Berlin #17

Jason Lutes's long-running portrait of Weimar-era Berlin continues with issue #17, its muted mauve-and-black cover presenting a single, quietly arresting image — a figure whose face is almost entirely obscured by the wide brim of a pulled-down fedora, one hand raised as if shielding an identity or bracing against an unseen world. The restrained design carries the whole weight of the series' atmosphere: shadow, anonymity, and unease rendered in Lutes's precise linework. At $4.95, this 2010 installment is another carefully crafted chapter in one of alternative comics' most ambitious ongoing narratives.