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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.
Hinweis: Dieser Artikel kann nur an eine deutsche Lieferadresse ausgeliefert werden.
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.
Hinweis: Dieser Artikel kann nur an eine deutsche Lieferadresse ausgeliefert werden.
Superhelden sind von gestern, Architekten von heute: David Mazzucchellis "Asterios Polyp" zeigt genial und beispielhaft, was Comics können.
Das Einzige, was man im Buch selbst zum Autor von "Asterios Polyp" erfährt, lautet: "David Mazzucchelli hat sein ganzes Leben lang Comics gezeichnet. Dies ist seine erste Graphic Novel." Mit Verlaub, der zweite Satz ist Unsinn. Denn Mazzucchelli (zu dem es viel mehr zu sagen gibt, als der erste Satz vermuten lässt) hat bereits 1994 "City of Glass" gezeichnet, und wenn es etwas gibt, das den Marketingbegriff "Graphic Novel" in seinem buchstäblichen Sinne verdient, dann war es dieses Comic-Meisterwerk. Nach dem gleichnamigen Roman von Paul Auster, der auf Deutsch im Rahmen der "Manhattan Trilogie" erschienen ist, hatte der Comiczeichner und -theoretiker Paul Karasik im Auftrag von Art Spiegelman eine Adaption entworfen, die aber derart anspruchsvoll geriet, dass er das Zeichnen David Mazzucchelli überließ.
Er war damals bereits in Amerika ein Star. Aber weiß Gott nicht einer jener Comicbewegung, die wir in Anlehnung an den Begriff der Graphic Novel einmal als literarische bezeichnen wollen. Man könnte auch sagen: unabhängige. Denn in Amerika fanden damals fast nur Superheldencomics Beachtung, und was an anspruchvolleren Stoffen abseits dieses Genres entstand, war die Sache von kleinen unabhängigen Verlagen - wenn es sich nicht gerade um Spiegelmans "Maus" handelte, der als Buch bei Pantheon erschienen und ein Bestseller war.
Mazzucchelli, 1960 geboren, wurde schon als junger Mann Zeichner der prestigeträchtigen Superheldenserie "Daredevil". 1986 setzte er die von Frank Miller, dem großen amerikanischen Comic-Star der achtziger Jahre, geschriebene Daredevil-Geschichte "Born Again" um, und kurz danach schrieb Miller die Batman-Erzählung "Year One", für die er sich ausdrücklich Mazzucchelli als Zeichner wünschte. Der Erfolg bei Publikum und Kritik war immens - endlich boten auch Superheldengeschichten nicht nur die psychologische Tiefe, sondern auch den ästhetischen Wagemut anspruchsvoller Comics. Mazzucchelli galt als größter kommerzieller Zeichner seiner Generation - und hängte die kommerzielle Arbeit an den Nagel.
Stattdessen gab er im Selbstverlag von 1991 bis 1993 drei Ausgaben der allein von ihm gestalteten Anthologie "Rubber Blankets" heraus, ehe er das Angebot erhielt, "City of Glass" zu zeichnen. In dieses Projekt steckte er seine ganze Experimentierfreude. Wieder wurde er zum Star, diesmal nun bei all jenen, die dem Comic ein eigenständiges ästhetisches und erzählerisches Potential zubilligen. Und wieder verschwand Mazzucchelli danach in der Versenkung. Diesmal gleich für anderthalb Jahrzehnte.
Dann kam vor zwei Jahren in den Vereinigten Staaten "Asterios Polyp" heraus, ein fast 350 Seiten starker Comic in einer Aufmachung - Halbleinen, Blindprägung, modernistischer Zeichenstil, immens große, aber immer wie ausgebleicht wirkende Farbpalette -, die auf den ersten Blick neue Maßstäbe versprach. Und diesen Anspruch auch einlöste. Davon kann man sich nun endlich auch auf Deutsch überzeugen, denn der Eichborn Verlag hat seiner derzeit heiklen finanziellen Lage die Produktion der Übersetzung noch abtrotzen können. Warum so spät? Weil Mazzucchelli darauf bestand, dass man, abgesehen vom Text, nicht ein Jota gegenüber der amerikanischen Originalausgabe ändern durfte. Bis aber deren chinesische Druckerei wieder Kapazitäten hatte, um auch all die ausländischen Aufträge zu erfüllen (das Buch ist bislang in einem halben Dutzend Übersetzungen erschienen), dauerte es seine Zeit.
