Berlin (comics)

The first eight issues were compiled into a book titled Berlin: City of Stones, published in 2000. It starts with Marthe Müller, an art student, arriving in Berlin. One story arc details the start of her life in Berlin, focusing on her relationship to journalist Kurt Severing. A second storyline describes a working-class family which breaks up due to differing political views, the mother, Gudrun, eventually joining the communists with her daughters Elga and Silvia, while the father takes his son Heinz to the Nazis. The book ends with the massacre of 1 May 1929, the International Workers Day (known in German as Blutmai).

Issues 9–16 have been compiled into Berlin Book Two: City of Smoke, published in 2008.[2] In this second volume, the relationship between Marthe and Kurt disintegrates, partly due to the influence of Kurt's former lover, the socialite Margarethe. Marthe develops a lesbian relationship with her fellow art student Anna. Gudrun's daughter Silvia struggles to survive in the streets of Berlin, partly with the help of a Jewish junk collector. Another major subplot involves a group of African-American jazz musicians who perform at a Berlin nightclub, but slowly begin to believe they are being ripped-off by their local manager. The volume concludes with the electoral victory of the Nazi Party in September 1930.

The final volume was published by Drawn and Quarterly in 2018, and comprises issues 17–22. The title of this final part is Berlin: City of Light.[3]

With the Nazi party now in power, the tensions between the factions erupt all over the country. The Communists prepare themselves for being attacked by the police and the followers of Hitler. Marthe and Anne are now living together, while Severing plunges into depression after his editor is arrested by the government. As the situation around them becomes increasingly violent, the characters slowly give up trying to change their own destiny and start planning for the future.