Asterios Polyp

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I don't have much to say about it, as I don't think I have rationalized it much yet: visually, it's extremely creative and exciting. De esas que cuando las terminas, regresas al inicio y vuelves a empezar (y en la cual siempre encuentras algo nuevo). Alles is in balans, een tekenstijl en lettertype die zich vormen naar de personages, mooi subtiel kleurgebruik, het juiste papier, van goed verdeelde witruimtes tot en met het gewichtige eindeloze gevoel van de 344 bladzijden en de kartonnen met linnen kaft aan toe. Ha altresì, come sappiamo una personalissima ossessione per i doppi che dà forma alle ricerche intellettuali del suo pensiero cosciente . With "Asterios Polyp," Mazzucchelli has put paid to that charge: It's funny, it's warm and it's beautiful.

See our Remarkables Archive list for what is no longer in print, but which we are happy to track down. With “Asterios Polyp,” Mazzucchelli has put paid to that charge: It’s funny, it’s warm and it’s beautiful. It’s a sweeping, provocative book that blends the richness of the traditional novel with the best modern art. It seems like Asterio's problems with putting things into tidy either/or boxes is also an extension of David Mazzucchelli's same impulse.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. I see this as a love story, and - among many other things - a story about the communication challenges that we experience because of our differences. This turns out to be a running motif, and later, during Asterios and Hana's first meeting, his blue outlines begin to fill with pink haze, and her pink shadows become outlined in blue, until they both have nearly the same appearance. Rather than merely have the graphic element supplement the story, Asterios Polyp makes graphics a part of the theme, using it to highlight conflicts and characterize its protagonists. On top of Mazzucchelli's tight reign over his colour spectrum, there is ample evidence that he maintains the same level of control over his linework and design.

At times the characters seem very real (the dialogue is well written, and the bodily gestures are so well drawn, just spot on! Ambos son la enésima constatación de la maestría de un Mazzucchelli que lleva pasándose el arte secuencial desde mediados de los 80 y que aquí demuestra una vez más a lo largo y ancho del tebeo. Uno cuenta casi sin texto lo que es la cotidianidad de una relación de pareja desde una multiplicidad de tiempos y situaciones que se desarrollan o no consecutivamente, dependiendo de su posición en la página o el color utilizado.

The rows in the middle tell a consistent, simple story, wherein Hana has lost the puff of a Q-tip inside her ear, and has a mild panic until Asterios removes it with a tweezer. But it's that brilliant kind of complex which can be enjoyed on many levels, like Lolita, say, or The Metamorphosis, where, if you'd like, you can derive great enjoyment from the story on the surface, without doing a whole lot of delving.

And like Ryder, Asterios suffers from an inability to see the world as it is and is (really, like us all) victim to his own perceptions. Asterios Polyp is, in the simplest terms, a coming-of-age story—one in which the fifty-year-old lead, celebrated architect Asterios Polyp, begins a quest to put away the childish things of his past and embarks on journey of both self-discovery and exploration of the world as it is rather than how he has intended to see it for so long.

Una vez terminado he vuelto a las primeras páginas y veo un montón de cosas nuevas: los vídeos, la navaja, el reloj, los gemelos siempre presentes incluso en pequeños detalles (los libros que salen: El príncipe y el mendigo, El hombre de la máscara de hierro. Though Mazzucchelli has authored many excellent short works, his first original graphic novel is exactly that. It's something that could never be done in prose, and to me it is the beating heart of the novel--echoed and augmented later by a pitch-perfect, harrowing, devastating, wordless dream sequence, which is rendered as an intricate dance opera.