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WORK TITLE: Babylon Berlin
WORK NOTES:
PSEUDONYM(S):
BIRTHDATE: 1973
WEBSITE: http://storymator.blogspot.de/
CITY: Berlin
STATE:
COUNTRY: Germany
NATIONALITY: German
RESEARCHER NOTES:
PERSONAL
Born 1973, in Bremen, Germany.
EDUCATION:Studied communications design and animation in Hamburg and Potsdam.
ADDRESS
CAREER
Storyboard designer, animator, director, illustrator, screenwriter, and graphic novel writer.
WRITINGS
SIDELIGHTS
German artist Arne Jysch has worked as a storyboard designer, animator, director, illustrator, and screenwriter. He has done storyboard art for short and advertising films, published his own graphic novel, Wave and Smile, and adapted Volker Kutscher novel Babylon Berlin into a comic book.
Wave and Smile
Wave and Smile follows the life of a German soldier in Afghanistan. Captain Menger is at home in Germany with PTSD grieving for the kidnapping of his friend Marco by the Taliban. He returns to the Afghan-Pakistan border to look for Marco, accompanied by a young woman photographer. They encounter a local clan headman on the mass murderer list, yet he offers the German soldiers protection at a time when their own government gave them a poorly-defined mission that has morphed from a humanitarian mission to a war deployment. The graphic novel provides action as a military convoy is attacked, the ensuing skirmish escalates, and soldiers react to the carnage.
“Arne Jysch cultivates a realistic stroke that, as he says, allows him to make progress quickly. His sketch-like pencil drawings are then water-coloured in sandy shades. He plays with page layout conventions with great skill, when, for instance, grenades cut through panel frames or the interpreted dialogue with locals is reproduced in Arabic-style script,” according to reviewer Katja Lüthge on the Goethe Institute website.
Babylon Berlin
Jysch next published Babylon Berlin, translated by Ivanka Hahnenberger. In the 1920s at the birth of the Weimar Republic during economic and political troubles, disgraced homicide Detective Inspector Gereon Roth is reassigned from Cologne to Berlin after killing a suspect. Now he is investigating a pornographic sex ring, Russian gangsters, and stolen gold the Nazis are after. Roth soon learns that no one can be trusted, even the police. A Publishers Weekly reviewer noted: “Jysch’s hard-boiled dialogue has the right level of sardonic bravado for this type of two-fisted tale,” and Jysch provides textured backgrounds that evoke a jazzy, debauched noir mystery.
In an interview online at Mystery Tribune, Jysch explained why he wanted to write a story set in that time: “It’s so fascinating to imagine how it must have felt to live back then. … Germany was trying to establish its first ever democracy…[The] new middle-class was trying to live their lives excessively on the one hand and political unrest of left- and right-wing extremists where common on the other. The creepy part of it, from our perspective, is that we know, how this all was going to end later.”
BIOCRIT
PERIODICALS
Publishers Weekly, February 26, 2018, review of Babylon Berlin, p. 75.
ONLINE
Goethe Institute website, http://www.goethe.de/ (September 1, 2018), Katja Lüthge, review of Wave and Smile.
Mystery Tribune, https://www.mysterytribune.com/ (March 6, 2018), author interview.
Jysch, Arne
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Biography Arne Jysch
1973 born in Bremen
1994 production of his first 8mm short film
1995 studied communications design and animation in Hamburg, later in Potsdam
lives in Berlin and works there as storyboard artist for (short) and advertising films
Arne Jysch - Jysch has worked as a storyboard designer, animator, and screenwriter. As well as adapting Kutscher's Babylon Berlin, Jysch has published his own comic, Wave and Smile.
A Conversation With Arne Jysch On Graphic Novel “Babylon Berlin”
By : Mystery Tribune March 6, 2018
Arne Jysch is the name behind texts and illustrations of Babylon Berlin, the Hard Case Crime graphic novel adaptation of the book that inspired the new Netflix series of the same name.
Originally written by international-bestselling writer, Volker Kutscher and set in Berlin, 1929, the story centers on Detective Gereon Rath’s search for Russian Gold.
In Babylon Berlin, following an unfortunate incident of manslaughter and at a moment of radical change in Germany, Detective Inspector Gereon Roth moves from his old position in Cologne to a new appointment in Berlin. He stumbles into an ever-growing criminal investigation into a pornographic sex ring, discovering that he can trust no one, not even the police.
