This book was really good. I completely agree with TIME's blurbs on the back: "[Berlin] will be the longest, most sophisticated work of historical fiction in the medium. Lutes has a natural, clean, European drawing style, much like Herge's Tintin... this book has the density of the best novels."
I always thought Herge had a detailed, highly sophisticated style of drawing. Lutes also does, but in a different way: his use of lines reflect a german quality... 'german engineering,' so to speak. I can't really explain it. Herge definitely drew in an English/French sort of style.
As for density, Berlin really is like a novel. It seems like I've been reading so many graphic novels lately, that I don't really consider them 'comics' as much, but lump them in my mind with novels in general. Because the story is what matters, whether told in pictures, words, written words, or a combination of the three.
There was one particular example of panel use that I thought was pretty cool. On page 197, when kurt and marthe are sitting in a restaurant. In the last two panels, the space in between the two panels act as the glass, with the man on one side and kurt and marthe on the other. I almost didnt catch that, but then I saw the guy's words were getting less bolder as they moved in to the next panel. Then, looking back at the previous panel, I remembered that he had been pounding on the window. Then everything clicked. Not a big deal, i guess, but, how do you even think of that?
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