There are no blow-ups with the rest of the band about the departure, no Byronic tortured-artist moments. The events are enumerated quietly and chronologically through action and dialogue (lots of simple sentences ending in periods in which characters explain things to one another), until they stop. Bellstorf works tirelessly to sap the mystique out of the Beatles bildungsroman generally, and the oft-told tale of fifth-Beatle Sutcliffe, John’s close friend, ankling the band for an arty life with Astrid specifically. Baby’s in Black tells the story of this pivotal stage in the Beatles’ career without storytelling. (The likenesses for the famous characters, especially John and Paul, are crazy good.) And I’m hard pressed to think of a single image in which the main characters (who also include George Harrison and Kircherr’s friend and future tertiary Beatle-helper Klaus Voorman) aren’t turned in three-quarter profile, giving their every line the feel of a conspiratorial whisper we readers have been privileged to overhear.īut that’s about as much drama as you’re gonna get.

The art throughout is as warm and sensual and smoky as a cigarette-filled basement beerhall, with Bellstorf’s figurework and portraiture particularly impressive, a cross between Blaise Larmee’s cherubic androgynes and Bryan Lee O’Malley’s sexy-cute cartoon hipsters. Starting with the title and the cover itself, featuring the black-clad soft-focus side-eyed angelic figures of John, Paul, erstwhile bassist/wannabe painter Stuart Sutcliffe, and German photographer/stylist/superfriend Astrid Kircherr, the visual tone is set for the entire affair. If you came to Baby’s in Black, writer-artist Arne Bellstorf’s take on the young Beatles’ bohemian demimonde in early-‘60s Hamburg, expecting a darkly glamorous romantic tragedy amid the gathering clouds of a pop-culture hurricane-well, I can’t say I’d blame you.

Baby's in Black by Arne Bellstorf