BIOGRAPHY:
Jason Lutes (1967- ) was born in New Jersey
but his family soon moved to Missoula, Montana. As a child
he loved American superhero comics, but a trip to France at
the age of eight left a great impression on him. "I got
introduced to a lot of European comics, primarily Tintin and Asterix,
and fell in love with them. That early exposure to non-American
comics was a big influence on my current style of drawing."
"Going away to college, I decided to put aside 'childish' things like comics
and concentrate on 'serious' art. It didn't take me long to discover that a lot
of 'serious' artists (or at least the ones I went to school with) were pretentious,
self-indulgent, and more concerned with acting cool than producing anything
of interest." He graduated from the Rhode Island School of Design (RISD)
with a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree in illustration in 1991. But while studying
he rediscovered his love of comics after finding a copy of Art
Spiegelman's RAW magazine. "I realized that
comics didn't have to be limited in their form or content; that they could
be about anything and drawn or constructed in any style; basically, that they
were a medium like any other medium." He then began to published his own
mini-comics under the Penny Dreadful Press and moved to Seattle in 1991.
In 1993 he began drawing Jar of Fools, which was serialised
in the weekly paper, The Stranger, and in 1995 he
became that paper's the art director. However, after completion of Jar
Of Fools he decided to devote himself full time to comics and embarked
upon the research for his new historical comic master-piece, Berlin.
Interviews:
POV (2006)
Silver Bullet Comic Books (2001)
The Comics Journal #228 (2000)
Sequential
Tart (1999)
Resources:
Jason Lutes at Drawn & Quarterly |
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ESSENTIAL
READING: |
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Drawn & Quarterly,
1995
Ernie Weiss is an unemployed magician haunted by the death
of his escape artist brother and a failed romance. His remaining
hope lies in his aging mentor Al Flosso, a fugitive from a retirement
home who is slipping into senility with each passing day. Jar
Of Fools is a compelling, beautifully rendered rumination
on the nature of love, loss, magic and memory.
"Reading Jar of Fools is like
getting a slow motion punch in the face. There's plenty of time
to get out of the way, but something compels you to wait and
find out of it's actually going to hurt as much when it hits.
And, of course, it does."
Chris Ware, author of Jimmy Corrigan |
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Drawn & Quarterly,
2001
Berlin is
a historical novel with cinematic sweep, documenting
the lives of Weimar Berlin's glamorous and downtrodden denizens
as they criss-cross in the cold city streets and change the
city's destiny forever. Berlin: City Of
Stones is the first volume of an ambitious trilogy (collecting
issues #1-8 of the Berlin periodical) set
in the German city in the twilight years of the Weimar Republic
in the late 1920's.
"... a comic of impressive scope...one
of the most appealing things about Berlin is
Lutes' love of the comics medium. His story is full of novel
combinations of text and pictures, shuttling (a la Wings
of Desire) between impassive bird's-eye cityscapes
and diary-like internal monologues."
San Francisco Chronicle Book Review "It
will be the longest, most sophisticated work of historical fiction
in comics... this book has the density of the best novels."
Time.com
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with Ed Brubaker
Drawn & Quarterly, 2001
In this taut and dramatic mystery a young
woman falls to her death. The present day discovery of a handbag
buried in a garden leads Kirk on the trail of the murderer who
escaped justice nine years earlier. But playing amateur detective
is not without deadly consequences when your prey does not want
to give up easily.
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SELECTED
BIBLIOGRAPHY: |
Graphic Novels:
Berlin: City Of Stones - Book 1 (2001)
Jar Of Fools (1995)
Short Stories:
Small Explosions (2004) in Rosetta Vol 2
Rules To Live By (2003) in AutobioGraphix
The Fall (2001) with Ed Brubaker
Late Summer Sun (1997) in Drawn & Quarterly
Vol 2 #6
Periodicals:
Berlin #1-12 (1998-2006)
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