Even by the standards of the graphic novel, this cosmic epic pushes
the creative envelope.With previous credits including superheroes
for Marvel Comics and the transformation of Paul Auster's City of
Glass into a graphic novel (2004), Mazzucchelli returns with a
title that suggests a mid-period Pink Floyd song and an illustrated
narrative that is every bit as mind-blowing. It begins with a bolt
of lightning that destroys the New York City apartment of the title
character, a pompous academic who is celebrated (or who celebrates
himself) as a "paper architect." He draws plans for buildings that
will never be built, and his theories inform many of the panels,
rendering them as the graphic equivalent of metafiction, design
about design. For many pages at a stretch there are few or no
words, as a single panel might stretch across a page or two. Yet
the narrative functions something like memory, flitting from the
present - in which Polyp finds work in a small-town auto shop,
after losing everything in his apartment fire, and inserts himself
within a community that proves surprisingly accommodating - through
critical junctures of his past. It seems that Polyp was actually a
twin, and that his stillborn brother might be providing narration.
He has also somehow married a beautiful, talented,
Japanese-American artist named Hana, though something went wrong
with the marriage well before the lightning bolt. In this graphic
novel of fate, chance and shooting stars, Polyp insists that "I am
the hero of my own story," yet the art provides plenty of evidence
to the contrary.A visual and even philosophical stunner. (Kirkus
Reviews)
The triumphant return of one of comics' greatest talents, with an
engrossing story of one man's search for love, meaning, sanity, and
perfect architectural proportions. An epic story long awaited, and
well worth the wait.
Meet Asterios Polyp: middle-aged, meagerly successful architect and
teacher, aesthete and womanizer, whose life is wholly upended when
his New York City apartment goes up in flames. In a tenacious daze,
he leaves the city and relocates to a small town in the American
heartland. But what is this "escape" really about?
As the story unfolds, moving between the present and the past, we
begin to understand this confounding yet fascinating character, and
how he's gotten to where he is. And isn't. And we meet Hana: a
sweet, smart, first-generation Japanese American artist with whom
he had made a blissful life. But now she's gone. Did Asterios do
something to drive her away? What has happened to her? Is she even
alive? All the questions will be answered, eventually.
In the meantime, we are enthralled by Mazzucchelli's
extraordinarily imagined world of brilliantly conceived eccentrics,
sharply observed social mores, and deftly depicted asides on
everything from design theory to the nature of human
perception.
"
Asterios Polyp" is David Mazzucchelli's masterpiece: a great
American graphic novel.
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