DAVID MAZZUCCHELLI has been making comics his whole life. Known chiefly for his collaborations— with Frank Miller on seminal Batman and Daredevil stories, and with Paul Karasik on an adaptation of Paul Auster's novel, City of Glass—he began publishing his own stories in 1991 in his anthology magazine, Rubber Blanket. Since then his short comics have been published in books and magazines around the world. Asterios Polyp is his first graphic novel, and has won the Los Angeles Times Book Prize and been listed as a New York Times notable book.
“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
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“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
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