ASTERIOS POLYP
Sep. 16th, 2010 03:52 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
fulseldenHalf way through David Mazzucchelli's fantastic 'first graphic novel' (that's what it says on the dust flap...) Asterios Polyp at the moment.
... YEAH DON'T WORRY THIS WON'T BE A GENERAL THING, OK. I will try and use words instead of cartoon rats if I talk about books in the future.
... And I should scan some Mazzucchelli instead of, uh, me (sorry!). But in the meantime there is a pretty awesome post on him over here (though scroll down asap to get away from the early kung fu comics). And Asterios Polyp is great stuff, no doubt. Just so ... completely packed full of rather baldly stated reflections and refractions (he has an invisible dead twin! he keeps getting called Sterio! video cameras everywhere!). It's all sorta Ulysses as starring Polyphemus ('an exasperated Ellis Island official had cut the family name in half, leaving only the first five letters').
Not that Mazzucchelli has any sympathy for my delicate sensibilities - he spends a whole page namechecking The Fall of the House of Usher, Jeckyll and Hyde, Calvino's The Cloven Viscount, etc, then has his caption snark that 'some might argue that such simplification is best suited to children's stories, or comic books'. Simplification, indeed. At least it helps me get over Charles Burn's Black Hole, which I think was the last comic I read that had any pretentions to being a classic, but which I thought was rather disappointing - amazing art, great evocation of the uncanniness of adolescence and (afaik...) growing up in the seventies - but in the end really not much more than that. A mood piece, ultimately.
And Asterios Polyp is also, as I say, a reminder that my knowledge of comic book history basically jumps from Little Nemo in Slumberland to, I don't even know? Tintin? Kirby? Giles? Frank Miller (pre-crazy version, obvs)?? Man. Anyway, this useful post bemoans the general ignorance of cartoon history and also compiles a load of reviews (though I haven't read any yet, for fear of spoilers).
And it's all wrapped up in this urbane, geometric, glass and chrome, New York(er) flavoured modernism, which isn't a style I've ever really fallen for, though it's being used to fantastic effect here to flesh out Asterios, a 'paper architect' who starts off with far too much faith in the linear and functional. I haven't read much other Mazzucchelli, but every page here is, quite apart from anything else, deeply gorgeous. And ... it really does make me want to watch Mad Men (not that this is particularly shameful - I just think Mazzucchelli might prefer me to be full of thoughts about the nature of art and identity atm), which I've avoided partly because as far as I know part of the appeal is meant to be its loving recreation of this kind of style, if in a slightly later iteration - the whole deal is that it's right on the cusp of the sixties, right? And that never really grabbed me. Now, though - maybe I'll succumb. If I ever have the time, oh sigh.
... Yeah. Drawing a silly comic was meant to be a substitute for writing. Stopping myself now!
... YEAH DON'T WORRY THIS WON'T BE A GENERAL THING, OK. I will try and use words instead of cartoon rats if I talk about books in the future.
... And I should scan some Mazzucchelli instead of, uh, me (sorry!). But in the meantime there is a pretty awesome post on him over here (though scroll down asap to get away from the early kung fu comics). And Asterios Polyp is great stuff, no doubt. Just so ... completely packed full of rather baldly stated reflections and refractions (he has an invisible dead twin! he keeps getting called Sterio! video cameras everywhere!). It's all sorta Ulysses as starring Polyphemus ('an exasperated Ellis Island official had cut the family name in half, leaving only the first five letters').
Not that Mazzucchelli has any sympathy for my delicate sensibilities - he spends a whole page namechecking The Fall of the House of Usher, Jeckyll and Hyde, Calvino's The Cloven Viscount, etc, then has his caption snark that 'some might argue that such simplification is best suited to children's stories, or comic books'. Simplification, indeed. At least it helps me get over Charles Burn's Black Hole, which I think was the last comic I read that had any pretentions to being a classic, but which I thought was rather disappointing - amazing art, great evocation of the uncanniness of adolescence and (afaik...) growing up in the seventies - but in the end really not much more than that. A mood piece, ultimately.
And Asterios Polyp is also, as I say, a reminder that my knowledge of comic book history basically jumps from Little Nemo in Slumberland to, I don't even know? Tintin? Kirby? Giles? Frank Miller (pre-crazy version, obvs)?? Man. Anyway, this useful post bemoans the general ignorance of cartoon history and also compiles a load of reviews (though I haven't read any yet, for fear of spoilers).
And it's all wrapped up in this urbane, geometric, glass and chrome, New York(er) flavoured modernism, which isn't a style I've ever really fallen for, though it's being used to fantastic effect here to flesh out Asterios, a 'paper architect' who starts off with far too much faith in the linear and functional. I haven't read much other Mazzucchelli, but every page here is, quite apart from anything else, deeply gorgeous. And ... it really does make me want to watch Mad Men (not that this is particularly shameful - I just think Mazzucchelli might prefer me to be full of thoughts about the nature of art and identity atm), which I've avoided partly because as far as I know part of the appeal is meant to be its loving recreation of this kind of style, if in a slightly later iteration - the whole deal is that it's right on the cusp of the sixties, right? And that never really grabbed me. Now, though - maybe I'll succumb. If I ever have the time, oh sigh.
... Yeah. Drawing a silly comic was meant to be a substitute for writing. Stopping myself now!
