Customer Reviews

I Killed Adolf Hitler

5 star:		(4)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

The Norwegian cartoonist's latest, out for some time in a French version, is a bent time-travel yarn in which a hit man from the future goes back to 1938 to try to cut Hitler's career short. This being Jason, nothing works out as planned. This being Jason, there's a poignant love story tucked inside the main "poli-sci-fi" escapade. The familiar Jason Repertory Company of flop-eared dogs and nearsighted crows is at the top of its game, lucidly conveying deep emotions with a tilt of the head or a bowed back. There's a little more dialogue than usual but seldom a wasted word, never a wasted panel. There's deadpan humor in an early sequence where guilt-ridden customers struggle to explain why they'd want to order a rub-out. With its arresting title and clever plot lines, could this be Jason's breakthrough book? It would make a more compelling movie than some of the Frank Miller fare that's out there. For people who don't know Jason, this might make a good introduction. It's not his best; he may never top his first - "Hey, Wait ..." - but nobody else will, either.

The books by Norwegian cartoonist Jason, born John Arne Sæterøy, are as difficult to explain as their appeal. Take, for instance, I Killed Adolf Hitler, published in the United States by Fantagraphics in June 2007 and translated by Kim Thompson. This original graphic novel features Jason's usual anthropomorphic animal characters who visually echo the early, simple style of Walt Disney, but whose faces often lack significant emotional expression. The worlds the cartoonist depicts also tend to mix elements and tropes from different genres of film--in this case, Jason combines time travel, hit men, and alternative history and throws in a melancholy love story just for good measure.

The plot of I Killed Adolf Hitler is almost too simple to describe and, in fact, can probably be mostly gleaned from what I've written already. Suffice it to say, our protagonist (none of the characters have their names identified . . . except for the titular führer, of course) is hired to travel back to Nazi Germany to do the deed. And, of course, things go . . . well, not wrong. But strange. Along the way to the book's end, there's a lot of standing around, murders, talking in diners, more time travel, and trips to the library.

Did I mention that Jason's work is difficult to explain?

Nevertheless, there's something intriguing here. The pages are broken into six-panel grids, giving the story's flow a cinematic feel. This effect is aided by a lack of caption boxes and scene transitions that almost resemble a movie's "jump cuts," where suddenly one scene ends and another has begun without warning. And since Jason creates comic book mash-ups of film genres, the effect hardly seems accidental.

Adding to the mystique are the blank faces of the animal characters who populate the world of the story. On the rare occasion that they actually do emote, they are usually expressing consternation, shock or surprise, or anger, skewing toward the darker end of the emotional spectrum. These are not happy characters, and this is not a happy story. Its ending, however, has a strangely satisfying conclusion that offers a sense of resolution and peace that is both entirely unexpected and entirely welcome.

An important aspect of this and all of Jason's books is the juxtaposition of these childish-looking cartoon animals and the violent and often sexually explicit lives they lead. While you never see any graphic depictions of sex in I Killed Adolf Hitler, it is discussed at one point--in detail--and there are a lot of bullets going into animal-people's heads. Think of it as Itchy and Scratchy meets Resevoir Dogs meets Ingmar Bergman.

I have mentioned that Jason's work is difficult to explain, right?

It seems as though Jason's work takes the baser aspects of reality--violence, sex, lies, and death--and forces readers to see them through the perspective of a child's cartoon, thereby making familiar themes and filmic conventions wholly new and often unsettling. By making the familiar strange, I Killed Adolf Hitler will make readers confront their assumptions about what art can and should be.

-- Brian P. Rubin

Perhaps the reason I think so positively about this book is that it was my first time reading a story by Jason, but either way it was a very enjoyable read.
There's a beautiful play of the way we interpret words and images because his personified or anthropomorphized animals betray little emotions in their faces, but just pour it out of their words and body language.
This is a really good example of how an artist can infuse subtle emotion in symbolic action and dialogue.

The style of Jason's lines renews the comics market, and his work gives us comfort and lightness even talking about serious subjects like that.

Jason does the most amazing things with basic generic plot ideas garnered from movies and television. He takes them in astounding directions, and his deadpan drawing style pulls off hysterically funny moments. This is one of his best, a little graphic novella on the theme of time travel with more comic twists than you would have thought possible. This is right up there with LOW MOON and ALMOST SILENT, all three terrifically inventive funnies from one of the most devious minds working in the medium.

When artists use alot of non sequiturs in their narrative it's usually as an all-purpose story filler that transforms the plot into a foil for their pretentiousness; Jason is the rare example that can use the comic medium in this way and be heartfelt, captivating and brilliant. It's minimalistic artistically but with a story so expansive in so few pages that it'd make Alan Moore's head explode. This is the very first book by the author I've read and I don't anticipate it being the last.

I love this book. His stories always seem to meander and float along and then at some point they kick into high gear and they twist and twist and twist. Jason is by far my favorite new writer in the indie-comics scene. His stories are smart, witty, funny, horrifying and romantic. All in the same book. All within 48 or so pages. What a marvel. I enjoyed the love story in this one a bit more than his others. It was sweet how the woman waited 50 years just to save her true love and spend the few remaining years they'd have together.