Berlin

Over twenty years in the drawing, Berlin covers just a few crucial years in the city's history, from late 1928 to the end of the Weimar Republic in early 1933. Lutes's scope is wide—he marks the major political turning points, and his lovingly detailed cityscapes are often his most powerful panels—and his cast includes dozens of characters, some of them, including the courageous editor Carl von Ossietzky, taken from real life, but his most vivid stories are the personal ones, particularly those of the young art student Marthe Müller and the older journalist Kurt Severing. Lutes's nature, in his brilliant compositions and his clean lines (evocative equally of Tintin and Los Bros Hernandez), is optimistic, but the story he has to tell isn't, and he knows it. His panoramic, 550-page epic makes you want to turn back to the first page and put it all together again.