About the Jar of Fools

Uses a graphic presentation to offer a meditation on love, loss, magic, and dreams in a story featuring Ernie, an alcoholic stage magician, his former girlfriend Esther, and small time grifter Nathan Lender and his twelve-year-old daughter Claire.

Jason Lutes was born in New Jersey in 1967, and started reading and drawing comics as soon as he was able. The European comics he encountered during childhood visits to France made a great impression on him, and have proven a strong influence on his adult work. The first time he gave up comics was to attend the Rhode Island School of Design(BFA in Illustration, 1991), but publications such as R. Crumb's Weirdo, Art Spiegelman's RAW, and Chester Brown's Yummy Fur lured him back. Upon graduation, he moved to Seattle, lost his spleen in a bike accident, and washed dishes until he was hired by Fantagraphics Books.The second time he gave up comics was a year later, when he became disillusioned with the comics industry and quit Fantagraphics to wash more dishes. He was lured back by the opportunity to draw a strip for "The Stranger", a Seattle weekly, and that strip was later collected in the book "Jar of Fools". In 1995, after a stint as art director at "The Stranger", he quit to try his hand at being a full-time cartoonist. He currently lives in Seattle, where he infrequently produces chapters in the comics novel "Berlin" and fondly recalls happier days as a dishwasher. In 1996 Lutes started work on Berlin, a projected 600 page story set in Germany during the twilight years of the Weimar Republic.