I've been wondering, for a while, where Jason Lutes went. Lutes is a comic book artist and writer with certain historical proclivities who penned two elegant pieces that I happened upon in the distant past and fell in love with: Berlin, an interlocking ensemble story taking place during the final throes of the Weimar Republic, and Jar of Fools, a story about failed romance and failed stage magicians. Lutes favours a graphic design sense that recalls the clean cartoons of Hergé, and demonstrated a capable hand when it came to juggling a large cast with characters all moving inexplicably in seperate, disconcerting directions. Only Berlin dried up after the first book, subtitled "City of Stones," and "City of Smoke" never quite materialized, although I seem to recall seeing a chapter of it show up at random. I didn't pick it up because with Lutes I want them collected, in the trades, where the connections are sumptuously made more tangible.
Only Lutes went away. What was Lutes doing? When was more of Berlin coming out? I forgot about it for the most part, although the idea of Lutes and his preoccupations remained, occasionally out of sunlight in the dusky regions at the back of my head.
And then.
The other day I was drifting through town and ended up stopping in at Legends on Johnson, looking through the new racks, and my eye caught something. A stark white, red, and black hardcover book on the top shelf, with a man in fetal position hurtling off a bridge, with a crowd of faceless onlookers watching. Houdini: The Handcuff King, declared the crisp, serifed font (with italics for the subtitle), followed with by Jason Lutes & Nick Bertozzi. Now I like Lutes, obviously, and I love escape artists in much the same way I love stage magicians - the way performance and burlesque are combined with the fantastic - so I picked it up, shocked, dazzled, and a little surprised. So this is what Lutes has been doing.
Lutes doesn't draw it, unfortunately, this Bertozzi chap does that. His line work is much fatter than Lutes's, favouring a much broader, sketchier look to Berlin's clean, crystalline artwork. Bertozzi's obviously quite competent, although the look of the piece isn't quite to my tastes but he does have strong composition and a calm mastery of the two-tone (black & white with blue in this case). Lutes is strictly in the writing camp and he does a simple story: a day in the life of Harry Houdini, performing one of his escapes before crowds in Cambridge. It demonstrates the lengths Houdini went to in order to cement his fame and attract crowds. It also introduces us to his wife Bess and illustrates one of the theories about how exactly Houdini pulled off his escapes, in much the same way Alan Moore used one of the theories about who Jack the Ripper was in From Hell.
The story's quite minimalist in its tack, soft and quiet -- just a short thing, perhaps a little colder than Lutes's other work; Berlin is certainly notable for its detached, flat tone but uses it to evoke emotional responses from the audience, while Houdini leaves us mostly ignorant to the characters' motivations (fictionalized as they would be). There isn't the same sense of conflict except on the small-scale, the small prejudices and violences cropping up around Houdini in his context.
The backmatter's full of information about Houdini's methods, history, and life - well-researched, a little patronizing - it has that tone of being for younger readers which is a good thing, but ends up talking down a little too much, and I probably could have done without it. Looking at comics for younger readers I'm still more prone to suggesting Jeff Smith's Bone series or his more recent Shazam! Monster Society of Evil comic, where the tone is all-ages but veers in the direction of talking to rather than at.
Houdini's a decent read, quick and sharp. However, it's worth it more for the pacing and the structure.