at #48 in their list of "50 Best Non-Superhero Graphic Novels". *

• Illustration — Guild Seal of Berlin, 1280, which closes the book. Berlin features a number of historical events, organizations, and figures, listed in end materials. The book ends with a contemporary (2017) photograph of Potsdamer Platz, echoing the drawing on page 18 of the place in 1928, and then with the coat of arms of Berlin from 1280. Paragraph 175 (section of the German Criminal Code making homosexuality illegal) is mentioned on page 453, and elaborated in endnotes. Organizations: • A-I-Z: Arbeiter-Illustrierte-Zeitung (The Workers Pictorial Newspaper) • Die Weltbühne (The World Stage), weekly magazine for which Kurt writes. • Hitler Jugend (Hitler Youth) • KJVD: Kommunistischer Jugendverband Deutschlands (Young Communist League of Germany) • KPD: Kommunistische Partei Deutschlands (Communist Party of Germany) • NSDAP: Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei (National Socialist German Workers' Party, Nazi Party) • Schutzpolizei ("Schupo", Protection Police) • SA: Sturmabteilung (Storm Detachment, "stormtroopers", "brownshirts") Historical figures (in order of appearance): Joachim Ringelnatz, Carl von Ossietzky, Ernst Thälmann, Joseph Goebbels, Josephine Baker, Horst Wessel, and Adolf Hitler. Other terms used include Gauleiter (roughly "Shire leader").