3 Responses to “Asterios Polyp: Quick Review”

1. oscar on November 9th, 2009 2:04 am

   The book is saturated with allusions to the history of the representation/abstraction dichotomy in art. Asterios name-drops “Narcissus and Goldmund” and “The Cloven Viscount.” (“Some might argue that such simplification is best suited to children’s stories or comic books,” the narrator snarks back at him.) An Orphic descent into the underworld is drawn in a style that nods to Orphic Cubism. A cat is named Noguchi. Mazzucchelli throws in visual allusions to other cartoonists and quasi cartoonists, from Lynd Ward to Dan Clowes and John Porcellino, who’ve confronted the same issues in their work. And he can’t resist drawing implicit parallels between comics and every other medium his characters encounter: a sequence in which a composer discusses simultaneity and polyphony in music appears as a single image with overlapping panel borders, so that its viewers might better navigate its “cacophony of information.”

   “Asterios Polyp”: a big, proud, ambitious chunk of a graphic novel, with modernism on its mind and a perfectly geometrical chip on its shoulder. The tension between formalist rigor and emotional subtlety is not just the theme (and method) of the cartoonist David ­Mazzucchelli’s decade-in-the-making opus; it’s basically the plot. The book is a satirical comedy of remarriage, a treatise on aesthetics and design and ontology, a late-life Künstlerroman, a Novel of Ideas with two capital letters, and just about the most schematic work of fiction this side of that other big book that constantly alludes to the ­“Odyssey.”

   Modernism came late to comics. Cartoonists are naturally stylistic chameleons, selecting and altering visual techniques to serve their subjects. But explicitly presenting style as content? That’s always trickier. It took creative giants to make it work in literature, music and fine art, and many comics artists of the last few decades who’ve made formal and stylistic exploration the chief focus of their work have had to neglect the pleasures — and audiences — of storytelling.

   “Asterios Polyp” is a dazzling, expertly constructed entertainment, even as it’s maddening and even suffocating at times. It demands that its audience wrestle with it, argue with it, reread and re-examine it. Isn’t that the ultimate purpose of style?

2. adam! on November 15th, 2009 7:44 pm

   Ang masasabi ko pa lang muna dito ay ang POLYP ang isa sa pinakastyle- & design-minded na libro na lumabas sa panahon kung saan ang style at design ay seemingly umaalma na para sa pansin – FATE OF THE ARTIST, WHAT IT IS, JIMMY CORRIGAN, IT’S A GOOD LIFE, pati ang reprint ng BREAKDOWNS – late nga ang pagdating ng Modernismo sa comix, pero heto na siya, sumasabay rin sa Recherchez Modernism nina Safran Foer, Eggers, Vollman, Wallace, etc. Maganda talaga sana kung mas maraming komikero ang makapagbasa nitong mga ito, kahit pa sa CBR/CBZ comicscans, para lang makita ang mga “bagong” bagay na’to, at para matuto.

3. benj on December 3rd, 2009 9:42 pm

   chanced on a copy in fullybooked, bought it then and there. it’s so absorbing i finished it in (almost) one sitting. tama nga, Mazzucchelli doesn’t spoon feed, and it’s gonna take more than three or four readings to really digest it (if ever it can be really grasped). im looking forward to reading it again actually haha. love the art and the storytelling, though i honestly can’t say i see or understand all the art allusions and name-drops. anyway i hope fans of his superhero artwork get this too, even though its a far cry from born again or batman year one. more like city of glass. and i liked the ending. heartbreaking in a good way. i mean, how do you end a story like that? haha anyway i hope you do write more about it, sir gerry.