For the next few weeks pravdakid and I are going to try something a little different, at least for this blog. We're both going to be blogging about the same thing, the new graphic novel Asterios Polyp. Tomorrow, I'll blog my first reactions, but today I want to introduce the novel and give a little background to it.
Asterios Polyp is written and drawn by David Mazzucchelli (I'll be misspelling that name frequently in the course of these comments, I'm sure). It has generated a fair amount of buzz both in the mainstream media (getting several different reviews in the New York Times), and in the world of comics criticism. Mazzucchelli was a name unknown to me, but apparently he's pretty famous in the comics world, since he worked with Frank Miller on some groundbreaking projects, including Daredevil and Batman: Year One. A graduate of the Rhode Island School of Design, his work is somewhat reminiscent of another design school grad, Chris Ware, in that he clearly loves to experiment visually with comics conventions. He's been working on this thing for about ten years or so.
Briefly, the book is about an East Coast architect and academic named Asterios Polyp, whose life, at the beginning of the narrative, has taken a woeful turn. This is due in no small degree, we quickly understand, to the fact that Polyp is an asshole. When we first see the main character, he has lost his job and his wife, his apartment is a mess, and he is watching old home-made porn tapes. Then his apartment building is struck by lightning and burns up: this is the event that gets him moving. He leaves New York and takes a bus upstate. That's as far as I've gotten. More tomorrow.
(Dave, feel free to correct any mistakes I've just made here.)
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