Rain

(Tundra, 1991)
©1991 Rolf F. Stark & Marlene Stevens

Rain is a six-issue series by noted artist Rolf Stark and co-writer Marlene Stevens, based on Stark’s memories of Germany during and after World War II. Stark’s jagged and harrowing black-and-white artwork is the perfect vehicle for the ambitious and kaleidoscopic story that unfolds in the series. Events from protagonist Karl’s life as a barely subsisting taxi driver in the present time mingle with disturbing fragments of events and images from his previous life, including his childhood in war-torn Germany and his subsequent experiences wandering the globe.

Both the language and the artwork in Rain are shockingly and deliberately ugly. But at the same time, the ugliness is necessary to communicate Stark’s harsh vision of reality without sensationalism or sentimentality. Rain occupies territory staked out by Art Spiegelman’s Maus and very few others in its use of the comic book form as literature.

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