New Releases by Jason Lutes

"I have escaped out of more handcuffs, manacles, and leg shackles than any other human being living." Harry Houdini mesmerized a generation of Americans when he was alive, and continues to do so over ninety years since his death. This is a snapshot of The Handcuff King''s life, centering on one of his most famous feats. As Houdini prepares for a death-defying leap into the icy Charles River in Boston, biographer Jason Lutes and artist Nick Bertozzi reveal Houdini''s life and influence: from the antisemitism Houdini fought all his life, to the adulation of the American public from his hounding by the press, to his loving relationship with his wife Bess from his egoism to his insecurity from his public persona--to the secret behind his most amazing trick! And it''s all in graphic form, so it''s fresh, original, and unlike anything previously published about this most fascinating of American showmen.

"Originally serialized in the comic book ''Berlin,'' in issues 17 through 22, published by Drawn & Quarterly"--Copyright pag

The second installment of the epic historical trilogy The second volume of Jason Lutes''s historical epic finds the people of Weimar Berlin searching for answers after the lethal May Day demonstration of 1929. Tension builds along with the dividing wall between communists and nationalists, Jews and Gentiles, as the dawn of the Second World War draws closer. Meanwhile, the nightlife of Berlin heats up as many attempt to distract themselves from the political upheavals within the city. The American jazz band Cocoa Kids arrives and quickly becomes a fixture. The lives of the characters within Lutes''s epic weave together to create a seamless portrait of this transitory city. Marthe Muller follows her lover Kurt Severing as he interviews participants in the May Day demonstration, but she moonlights in the city''s lesbian nightlife.Severing acts as a window through which the political shifts within the city and its participants can be seen. As with Berlin Book One: City

Haunted by a failed romance and the death of his escape-artist brother, Ernie Weiss is a washed-up stage magician whose remaining hope lies in his ageing mentor, Al Fosso. But Al is slipping further into senility with each passing day. Meanwhile, Esther O''Dea, Ernie''s ex-love, struggles to find peace in her own life, and then a con-man named Nathan Lender sets some mysterious plans in motion that will affect the futures of them all. Fascinating and tragicomic, Jar of Fools is a classic of its genre.

Berlin: City of Stones presents the first part of Jason Lutes'' captivating trilogy, set in the twilight years of Germany''s Weimar Republic. Kurt Severing, a journalist, and Marthe Muller, an art student, are the central figures in a broad cast of characters intertwined with the historical events unfolding around them. City of Stones covers eight months in Berlin, from September 1928 to May Day, 1929, meticulously documenting the hopes and struggles of its inhabitants as their future is darkened by a glowing shadow.

To be completed in 24 serialized installments, a critically acclaimed graphic novel trilogy spanning the brilliant and dangerous years of the Weimar Republic of Germany. Artists, journalists, communists, fascists, police, poets, lovers and workers cross paths while they dance the decadent city of Berlin into the arms of growing fascism.

"Collection of comic strips that originally appeared in newspaper form... and which deal with the language of comics in a humorous way."--Poopsheet Foundation.

In this wordless comic, an aggressive, chainsmoking, drunk driver comes to a fitting end.