Auch die extrem sorgfältige Übertragung von Thomas Pletzinger dürfte ein Vielfaches der üblichen Spanne erfordert haben - nicht nur des schieren Umfangs wegen, sondern weil Mazzucchelli seine Figuren nicht zuletzt über ihre Sprache charakterisiert. Jede spricht in einer eigenen Typographie; der arrogante Titelheld zum Beispiel nur in eckigen Sprechblasen und Versalien, was vor allem in den Dialogen mit seiner japanischstämmigen Frau Hana die kulturellen wie mentalitätsbedingten Unterschiede zwischen dem Paar aufs schönste sichtbar macht. Vor allem aber mussten ihre sprachlichen Marotten, die sich etwa in Nachlässigkeiten, Wortverdrehungen oder Archaismen zeigen, aufs genaueste bewahrt werden. Dieser Comic lebt trotz seines spektakulären Erscheinungsbildes noch viel mehr vom Text.
Wie hier das Leben des fiktiven Architekten Asterios Polyp erzählt wird, das hält nicht nur dem Vergleich mit großen Entwicklungsromanen stand, das zieht auch alle Register dessen, was Comic graphisch zu leisten vermag. Ein zweites Mal in Mazzucchellis Werk gilt also, dass eines seiner Bücher mit vollem Recht Graphic Novel heißen dürfte. Dies ist in der Tat, wenn man denn so will, ein gezeichneter Roman.
Und diesmal hat Mazzucchelli ihn nicht nur gezeichnet, sondern auch selbst geschrieben. Dass er sich dafür fünfzehn Jahre Zeit genommen hat, ist jederzeit spürbar. Und zwar aufs schönste. So ausgefuchst, wie hier außer mit Schriften und Sprechblasen auch mit der Seitenarchitektur, mit winzigen Anspielungen und kulturellen Codes graphischer wie erzählerischer Art umgegangen wird, hat man das noch selten gesehen.
Es ist das bitterernste Buch eines Niedergangs und einer Läuterung. Es ist die groteske Biographie eines Architekten, dessen Entwürfe mit den höchsten Preisen bedacht werden, der aber noch nie ein Haus gebaut hat. Es ist ein Liebes- und ein Eifersuchtsroman. Es ist Satire und Melodrama. Und es ist ein Kompendium der Comic-Kunst, in dem Figuren, die aussehen, als wären sie einer Bauhaus-Blaupause entsprungen, solchen begegnen, die aus Picassos klassizistischer Periode stammen könnten. Und all diese scheinbar inkommensurablen Elemente stehen im Dienst einer Geschichte, die dem banalsten und größten Thema der Kunst noch einmal neue Facetten abgewinnt: der Freundschaft.
Angesichts dessen sind solche Geniestreiche wie die stete Porträtierung des Titelhelden im Profil, wie der konturlos gezeichnete dicke Körper eines braven Mechanikers aus dem Mittleren Westen, wie das optische Leitmotiv der Zweiteilung oder die piranesihafte Variation auf "Orpheus in der Unterwelt", ist also all die postmodern scheinende, aber vollkommen zeitlose Meisterschaft des unendlich wandlungsfähigen und kenntnisreichen Autors und Zeichners David Mazzucchelli nichts anderes als auch nur wieder eine Freundschaftserklärung: Seine wichtigsten Gewährsleute hat der Comic in Menschen, die ihm als einer Erzählform vertrauen, die keinen Vergleich mit anderen zu scheuen hat.
