Jason Lutes
Jason Lutes ( born December 7, 1967 in New Jersey ) is an American comic book artist, known primarily for his historical graphic novel trilogy, "Berlin".
Life
Lutes began with drawing already during his childhood. At age 8 he was for the first time with his parents in Europe and was inspired by European comics like Tintin or Asterix. After completing his studies at the Rhode Iceland School of Design in 1991, he received the opportunity to work in the comic book publisher Fantagraphics. There he was employed as an assistant to the art director, he abandoned his work after one year again. His first comic strip was published in 1993 in The Stranger, a city magazine in Seattle. In The Stranger, he received a steady job and was art director of the magazine. In 1995 he gave up this work in order to devote himself entirely to his own works can.
Works
Fool
The strips that appeared in The Stranger, were later in his first graphic novel, The Jar of Fools ( German title: fools ) was added. He describes in a few days in the life of an unemployed magician and places special emphasis on the representation of the feelings of the protagonists, in dream sequences and flashbacks to clarify the motives of the characters. For fools Lutes received the Xeric Grant Award. Jar of Fools was released in 1994 initially self-published and was issued in 1997 at the Canadian publisher Drawn & Quarterly. The German edition was published in 1999 when Carlsen Verlag.
Autumn fall
For the psychological detective story The Fall ( German title: Autumn fall ), he worked with the comic book writer Ed Brubaker, who took up in his earlier work on crime and action themes. A young man is involved in a 9 years earlier murder case and thus torn from his unspectacular life. The case was published in an anthology by Dark Horse and 2001 as an album by Drawn & Quarterly. The German edition was published in 2004 by Reprodukt.
Berlin
1996 Lutes began preparations for its historical graphic novel Berlin playing in Berlin in the late Weimar Republic. It starts in September 1928 and ends in January 1933 and describes different fates at this time. The comic impressed by the presentation of the historical city views and different for each character view of the political and social changes of that time. These include the love story of a young art student with an older journalists as well as the problems of a single mother.
Berlin has been designed from the Lutes in 24 chapters, the first of which was published in 1998, the series is not yet complete. 2001, the first eight chapters were added to the band Berlin - City of Stones combined. In Germany Carlsen Comics brought out in 2003 this first volume of the planned trilogy under the title Berlin- Stone Town. The second volume was published in 2008 in German under the title Carlsen also in Berlin - Leaden city.
Style
Lutes read in his youth also many superhero comics, which he dropped when he discovered the comic magazine Heavy Metal, in addition to the American and European comics were published for an adult audience. He was by several trips to Europe especially impressed by European comics to his role models include Hergé and Vittorio Giardino.
Lutes is a representative of the realistic style of drawing, in which many elements of the Ligne claire are later on. Often sections of a scene increases, one foot on the pavement, a hand that waves goodbye to. He dispensed with grays and plays with the contrast of black and white. The figures move before detailed elaborated backgrounds.
One of his idols is Scott McCloud, and just this also leads to criticism of his work: The uncompromising designed according to the theories McCloud's construction of the comics is lacking at times of tension and surprises. McCloud himself found the work so compelling that he used to reinvent some panels from Jar of Fools for documentation in his book Comics.