How the story-line changes direction to Russian Gold is an intriguing part reserved for readers immersing themselves in this new title. However, Arne Jysch had plenty of other interesting views to share with Mystery Tribune in regards to Babylon Berlin and other comic topics.
*****
Babylon Berlin is not only a crime graphic novel but an interesting foray into history of Europe and social and political tensions of the time. How did you decide to purse this project?
Actually, I wanted to tell a story set in the 1920s Berlin since I was a Film student in town and, around 2006, I had already finished a rough exposé about a revue dancer and a murder case. It’s so fascinating to imagine how it must have felt to live back then. From our perspective it’s this short period after the war when Germany was trying to establish it’s first ever democracy for the first time. A hayday of freedom and artistic achievements where a pleasure-seeking new middle-class was trying to live their lives excessively on the one hand and political unrest of left- and right-wing extremists where common on the other. The creepy part of it, from our perspective, is that we know, how this all was going to end later.
It was my interest in the history of the country and the fun and entertainment part of a roaring twenties crime novel what attracted me immediately when Volker Kutscher’s Book was published in 2008. I thought: “Well, know someone has done it!” The novel is such a painstakingly well researched time window into the year 1929 while, at the same time, providing the pleasure of a cool crime novel which isn’t shying away from some genre cliché. I imagined it as a movie first, but when my Graphic Novel “Wave and smile” came out in 2012 and the publisher asked me what book I wanted to do next, It became clear that it will be “Der nasse Fisch” (“The wet fish” means cold case) [Babylon Berlin’s German title].
This book has been illustrated in black and white and this style, combined with the historical and noir flavor of the story, gives the reader an impression like black and white crime movies of the 1930s and 40s. Was this a conscious choice? Do you prefer to illustrate in black and white and not use coloring?
The publisher and I decided to find a style in black and white. At first, it was an economical choice to illustrate in black and white. But when I startet to look for the appropiate drawing style I found it’s much easier to immerse the present reader in the past by using the atmosphere of contemporary 1920s black and white artwork, movies and photographs. In comparison to my previous book which had a dusty, light watercolor look, I wanted to use a lot of blacks and shadows for “Babylon Berlin”. Which, of course, is also a reference to the noir movies of later decades.
But the black and white style of my book with it’s grainy watercolor shading draws a lot of inspiration by 1920s illustrators like Jeanne Mammen or Russell Patterson whom I really learned to admire. So, I wouldn’t say I prefer black and white but it felt right for this story.
Babylon Berlin TV series was also just released by Netflix. Is Babylon Berlin graphic novel also going to become a series?
The question often occurs not only because of the TV series but because the original Novel is the first of six books with the cases of Gereon Rath. Volker Kutscher himself, really would love to see at least the second book “the silent death” to be turned into a graphic novel and I like the Idea. We’ll see.
The architectural references and scenes in Babylon Berlin are amazingly realistic. Yet the book happens in a specific period in Germany’s history which is later affected by WW II destruction. How did you accomplish the task of researching the local scenes given this challenge?
This is hard and easy at the same time. “Hard” because you don’t find any building which looks exactly like before WWII in present Berlin. “Easy” because there are so many photographs of that 1920s era that are well preserved in picture books. So that kind of books became my main source for the establishing images of street scenes. Not only for the architecture, but for the depicting of the common pedestrian and the traffic, as well. I was looking for clear shapes and elements which are distinctively different from today.
For example, a lot of typical buildings before the war seem to be one level higher than today because of all the nicely decorated turrets and pediments which had never been rebuilt after the destruction. On the photographs I discovered a lot of traffic lights which had been attached to cables over the middle of street crossings, giant commercial signs and large blinds on the face of the buildings…. These all are things that you don’t find in the Berlin of today. So, I created this vintage impression by emphasizing those kind of elements in the graphics.
Both illustrations and story for this title are written by you. Is this something you prefer? Why did you decide to manage both?
In the German comic scene you don’t have much of a choice. There is no such thing like the comic book writer and the pure Illustrator. Most of the comic artists are both author and illustrator.
After the experience with working on “Wave and smile” for which I had done a lot of research on German military and I’ve had developed the story all on my own I wanted to do something where I could research something historical. I had met Volker Kutscher several times since 2008 and was hoping that maybe he can write the adaptation for the comic book. But he was to busy. So I started to write my version of “Babylon Berlin” in 2013.
I don’t like writing very much, – for me it’s mostly a necessary process to express what I want to draw later on. Because of that, I was happy to have Volker, the inventor of the original, as a help. Whenever I was unsure about the intention of a certain scene, or the motivation of a character, for example I could ask him. I actually send him several drafts of the comic script and the sketched out storyboard pages to make sure it stayed true to his vision.
