Entrevistes

1. In a previous interview, you said that the creation of Berlin…. was done on an impulse. But how did you respond to that impulse? How did you organize such a monumental task, after you had decided to undertake it: time to research the topic, create the stories, profile the characters, etc.?

 

Jason Lutes: The first thing I did was start reading everything I could about Weimar Berlin, and German and European history in general. I read books and took notes for about two years before beginning to write the story. As I absorbed information, certain themes or ideas percolated to the top, and I think I began to organize those things unconsciously. In my work, I like to improvise within a firm structure, so from very early on I decided that the whole story would consist of 24 chapters of 24 pages each, and that it would end in 1933, when Hitler became Chancellor.

 

Then I decided that there would be two main characters -- Marthe, who is coming to the city for the first time, and Kurt, who knows it well. She's an art student and he's a journalist because I wanted to explore their relationship as a potential metaphor for comics itself -- pictures and words interacting. Thankfully, that idea fell by the wayside once they started to assert their personalities. Within the basic structure I allow myself a lot of room to improvise, so for me it's a very exploratory experience, and I hope that that sense of discovery carries over into the reader's experience.

 

2. I have read that as a student, you were inspired by the comics of Art Spiegelman. Does your interest in illustrating a graphic novel set in Germany between the two World Wars owe anything to Maus? Besides this particular work, what other works in general (comics, literature, cinema…) have served as inspiration to you at various times?

 

J.L.: No, it has nothing -- or at least, very little, to do with Maus. Maus is a great work, but what I admire most about Spiegelman is his formal experimentation. Spiegelman's early work, the comics of Chester Brown, and Hergé's Tintin albums had the greatest influence on me. It helped me see that there was this vast untapped expressive potential in the medium, and once I saw that nothing was going to stop me from exploring it.

 

The thematic similarities between Maus and Berlin are coincidental. Berlin came primarily out of my own personal desire to understand my own place in the world, and how the meaning and impact of the promise and fate of Weimar Germany. 

 

 

3. I greatly enjoyed the second volume, especially the complexity of the characters and the intricacy of the plot, with the inclusion of topics such as homosexuality and jazz. Choosing from the entire set of characters, which ones did you feel most comfortable with? Which ones were most problematic for you?

 

J.L.: It was hard to write the Cocoa Kids, because I'm a white guys from the California suburbs. The line between character and caricature is a hard one to walk, especially if you're trying to be honest about your subject. But part of my job as an author is to inhabit and try to understand people who are not me, and in that sense writing the Cocoa Kids was a challenging and satisfying experience.

 

I feel most comfortable with Kurt and Marthe, because originally I saw them as reflecting two different aspects of my own personality. I'm less comfortable now than I was in the beginning, but I see that as a good thing -- it turns out that they are different from me in important ways, and figuring out how to be true to them is a key challenge of this endeavor.

 

My favorite character, or at least the one I have ended up caring most about, is Silvia Braun. When she first appeared I had no idea that her story would become one of the primary narrative threads, and now I find myself invested in her fate. Which is hard, because I want her to find peace and happiness, but I have to stay true to her character and whatever "realities" she will encounter. 

 

 

4. Do you consider that the two volumes of Berlin… are realistic works, or are they intended, above all, to serve as criticism?

 

J.L.: Definitely do not see them as criticism. I am trying to be true to the people and their time, to see them in an honest light. My own biases and perspectives inevitably bleed through, but understanding, not judgment, is the goal.

 

 

5. Did you, at any time during the creative process, consider doing Berlin… in color? If you had, what color scheme would you have used?

 

J.L.: I envisioned it from the beginning as black and white. Introducing color into comics complicates the visual language a hundredfold. Few cartoonists who can really manage it well (I would consider Chris Ware the current living master). Most of the time I find that color in a comic has a distancing effect, and I want my readers to feel as immersed in the world of the story as possible. Also, there is a kind of intimacy to black and white art printed on paper -- I created it as black ink on white paper, and the finished product is delivered from the printer as black ink on white paper. I believe that this results in a kind of subtle immediacy, minimizing the number of intervening steps between myself and my readers. This is something unique to print comics, something that prose novels or digital reproductions cannot replicate.

 

 

6. We always like to know what the authors we are interviewing like to read. Are you interested in European comics? What titles have had the greatest impact on you?

 

J.L.: As I mentioned before, the work of Hergé has had the greatest impact on  my approach to visual narrative. Before embarking on my first long-form comic book, Jar of Fools (Juego de Manos, Ediciones La Cúpula), I deconstructed Tintin albums in an effort to see what made them tick. I discovered a number of eye-opening storytelling devices that Hergé had perfected, and which I incorporated into my own work. For example, if you look through a Tintin album, you will see that 95% of all character movement is from left to right, which reinforces the left-to-right reading pattern, and lends a kind of invisible momentum to the storytelling.

 

Stylistically, the work of Vittorio Giardino -- specifically his Sam Pezzo stories -- influenced the development of my drawing style.

 

 

7. Spain is experiencing a sort of renaissance in the area of comics for adults. This is apparent in the Salons de Comics (Comics Fairs), as well as the large number of blogs and webs specialized in the topic, and in the books that are checked out from public libraries. Is this same phenomenon apparent in the United States? Of the countries that you are familiar with, where does the Ninth Art enjoy greatest prestige?

 

J.L.: Interest in comics has grown slowly over the last 15-20 years in the US, but it has still not reached the level of acceptance and appreciation present in Europe. I an heartened by each new incoming class at the Center for Cartoon Studies (where I teach), who seem more sophisticated and wide-ranging in their tastes.

 

I don't know enough to single out a single country where comics are most highly regarded, but in my estimation France and Japan are probably at the top of the list.

 

 

8. When will the third volume of Berlin… be published in Spain? Do you have any other similarly ambitious projects in mind at this time?

J.L.: The English and German editions of volume three are scheduled for 2012, and I expect the Spanish edition will be released either concurrently or shortly thereafter. I doubt that I will attempt anything as ambitious for the rest of my life, but I do have many other stories I'd like to tell. Foremost among them is a Western which is mostly written, and for which I am currently looking for an artist.