Moving Pictures

Moving Pictures is a new graphic novel by Kathryn & Stuart Immonen, published by Top Shelf, that uses as its setting, the efforts by the French and Germans during World War II to hide (and inventory and categorize) the collections of their major art galleries. Within this real historical framework, the Immonen's explore, in a fictional context, one scenario as to how this affected the lives of two people who are on opposing sides.



On the one side is Ila Gardner, a curator, who is suspected by officer Rolf Hauptmann (the other central character), to be hiding some of the galleries (and or has knowledge of where they're hidden) that the German Military Art Commission also have an interest in. Further compounding the mystery that officer Hauptmann is trying to unravel through his interrogation of Ila, is that they also have an illicit relationship with each other.

Stuart Immonen is mostly known as a superhero comic book artist (Ultimate Spider-Man, New Avengers, and Nextwave), so it is interesting to see the minimalist art style he employees for Moving Pictures, an artistic style that illustrates that less can be more. Stuart Immonen's use of black and white also works as a great contrast to the mystery that unfolds in Moving Pictures.