The design and textures of the artwork are beautifully minimal, the spareness based on tiny little differences. Whether this detachment is deliberate or not, it combines with the almost identical character faces to hold the story back. It has the same even, calm and slightly distant feeling no matter what is happening. The design pulls you in, but Bellstorf’s carefully modulated drawing and the doll-like faces of his characters have a flattening effect on the drama of his narrative. Kirchherr’s point of view, based on interviews with her, formed the basis for Arne Bellstorf’s graphic novel about the Beatles, Hamburg, Stuart Sutcliffe and the love affair that changed his life.īaby’s in Black has elegantly textured lines and smoky, smudgy pictures that look striking and instantly appealing, beginning with Kirchherr’s ex-boyfriend hearing the Beatles playing in a cellar and excitedly convincing Astrid to see them. Kirchherr fell in love with Stuart Sutcliffe, who decided to leave the band and stay in Germany with her to become a painter, but their relationship lasted only a few months before Sutcliffe’s death from a brain haemorrhage. Astrid Kirchherr’s photographs and her restyling of them into “moptops” helped propel them to stardom back in the UK. The story of the Beatles’ early formative time in Hamburg, as a five-piece band with guitarist Pete Best and bassist Stuart Sutcliffe, is the stuff of legend.
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