Finally, I enjoyed the writing on this book, because I was able to enhance some of the given, already exciting scenes of the novel. It was fun to flesh out some acting and the dialogue of the characters without having to worry about the plot, because the plot was so well crafted in Kutschers original.
What projects are you working on write now which you can tell us about?
Now, I’m working as a commissioned storyboard artist and Illustrator on different projects. For example, there will be a large movie production to start this year where I have to draw lots of storyboads for musical dance scenes.
Do you read comics? What comics are you reading and enjoying right now?
I’m not a comics enthusiast but I grew up with the Franco Belgian classics by Hergé and Franquin. What really stands out and what I enjoyed reading in recent years was DMZ by Brian Wood and Riccardo Burchielli. I liked the episodic, multi-perspective storytelling, powerful drawings and how the city is part of the narrative. What I also liked is the French underground book series “Doggy Bag” by different artists under the label 619, and what I enjoyed because of its atmospheric Pirate setting and dynamical drawings is “Long John Silver” by Mathieu Lauffrey and Xavier Dorison.
Note: Please see our other coverage of crime comics at 15 Best New Crime and Noir Comics To Check Out This Winter.
Netflix’s Babylon Berlin To Be Adapted By Titan Comics, Plus Preview
by Oliver MacNamee
As well as being the most expensive drama in European TV history, costing a reputed $47 million to make, Babylon Berlin was critically acclaimed when it launched on Netflix last October. The 16 parter was adapted from an existing novel by Volker Kutscher, and now it’s being adapted into a graphic novel too. Alongside new book Normandy Gold, this is another book from Titan that will help launch and establish their new hard crime comics’ imprint, Hard Case Crime this year.
My blogs
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About me
Gender
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Location
Berlin, Germany
Introduction
Berlin based storyboard artist, director and illustrator
Babylon Berlin
Publishers Weekly. 265.9 (Feb. 26, 2018): p75.
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2018 PWxyz, LLC
http://www.publishersweekly.com/
Full Text:
Babylon Berlin
Arne Jysch and Volker Kutscher. Hard Case Crime, $24.99 (216p) ISBN 978-1-78586635-7
This graphic novel adaptation of the first entry in Kutscher's Weimar Berlinset mystery novel series recalls a period noir, with a patina of cabaret decadence. Although the hero, disgraced homicide detective Gereon Rath, seems to be good at his job, he has another more important attribute: a propensity for getting into trouble. Reassigned to the Berlin vice squad from Cologne after killing a suspect, Gereon has barely gotten off the train when he's wrapped up in a conspiracy involving a criminal ring of Russian emi-gres and a pile of stolen gold that both the Nazis and the Communists want to get their hands on. Soon, Gereon is up to his neck in double-crosses and mysterious murders, not to mention frauleins willing to tumble into bed. Save for the odd rough translation (some Berliners speak more like Bowery Boys), Jysch's hard-boiled dialogue has the right level of sardonic bravado for this type of two-fisted tale, and his densely textured backgrounds neatly evoke the jazzy, debauched, and politically fraught environment of 1929 Berlin. This lightning-paced addition to Hard Case Crime's genre series will garner attention from the recent Netflix premiere of the German television adaptation. (Feb.)
Editor's note: Reviews noted as "BookLife" are for self-published books received via BookLife, PW's program for indie authors.
Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
"Babylon Berlin." Publishers Weekly, 26 Feb. 2018, p. 75. General OneFile, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A530637462/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=ITOF&xid=fd8f891a. Accessed 26 July 2018.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A530637462
Babylon Berlin
Internet Bookwatch. (Mar. 2018):
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2018 Midwest Book Review
http://www.midwestbookreview.com
Full Text:
Babylon Berlin
Arne Jysch, author/illustrator
Volker Kutscher, creator
Titan Comics
https://titan-comics.com
9781785866357, $24.99, 216pp, www.amazon.com
Following an unfortunate incident of manslaughter and at a moment of radical change in Germany, Detective Inspector Gereon Roth moves from his old position in Cologne to a new appointment in Berlin. There he stumbles into an ever-growing criminal investigation into a pornographic sex ring, and discovers the hard way that he can trust no one--not even the other members of the Berlin police force. Set in the 1920s, at the birth of the Weimar Republic amid great economic and political difficulties that would eventually give rise to the Nazis, "Babylon Berlin" is a graphic novel tale of corruption, trafficking, and scandal. An inherently fascinating mystery with many an unexpected twist and turn leading to a dramatic confrontational conclusion, "Babylon Berlin" is a very highly recommended and certain to be a perpetually popular addition to personal and community library Graphic Novel collections.
Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
"Babylon Berlin." Internet Bookwatch, Mar. 2018. General OneFile, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A538119798/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=ITOF&xid=1f83611c. Accessed 26 July 2018.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A538119798
Jysch, Arne
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Dramaturgy that clearly orients itself on film – Arne Jysch
Advertised and reviewed as the first comic on the deployment of German soldiers in Afghanistan, Arne Jysch’s comic debut Wave and Smile gained considerable media attention in summer 2012. Arne Jysch lives and works in Berlin as a storyboard artist. He is currently at work on the Berlin-based live-action crime thriller Point of View, which he is directing.
Slideshow by Arne Jysch
Slideshow
The bold, black capital letters leave no doubt as to the time and place of the events. “Afghanistan Provinz Kunduz 2009” can be read there in the style of a type of stencilled lettering frequently used by the US Army. Two men, recognisably dressed as Afghans, are seen in the whole-page picture under the lettering. They are sitting on a bare hill next to an ancient, ruined tank and are observing something in the far-distant valley.
Wave and Smile
There is a tense stillness to this first page of Arne Jysch’s comic Wave and Smile. On two smaller panels, the object of the seemingly unperturbed observers is virtually zoomed onto: it is a military convoy that is stirring up dust during its drive over the sandy track. Then an abrupt change of perspective occurs, we are now close-up with the occupants of the military vehicles and become witnesses to how the situation escalates. The convoy is being shot at. TATA TATAT TATAT TATAT TATATA rattle the machine guns in the skirmish, the commands shouted over the radio can be followed in jagged speech balloons. Soldiers in action are seen in what are now highly compartmentalised panels with disturbing effects – the soldiers fighting there are German ISAF troops.
Conceived as film and comic
One would think that US action films begin with such dynamism, and one wouldn’t be all that far off the mark, since Arne Jysch, artist and author of Wave and Smile, in fact comes from the film industry. Jysch studied film directing and animation in Hamburg and Babelsberg, and currently earns his living as a storyboard artist. It was for this reason that he conceived Wave and Smile as both an idea for a film and as a comic; the acceptance letter from Hamburg’s Carlsen Verlag was the deciding factor in realising the theme of German troops in Afghanistan as a graphic novel.
Arne Jysch cultivates a realistic stroke that, as he says, allows him to make progress quickly. His sketch-like pencil drawings are then water-coloured in sandy shades. He plays with page layout conventions with great skill, when, for instance, grenades cut through panel frames or the interpreted dialogue with locals is reproduced in Arabic-style script.
Captain Menger and his team-mates
The dramaturgy clearly orients itself on the (commercial) film, up to and including a classical hero whose destiny is prototypically unfolded in the book’s 200 pages. Captain Menger, a masculine guy with a sense of responsibility, is grieving over his failed marriage and the loss of his mates. He cannot get over the kidnapping of his mate Marco by the Taliban at all. Back in Germany, he is plagued by feelings of guilt, and demonstrates signs of post-traumatic stress syndrome. In the end, he returns to Afghanistan to seek for Marco in the Afghan-Pakistan border region. At his side, symbolising the civilian perspective on Afghanistan, is a young woman photographer, who of the two of them is the one who engages most with the local population.
The locals are depicted as ambivalent personalities. The local clan headman is on the one hand a notorious “mass murderer,” on the other a devoted paterfamilias who offers the German soldiers protection. They in turn feel left in the lurch by their government due to their vaguely-defined mission. Waving and smiling – signs saying “Wave and Smile” were in fact in every camp – hasn’t happened here for a long time any more. The humanitarian German mission has long since become a war deployment in which the German soldiers, described as restrained and circumspect, are not taken all that seriously in terms of their combat behaviour, either by the enemy, the Taliban, or by their allied partner, the USA.
