Jason Lutes

Who is Jason Lutes?

Jason Lutes is an American comics creator. His work is mainly historical fiction, but he also works in traditional fiction. His work includes the Berlin series and Jar of Fools, as well as The Fall, and many short pieces for anthologies and compilations.

Lutes was born in New Jersey, but his family soon relocated to Missoula, Montana. In his early years, Lutes liked superhero comics, but a trip to France exposed him to European comics like The Adventures of Tintin and Asterix, which he says greatly affected his style of drawing.

Lutes went to college at the Rhode Island School of Design, graduating with a Bachelor of Fine Arts in 1991. He moved to Seattle after graduation, where he found work for the alternative comics publisher Fantagraphics, and eventually became art director of the alternative weekly The Stranger.

During this period, Lutes began writing and self-publishing his own comic work with Penny Dreadful Press. In 1993 Lutes began serializing a strip for The Stranger, which was collected in 1996 in the critically acclaimed graphic novel Jar of Fools.