Asterios Polyp is a primer for both the fervent possibilities and the rich rewards of the graphic novel. Themes [ edit ] Mazzucchelli sketching the titular character in a fan's copy of the book at a June 2012 signing at Midtown Comics in Manhattan. We are led to believe that due to Asterios' inattention at his wife, she is falling for this dirty scumbag. As well, there are plenty of references to The Odyssey and this cross-pollination of mythologies only serves to enrich our experience of Asterios' journey.

It reminded me of Paul Krugman's sick burn, "Newt Gingrich is a stupid man's idea of what a smart person sounds like. Você entenderá a história (ou não) e relendo pela segunda vez, você começará a perceber a metalinguagem utilizada, em como arte e quadrinho se mesclam e uma utiliza da outra para efeito narrativo. Es un hombre cínico, egocéntrico, esnob, práctico y materialista que no da importancia a lo que tiene. I thought it was boring - an educated, middle-aged white man feels like his life has fallen apart so he jumps ship and tries to start over again. 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.Much like he did with Year One over 20 years ago, Mazzucchelli has once again raised the bar for his entire artform. Il layout del libro è cangiante, proteiforme, flessibile, incessantemente gradevole, mai soffocante. He rides until he gets to a small town, where he takes a job as a mechanic, and rents a room from his boss, a big man who lives with his voluptuous wife and their pudgy son. This is a comic for artists, and it plays with space and color in ways that maybe only artists will understand, but it is a story for everyone, and Asterios Polyp is easily among the best graphic novels ever made. And as I haven't got any kind of background in gender studies or feminist theory, I don't feel comfortable talking about what feminists think of this book or that one.

The narrative comes back to earth for a profoundly satisfying climax, but you’ll want to keep turning pages—all the way back to the beginning, for another read. Given all this, I still don't think it is justification enough for such an ending, because it really does make the whole book too obviously about ideas and ideas alone. It contains a relatively simple story (and probably a deceptively simple one), but told in a dazzlingly stunning array of comic book techniques not possible in other mediums.Iedere herinnering, ongeacht hoe ver het onderwerp ervan ook verwijderd is, vindt altijd 'Nu' plaats, op het moment dat ze weer in gedachten wordt geroepen. Questa storia è narrata dal gemello morto col quale Asterios tende qua e là a sovrapporsi, identificarsi, scambiarsi. Aggiungiamo che gioca anche col lettering, assegnandone uno per personaggio e mutandolo a secondo degli stati d’animo.

Asterios Polyp is, believe it or not, the main character's name - a brilliant professor of architecture who is re-examining his life after losing his wife due to his own self-absorption. Why would anyone want to make such a well crafted and carefully thought through graphic novel about an architect struggling with his preconceptions on the nature of duality?This is a story of redemption, of sorts, not only in the moral sense but in the graphic, on the level of visual design, a narrative and thematic utilization of the graphic in "graphic novel" that I would love to see taken up more in this genre. Pseudo-intellectual, middlebrow regurgitation of ostensibly interesting Wikipedia-culled dichotomies and philosophical conceptions, clunkily arranged into a narrative.

In books like Jimmy Corrigan — and the just released ASTERIOS POLYP by David Mazzucchelli, it happens on every. By using the Web site, you confirm that you have read, understood, and agreed to be bound by the Terms and Conditions. And we meet Hana: a sweet, smart, first-generation Japanese American artist with whom he had made a blissful life. I'm sure there are plenty of reasons for this that could be explained using behavioral psychology, but really, I just want to stop. On top of this is layered the framework of Greek tragedy and specific allusion to the myth of Orpheus (this is pointed out through fistfuls of overt clues, not the least of which is a dream in which Asterios takes the role of Orpheus and his ex-wife Hana embodies Eurydice).David Mazzucchelli’s boldly ambitious, boundary-pushing graphic novel is remarkable for the way it synthesizes word and image to craft a new kind of storytelling, and for how it makes that synthesis seem so intuitive as to render it invisible….