So gesehen, hätte Mazzucchelli mit "Asterios Polyp" sowieso nicht seine erste Graphic Novel gezeichnet - sonst müsste man ja den Roman als eine per se überlegene Bezugsgröße anerkennen. Dieser Band ist vielmehr eine der seltenen Arbeiten, die ganz auf der Höhe der Möglichkeiten des Comics sind. Und das ist viel wichtiger als das ganze Gerede um Benennungen.
ANDREAS PLATTHAUS
Alle Rechte vorbehalten. © F.A.Z. GmbH, Frankfurt am Main
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. Library Journal
This is an epic, emotionally rich, symbol-laden work that promises to redefine the graphic novel...David Mazzucchelli has made a beautiful, elaborate construction that coyly juggles style and content in a way few cartoonists are capable of. Globe and Mail
This brazenly original and complex work is easily one of the year's best novels, graphic or otherwise Brilliant. Absolutely brilliant. San Jose Mercury News
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 . Asterios Polyp is a fast, fun read, but it's also a work that has been carefully wrought to take optimum advantage of comics' hybrid nature it's a tale that could only be told on the knife-edge where text and art come seamlessly together. NPR s The Five Best Books to Share with Your Friends
As ever, Mazzucchelli keeps both the visual and storytelling fireworks coming This is a work that demands to be read, re-read, analyzed, and discussed. Comics Bulletin
Formally daring yet stylistically self-assured, Asterios Polyp is a bona fide masterpiece and the early frontrunner for best graphic novel of the year It s the presentation the use of narrative symbolism, color and visual metaphor that truly sets the book apart. Much like he did with Year One over 20 years ago, Mazzucchelli has once again raised the bar for his entire artform. Chicago Sun Times
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. Go read it, and read it twice. Providence City Paper
Mazzucchelli experiments with numerous art styles and pushes the envelope with challenging digressions into philosophy, religion and mortality throughout Polyp's tale. The engrossing effort culminates with a bombshell that will leave readers reeling. Toronto Star
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 . Asterios Polyp is a primer for both the fervent possibilities and the rich rewards of the graphic novel. Portland Oregonian
Now, after a decade-and-a-half, he has re-re-emerged with Asterios Polyp, an epic, emotionally rich, symbol-laden work that promises to redefine the graphic novel. Published by Pantheon Books (home to master-class cartoonists such as Art Spiegelman, Chris Ware and Dan Clowes), Asterios Polyp is Mazzucchelli's first graphic novel. It is also happens to be his masterpiece, the culmination of 25 years of promise .Mazzucchelli has made a beautiful, elaborate construction that coyly juggles style and content in a way few cartoonists are capable of. Globe and Mail (Canada)
The beauty of Asterios Polyp is that its core tenet, the need to pay attention to life as it happens, is so well reflected in the book itself in its lush paper tone and rough-hewn, elegant design and in the way all the formal devices serve the story. As such, it rewards attention and even devotion. Bookforum
The more you study Polyp, the more there is to discover. This is a book that stands with works by Updike, Roth, and other giants of American literature. It is undoubtedly one of the best novels of the year. The Stranger
Asterios Polyp is a perfect marriage of words and pictures. Every drawing, color choice and panel layout is pregnant with meaning. Columbus Dispatch
Mazzuchelli is using color to convey ideas in a way not attempted by most graphic novelists. The book is all about style, design and visual language, and Mazzuchelli is moving the discussion of all of these forward with Asterios Polyp. Matt Price's best graphic novels of 2009
Asterios Polyp will cause comic-book buffs to swoon, sure, but the narrative after a fire, an arrogant architect slowly begins to rebuild his own life makes it much more than a pretty picture book. Modern Tonic
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. That sticks; those last pages are as tender and heartbreaking a portrait of lost time as I can recall, and no less powerful for being nearly wordless Chicago Tribune
Critics have decried the modern graphic novel's focus on form at the expense of content. With "Asterios Polyp," Mazzucchelli has put paid to that charge: It's funny, it's warm and it's beautiful. Go read it. Newsday.com
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. Mazzucchelli is a genius of the form. Forbidden Planet