Strong media echo and much-praised attention to detail
Advertised and reviewed as the first comic on the deployment of German soldiers in Afghanistan, Wave and Smile attracted considerable media attention in summer 2012. All of a sudden, numerous media - from daily newspapers to public channels and Bundeswehr publications - were interested in this graphic novel. The starting print run was quickly sold out. Jysch, who had never been in the Bundeswehr or in Afghanistan, was praised for his attention to detail. The special type of helicopter, the equipment, the camp and also the depiction of the soldiers and their daily lives were particularly praised as realistic by the “boots on the ground.” The focus on human aspects and the extra-crisp look of the military personnel are surely flattering. The resulting massive criticism from the left-wing political spectrum was only logical. Here, it was claimed, German soldiers were on the one hand being glorifed as heroes in the style of military pulp novels and on the other as victims of circumstance. Mainstream media, by contrast, emphasised the successful look into the unknown parallel existence in the distant country.
Arne Jysch arrived at this theme with the same motivation. He researched intensively for a year before setting his first pencil stroke. He studied numerous German- and English-language films and books, and also cooperated closely with the Bundeswehr press office. The consistent setting is due to pictures by the German photo journalist Julia Weigelt, who was active in Afghanistan as an “embedded journalist.” Whatever position one might take with regard to Wave and Smile, the discussion shows how controversial the German engagement in Afghanistan still is in Germany. Arne Jysch is not planning any further comic on this thematic complex.
Katja Lüthge
is a journalist and writes for the daily newspapers Berliner Zeitung and the Frankfurter Rundschau, among others. In 2005, she curated the Berlin exhibition “Mit Superman fing alles an. Jüdische Künstler prägen den Comic” (i.e. it all began with Superman: Jewish artists’ influence on comics)
Copyright: Goethe-Institut e. V., Online-Redaktion
March 2013
Any questions about this article? Write to us!
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Review: Babylon Berlin by Volker Kutscher, Adapted by Arne Jysch
By Dave Richards
March 5, 2018
Babylon Berlin by Arne Jysch is a graphic novel adaptation of Volker Kutscher's first Inspector Gereon Rath mystery, set in 1920s Berlin (available March 6, 2018).
What comes to mind when you think of 20th-century Berlin? WWII, the Berlin Wall, a city full of political and military intrigue. But before Hitler and the “Iron Curtain,” during the waning years of the Weimar Republic, the Berlin of the 1920s was a city of vice and warring power players of criminal gangs, Nazis, exiled Russian monarchists, fanatical communists, and more. This Berlin is the Berlin of Voelker Kutscher's Gereon Rath series.
Kutscher's internationally acclaimed Rath series currently spans six books. This year, the first novel in the series, Babylon Berlin, will be translated into English, adapted for television (the most expensive production in German television history, currently available to stream in the US via Netflix), and adapted as a graphic novel by German artist Arne Jysch, now available via Titan Books.
One of the first things you'll notice about Jysch's adaptation of Babylon Berlin is his choice to depict it in black and white. This excellent artistic decision gives the book a classic noir feel while adding to the emotional starkness of several scenes. It leaves you feeling isolated and alone along with Gereon Rath as he wrestles with the demons of his past that still haunt him in the present, as on this page:
Another fantastic element of Babylon Berlin—both Kutscher's original novel and the way Jysch brings it to life here—is the characters. Inspector Rath is a haunted and wonderfully flawed protagonist. A lot of the trouble he gets into is of his own making. Rath is also surrounded by an eclectic and nuanced cast of characters, including his brutal-but-fatherly superior, Bruno “Uncle” Wolter; the decadent club owner and organized crime figure Dr. M; a real-life criminalist/detective, Ernst Gennat; and a Homicide Division Stenographer, Charlotte Ritter, who Gennat wisely employs to inspect crime scenes.
The blend of real-life and fictional characters collide against a backdrop of crime, vice, politics, and actual events—such as the bloody 1929 Mayday riots—which makes Babylon Berlin a gripping crime story and so much more. You see the way the Russian Revolution of 1917 upset the balance of power in Europe and how its effects are still being felt over a decade later. You catch a glimpse of the rise of the insidious Nazis. The jockeying for power between the far left and far right—with the prior knowledge of how history plays out—gives the story a real sense of the high stakes that made Berlin feel like a powder keg about to explode.
Conveying that turmoil in a visual medium takes an artist with a firm grasp of tone, and Arne Jysch is a master of his craft. The black-and-white design not only elevates the tone but emphasizes the shadows and light in a way that makes you feel like you're right there with Inspector Rath, trying to keep your head above a tide of morally murky intrigue and danger with no one to throw you a life raft. One of the best examples is this page of Rath standing in the rain over the body of a man he's been forced to kill.
I don't want to say much about the mystery that drives Babylon Berlin because there's a lot of great twists and reveals. However, I will say that a lot of it is driven by a treasure hunt for a large and fabled cache of Russian Gold, which sets up a thrilling climax in which all the major players converge on a train yard for a showdown.
