Asterios Polyp

Product Information

You know, you have this almost completely unlikeable character, Asterios, who sees the world from a very logical perspective, very limited to Reason, enlightenment-based modernism.

It is a testament to how distancing the story is that at the end, when the asteroid destroys everyone (itself a pretty immature narrative device), I didn't feel shocked or anything. Mazzucchelli experiments with numerous art styles and pushes the envelope with challenging digressions into philosophy, religion and mortality throughout Polyp's tale. This invitation is off-handedly dismissed by Asterios when he incorrectly assumes that it is directed to him; when Hana accepts, the beginning of the end of their relationship is signaled by his condescending self-superior attitude toward the director and the composer while Hana (finally) gets tired of his smug self-superiority, resulting in the eruption of some expressionist graphic explosions illustrating their fights. His ex-wife, Hana, is a quiet, humble sculptor - clearly going for the whole "opposites attract" thing.What Mazzucchelli accomplishes, though, with remarkable clarity and a jazzy pop-culture eye, and which the written word has a tougher time with, is portraying silence, moments between something said and something to come--even thought itself. One's experience of Asterios Polyp will no doubt be more enriched by a working knowledge of architectural history, familiarity with Greek mythology and Homeric tradition, and a smackerel of understanding of postmodern sculpture—but Mazzucchelli's conveyance of story through his visual sense means that even those with Asterios-sized gaps in their education can still get in there and have some deeper sense of what's going on. In Asterios Polyp—the best of the summer’s new releases—Mazzucchelli employs spotlights, coloring schemes, knitting, Aristophanes, an identical twin who died at birth and the wide array of secretions from a woman’s body to lead us into the self-centered world of the title character even as the center implodes….

I was completely blown away by Asterios Polyp, David Mazzucchelli's latest comic book, a pull-out-all-the-stops package that's funny, poignant and deep, with panels of thoughtfully shaded images that form a visual novel, a paper movie, and finally, an existential meditation on things that matter to us: religion, art, science, love and memory. By accepting all cookies, you agree to our use of cookies to deliver and maintain our services and site, improve the quality of Reddit, personalize Reddit content and advertising, and measure the effectiveness of advertising. Aggiungiamo che gioca anche col lettering, assegnandone uno per personaggio e mutandolo a secondo degli stati d’animo. This fan of the novel is an ever bigger fan of the magic that happens in comics, and only in comics, when text and art work together to create something wholly, wonderfully new. Maravillosa la parte en la que en unas pocas páginas da un repaso a la vida cotidiana de Asterios con Hana, también ese descenso a los infiernos en modo Orfeo para recuperarla.

Mazzucchelli manages to combine breathless formal experimentation and read feeling into a story where every line, color choice, and panel arrangement builds toward a cohesive whole, lending an air of epic proportions to what would otherwise be a simple tale. Asterios Polyp è la storia di un uomo che all'età di cinquant'anni, per una serie di ragioni, decide di cambiare vita e cercare il senso della propria esistenza. I am a reasonably quiet person unless I'm around people I have known for a while, and usually listen more than speak. He is an architecture professor, but a "paper architect," meaning that none of his designs have ever been built. This is of course terribly difficult to describe, and is a superb argument for the supremacy of the graphic novel form in this book.

Con esta novela gráfica he quedado fascinada sobre todo en el aspecto formal: el dibujo, el cambio en los colores para caracterizar a los personajes o para indicar el tiempo. Mazzucchelli’s work has all but abandoned the realistic musculature and architecture that made him stand out from his superhero peers. Fin qui si direbbe niente di eccezionale, tutto già sentito, un bildungsroman abbastanza classico (anche se alla fine io mi sono chiesto: ma Asterios Polyp non è anche un esempio di Grande Romanzo Americano? The book is all about style, design and visual language, and Mazzuchelli is moving the discussion of all of these forward with Asterios Polyp. But what I loved the most is that this graphic novel has a living and breathing soul, a true soul that you can see much better in the second part.

Solo che Mazzucchelli è il Thomas Pynchon del fumetto: ergo, sa trasformare una storia già nota in un’avventura unica. The novel is interspersed with scenes from his past (ostensibly narrated by his stillborn twin brother, Ignazio), including his childhood and troubled marriage, as well as dreams and allegorical sequences.