Each panel is a moment in the story that when connected to other panels becomes part of a scene or sequence that is rich in storytelling and fertile with ideas, inquiry, and themes. ComicBookBin, A+ review
Visually, Asterios Polyp is the lushest comic of the year--maybe of the last the 10 years, a decade not exactly thin on astounding cartooning. Mazzucchelli's work has all but abandoned the realistic musculature and architecture that made him stand out from his superhero peers. Asterios Polyp feels like three or four cartoonists working in concert, often on the same page, all of them firmly working on the "stylized" end of comics' spectrum. Baltimore City Paper
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. In books like Jimmy Corrigan -- and the just released ASTERIOS POLYP by David Mazzucchelli, it happens on every. Single. Page. NPR.ORG
This absorbing, idiosyncratic tale of love, ambition and opportunity marks the return of one of the modern masters of graphic storytelling. Miami Herald
You ll be in awe of how perfect it is and certainly envious of it if you are a writer. What a beautiful, staggeringly brilliant piece of literature. Contra Costa Times
"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. . 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?" Douglas Wolk, NYTBR
Heady with philosophical and mythological references, Asterios Polyp vaults Mazzucchelli into the top rank of graphic artists. It s a sweeping, provocative book that blends the richness of the traditional novel with the best modern art. Mazzucchelli s style - effortless and so versatile that you can t imagine Asterios in any other medium is sweeping in every sense. Boston Globe
It's a remarkable, bravura achievement - funny, harrowing and thought-provoking. San Francisco Chronicle
"A dazzling expertly constructed entertainment...that is a satirical comedy of remarriage, a treatise on aesthetics and design and ontology, late life Künstlerroman, a Novel of Ideas with two capital letters..." The New York Times Book Review
Asterios Polyp reads like an intricately designed and heartfelt work of metafiction, juggling design theory, philosophy and sly nods to other cartoonists to create a dryly funny masterpiece. Time Out New York
It's as if John Updike had discovered a bag of art supplies and LSD. Elegant, deceptively simple line work and nearly subliminal color symbolism make everything go down like candy. 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." Entertainment Weekly
Haunting and beautiful. Los Angeles Times
"The simplicity of that facile summary, along with the deceptively cartoony drawing style Mazzucchelli has adopted for the work, makes it easy to miss its genuine accomplishment. The sparseness of his illustration gives necessary clarity to his complex storytelling, which employs intricate and imaginative panel arrangements and a constantly shifting chronology.meticulously constructed.It's a testimony to Mazzucchelli's skills that by the end of Polyp's odyssey, the arrogant academic has been rendered a tragic and sympathetic figure deserving of the tale's (possibly) happy ending." Booklist
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. Pop Culture Nerd
Mazzucchelli's masterwork is by no means an easy read but it is a transcendent one. Austin Chronicle
The comics world is abuzz over Mazzucchelli s first solo book, Asterios Polyp. Rightly so: It s terrific. New York Magazine
A sprawling work about the life and loves of a middle-aged, philandering architect who loses everything in a fire. The coming release has been compared to the idiosyncratic work of Thomas Pynchon. The Wall Street Journal
An absolutely incredible piece of visual communication. Portland Mercury
Easily one of the best books of 2009 already." Publishers Weekly
A visual and even philosophical stunner." Kirkus
One of the greatest comics of all time. Comic Book Resources
We can all stop reading comics now, because David Mazzucchelli s crafted the ultimate comic book statement. Just take everything on your reading pile right now and chuck it out. Asterios Polyp is the new standard bearer. Mazzucchelli has somehow managed to jam just about everything great about comics into 340 pages of humanity, soul-searching, graphic design, philosophy and humor. Newsarama
Asterios Polyp is the work of a veteran artist firing on all cylinders, who, despite having worked his way through the sequential art ringer for a few decades now, has managed to craft something remarkably fresh. Daily Cross Hatch
One of the smartest and most rewarding graphic novels of the year to date. Pop Matters
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. Library Journal
