« Ceci n’est pas une personne »: On Jason Lutes’ Berlin (1996–2018) as a Stylistic Showroom

Thursday 23 May, 14:00  / KU Leuven, Van Den Heuvelinstituut (Dekenstraat 2, 3000  Leuven), leslokaal 01.65

During its more than two decades of serial publication and beyond, Jason Lutes’ Berlin has been used by a considerable number of authors pursuing an ‘abstract’ approach to comics, i.e., for illustrating the structures and possibilities of graphic narratives in general terms. These (in a broad sense) didactic uses of Berlin may be explained by the wide variety of its comics-specific elements. The work is a ‘stylistic showroom’ in that it borrows from a number of styles rooted in distinct traditions of 20th-century graphic narratives, employing a variety of different page layouts, text-image combination techniques, and smooth transitions between its different subplots. Not only does Lutes embed himself in a tradition of Hergé’s ‘clear line,’ he also exemplifies the political ambivalence of early 20th-century comic albums from Europe and North America; the vast diversity of styles sometimes associated with the term ligne claire; and, finally the ways in which ‘clarity’ in a broader sense is often considered to be a principle that structures this variety.

Jason Lutes, « Berlin », 2003. All rights reserved

Jason Lutes, « Berlin », 2003. All rights reserved

Lukas Etter is a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Siegen. He’s the author of Distinctive Styles and Authorship in Alternative Comics (De Gruyter, 2021) and he is currently working on a new manuscript entitled Word Problems: Recreational Mathematics in Antebellum Writing.