Arne Jysch is able to take Volker Kutscher's compelling Babylon Berlin and bring it to life with an adaptation full of beautiful visuals that enhance the mood and make the story even more exciting and powerful.
Babylon Berlin – graphic novel
February 22, 2018
Written by crimefictionlover
Published in Kindle, Print, Reviews
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Written by Volker Kutscher, artwork by Arne Jysch — This graphic novel version of Volker Kutscher’s Babylon Berlin is an impressive beast. The first thing you’ll notice is its size – A4, with a solid hardback binding and over 200 pages inside, it’s not at all your typical trade paperback in any way shape or form. And that’s part of the luxury, as Titan Comics and Hard Case Crime give fans of the incredibly captivating Babylon Berlin TV series another way of enjoying this wonderful piece of German crime fiction.
If you’ve seen the television series and think the graphic novel will merely repeat that story in a comic book format, don’t worry. This is a different experience. The change of medium aside, the story in the graphic novel has significant differences when compared to the TV show. In his adaptation, Arne Jysch has remained more faithful to the book than the producers of the show. In fact, this graphic novel came out in Germany seven months before the series was broadcast and had the same title as the original book, Der Nasse Fisch – The Wet Fish.
The year is 1929, and police detective Gereon Rath has arrived in Berlin from Cologne. He’s landed up in the vice squad, but his goal is to work in the homicide division. A man breaks into the house where he’s boarding, looking for Russian emigre Aleksej Kardakov. Rath boots him out but is intrigued by what has happened.
Across town, a car is pulled from the canal and it contains the body of a man who bears signs of torture. Among the police at the scene is Charlotte Ritter, a stenographer who is there with the male detectives led by Chief Inspector Gennat, ostensibly to record details of the crime scene. However, she has her own ideas and begins to interpret events beside the canal, much to the ire of some of the homicide investigators.
Rath soon finds out how much his vice partner Bruno Wolter is willing to bend the rules of policing. After sleeping with his landlady, Rath starts his own investigation into the Russian Kardakov. Then he gets a break that could allow him to prove his worth as a murder detective. The photo of the man pulled from the canal is circulated during a briefing in the police HQ – it’s the same man who tried to break into Rath’s room a few nights earlier. The canal murder and Kardakov are connected. Once our detective gets into his stride, he mixes with Wolter’s nationalist buddies, who are looking for a stash of gold belonging to the Sorokin family, and braces Berlin’s premier importer of cocaine. The latter has Russian henchmen and is linked to Kardakov and the dead man. Needless to say, this underworld character wouldn’t mind some of that gold, either. Eventually Rath will also cross paths with Charlotte Ritter, later in the story.
While the sights and sounds of 1920s Berlin do shine through in Arne Jysch’s adaptation of the story, they are not as prominent as in the television series. This graphic novel feels much more like a detective story and the focus is more tightly on Gereon Rath. He is a dogged detective, but will bend the rules and play the game a little bit like a corrupt cop because he’s driven by solving the case. He is working off the books, while other parties are trying to thwart him – if not kill him. Multiple cover-ups are going on, and Rath’s challenge is to expose the conspirators while tying things up in a way that saves his own neck. The last section of the story is particularly well done as the plans of various characters conflict or concur with Rath’s.
Unfortunately, there are issues in the way some parts of the plot line have been condensed. In two or three places, the story simply jolts forwards. Tricky situations and seemingly major issues are suddenly left behind and will leave you thinking, “What just happened there?” This makes it a little difficult to settle into the pace of the next part of the story and to absorb its new and quite different intricacies. When Rath kills a man he says it will weigh on his conscience, but the way he zips along to a new concern makes that hard to believe.
Visually, the graphic novel of Babylon Berlin is a lot more consistent. The artwork is in black and white but Arne Jysch really captures the sense that you are in a big European capital in the 1920s, with dark alleys and even darker secrets. While the television show featured plenty of the decadence of the era where the seedy side is paralleled by some fun and free living, here there is a grittier edge. What’s excellent is the way the artist captures the scale of the city, using pages and spreads here and there to demonstrate the extent of the architecture. Grand boulevards, construction sites, shadowy slums, the S-Bahn, rail yards, jaunty old cars – you get a good look at a city in turmoil.
For more graphic novels, click here, or check out our five favourite German crime shows. For some samples of the artwork in the graphic novel, scroll down.
Titan Comics/Hard Case Crime
Print/Kindle
£18.29