Mazzucchelli is a gifted artist/writer, and as a reader moves through the lush and varied pages of Asterios Polyp, stylistic surprises abound amid what feels like a master lesson in the form and function of design. He delivers a truly transformative tale of love and trust. World Literature Today
This is an epic, emotionally rich, symbol-laden work that promises to redefine the graphic novel...David Mazzucchelli has made a beautiful, elaborate construction that coyly juggles style and content in a way few cartoonists are capable of. Globe and Mail
This brazenly original and complex work is easily one of the year's best novels, graphic or otherwise Brilliant. Absolutely brilliant. San Jose Mercury News
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 . Asterios Polyp is a fast, fun read, but it's also a work that has been carefully wrought to take optimum advantage of comics' hybrid nature it's a tale that could only be told on the knife-edge where text and art come seamlessly together. NPR s The Five Best Books to Share with Your Friends
As ever, Mazzucchelli keeps both the visual and storytelling fireworks coming This is a work that demands to be read, re-read, analyzed, and discussed. Comics Bulletin
Formally daring yet stylistically self-assured, Asterios Polyp is a bona fide masterpiece and the early frontrunner for best graphic novel of the year It s the presentation the use of narrative symbolism, color and visual metaphor that truly sets the book apart. Much like he did with Year One over 20 years ago, Mazzucchelli has once again raised the bar for his entire artform. Chicago Sun Times
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. Go read it, and read it twice. Providence City Paper
Mazzucchelli experiments with numerous art styles and pushes the envelope with challenging digressions into philosophy, religion and mortality throughout Polyp's tale. The engrossing effort culminates with a bombshell that will leave readers reeling. Toronto Star
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 . Asterios Polyp is a primer for both the fervent possibilities and the rich rewards of the graphic novel. Portland Oregonian
Now, after a decade-and-a-half, he has re-re-emerged with Asterios Polyp, an epic, emotionally rich, symbol-laden work that promises to redefine the graphic novel. Published by Pantheon Books (home to master-class cartoonists such as Art Spiegelman, Chris Ware and Dan Clowes), Asterios Polyp is Mazzucchelli's first graphic novel. It is also happens to be his masterpiece, the culmination of 25 years of promise .Mazzucchelli has made a beautiful, elaborate construction that coyly juggles style and content in a way few cartoonists are capable of. Globe and Mail (Canada)
The beauty of Asterios Polyp is that its core tenet, the need to pay attention to life as it happens, is so well reflected in the book itself in its lush paper tone and rough-hewn, elegant design and in the way all the formal devices serve the story. As such, it rewards attention and even devotion. Bookforum
The more you study Polyp, the more there is to discover. This is a book that stands with works by Updike, Roth, and other giants of American literature. It is undoubtedly one of the best novels of the year. The Stranger
Asterios Polyp is a perfect marriage of words and pictures. Every drawing, color choice and panel layout is pregnant with meaning. Columbus Dispatch
Mazzuchelli is using color to convey ideas in a way not attempted by most graphic novelists. The book is all about style, design and visual language, and Mazzuchelli is moving the discussion of all of these forward with Asterios Polyp. Matt Price's best graphic novels of 2009
Asterios Polyp will cause comic-book buffs to swoon, sure, but the narrative after a fire, an arrogant architect slowly begins to rebuild his own life makes it much more than a pretty picture book. Modern Tonic
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. That sticks; those last pages are as tender and heartbreaking a portrait of lost time as I can recall, and no less powerful for being nearly wordless Chicago Tribune
Critics have decried the modern graphic novel's focus on form at the expense of content. With "Asterios Polyp," Mazzucchelli has put paid to that charge: It's funny, it's warm and it's beautiful. Go read it. Newsday.com
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. Mazzucchelli is a genius of the form. Forbidden Planet
Each panel is a moment in the story that when connected to other panels becomes part of a scene or sequence that is rich in storytelling and fertile with ideas, inquiry, and themes. ComicBookBin, A+ review
