Jake Tapper Makes His Comics Debut With The Butcher

Jake Tapper is stepping away from the television news desk and straight into the world of graphic novels, but he isn’t taking the easy route. The CNN anchor and bestselling author is writing and illustrating The Butcher: The Decades-Long Hunt for Klaus Barbie, One of the World’s Most Notorious Killers, a new nonfiction graphic novel coming from Top Shelf Productions on June 1, 2027.

The subject is as disturbing as it is historically important. Klaus Barbie, the Nazi officer infamous for his brutality in occupied France, escaped justice after World War II and spent decades evading accountability. Tapper’s book follows the investigators, journalists and Nazi hunters who pursued him, while examining the people and institutions that helped him disappear in the first place.

That last part is where the story becomes particularly uncomfortable. It’s one thing to document the crimes of a monster. It’s another to investigate the networks that allowed him to avoid facing consequences for so long. Tapper says he researched material in German, English, Spanish and French, digging into the complicated international trail left behind by Barbie’s escape.

What’s unusual here is that Tapper didn’t simply write a script and hand it off to an artist. He’s also illustrating the entire book. That makes The Butcher his debut as both a comics writer and an illustrator, a serious undertaking for a project built around such sensitive historical material.

Tapper described the work as one of the most difficult and rewarding projects of his career, citing the research, the challenge of shaping the facts into compelling storytelling and the effort required to draw the pages. Top Shelf editor-in-chief Chris Staros emphasized the book’s focus on the people who helped a notorious Nazi escape and those who refused to stop pursuing justice.

Comics have an incredible history of tackling difficult nonfiction subjects, from war and genocide to personal testimony and investigative reporting. The medium can connect readers to history in ways that prose alone sometimes cannot, provided the creators approach the material with rigor and respect. That responsibility is especially important with a subject like Barbie and the people who suffered under Nazi persecution.

Top Shelf has spent decades publishing graphic novels that push beyond traditional superhero storytelling, so this feels like a natural home for an ambitious work of graphic journalism. The question now is how Tapper’s visual storytelling will handle the weight of the evidence and the human lives behind it.

The Butcher arrives as a full-color softcover for $19.99, with a limited signed-and-numbered hardcover available exclusively through IDW’s online store for $49.99. The hardcover and paperback carry ISBNs 978-1-60309-626-3 and 978-1-60309-615-7, respectively.

Credits: Written and illustrated by Jake Tapper.
Publisher: Top Shelf Productions, an imprint of IDW Publishing.
Softcover: $19.99.
Limited signed hardcover: $49.99

Release: June 1, 2027