Visually, Asterios Polyp is the lushest comic of the year--maybe of the last the 10 years, a decade not exactly thin on astounding cartooning. Mazzucchelli's work has all but abandoned the realistic musculature and architecture that made him stand out from his superhero peers. Asterios Polyp feels like three or four cartoonists working in concert, often on the same page, all of them firmly working on the "stylized" end of comics' spectrum. Baltimore City Paper
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. In books like Jimmy Corrigan -- and the just released ASTERIOS POLYP by David Mazzucchelli, it happens on every. Single. Page. NPR.ORG
This absorbing, idiosyncratic tale of love, ambition and opportunity marks the return of one of the modern masters of graphic storytelling. Miami Herald
You ll be in awe of how perfect it is and certainly envious of it if you are a writer. What a beautiful, staggeringly brilliant piece of literature. Contra Costa Times
"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. . 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?" Douglas Wolk, NYTBR
Heady with philosophical and mythological references, Asterios Polyp vaults Mazzucchelli into the top rank of graphic artists. It s a sweeping, provocative book that blends the richness of the traditional novel with the best modern art. Mazzucchelli s style - effortless and so versatile that you can t imagine Asterios in any other medium is sweeping in every sense. Boston Globe
It's a remarkable, bravura achievement - funny, harrowing and thought-provoking. San Francisco Chronicle
"A dazzling expertly constructed entertainment...that is a satirical comedy of remarriage, a treatise on aesthetics and design and ontology, late life Künstlerroman, a Novel of Ideas with two capital letters..." The New York Times Book Review
Asterios Polyp reads like an intricately designed and heartfelt work of metafiction, juggling design theory, philosophy and sly nods to other cartoonists to create a dryly funny masterpiece. Time Out New York
It's as if John Updike had discovered a bag of art supplies and LSD. Elegant, deceptively simple line work and nearly subliminal color symbolism make everything go down like candy. 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." Entertainment Weekly
Haunting and beautiful. Los Angeles Times
"The simplicity of that facile summary, along with the deceptively cartoony drawing style Mazzucchelli has adopted for the work, makes it easy to miss its genuine accomplishment. The sparseness of his illustration gives necessary clarity to his complex storytelling, which employs intricate and imaginative panel arrangements and a constantly shifting chronology.meticulously constructed.It's a testimony to Mazzucchelli's skills that by the end of Polyp's odyssey, the arrogant academic has been rendered a tragic and sympathetic figure deserving of the tale's (possibly) happy ending." Booklist
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. Pop Culture Nerd
Mazzucchelli's masterwork is by no means an easy read but it is a transcendent one. Austin Chronicle
The comics world is abuzz over Mazzucchelli s first solo book, Asterios Polyp. Rightly so: It s terrific. New York Magazine
A sprawling work about the life and loves of a middle-aged, philandering architect who loses everything in a fire. The coming release has been compared to the idiosyncratic work of Thomas Pynchon. The Wall Street Journal
An absolutely incredible piece of visual communication. Portland Mercury
Easily one of the best books of 2009 already." Publishers Weekly
A visual and even philosophical stunner." Kirkus
One of the greatest comics of all time. Comic Book Resources
We can all stop reading comics now, because David Mazzucchelli s crafted the ultimate comic book statement. Just take everything on your reading pile right now and chuck it out. Asterios Polyp is the new standard bearer. Mazzucchelli has somehow managed to jam just about everything great about comics into 340 pages of humanity, soul-searching, graphic design, philosophy and humor. Newsarama
Asterios Polyp is the work of a veteran artist firing on all cylinders, who, despite having worked his way through the sequential art ringer for a few decades now, has managed to craft something remarkably fresh. Daily Cross Hatch
One of the smartest and most rewarding graphic novels of the year to date. Pop Matters
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. Library Journal
Mazzucchelli is a gifted artist/writer, and as a reader moves through the lush and varied pages of Asterios Polyp, stylistic surprises abound amid what feels like a master lesson in the form and function of design. He delivers a truly transformative tale of love and trust. World Literature Today