You have to hand it to David Mazzucchelli. Few other cartoonists in the history of comics have successfully reinvented themselves as often as the 48-year-old New Yorker, who began his career working for DC and Marvel in 1983.
Inside of five years, Mazzucchelli was a bona fide mainstream star, thanks to a bold naturalistic style that has been credited with injecting new blood into the somewhat moribund superhero genre. His stark moody art for Frank Miller's Batman: Year One, for example, contributed to his reputation as an innovator and remains a touchstone for many cartoonists today. (It also served as one of the chief – if unheralded – inspirations for the 2005 blockbuster movie Batman Begins.)
Asterios Polyp, by David Mazzucchelli, Pantheon, 344 pages, $34
In the late 1980s, Mazzucchelli turned his back on superheroes and took a one-year sabbatical from comics to try his hand at print-making and reconsider his approach to comics as a whole. In 1991, he re-emerged a fully fledged practitioner of alternative comics, which he presented to the world in his self-published anthology Rubber Blanket. Following three exquisite issues, and an acclaimed 1994 co-adaptation of Paul Auster's novel City of Glass, the hermetic Mazzucchelli vanished once again – this time to devote himself to teaching comics.
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.
Asterios Polyp is a “paper” architect who has won countless awards for his countless groundbreaking designs, none of which has ever been built. He's a textbook womanizer and major-league egoist with a habit of stubbing his toes on his own firm principles, and we are introduced to him at his nadir – lying in his filthy Manhattan apartment on his 50th birthday, watching surveillance tapes of the moment he fell in love with his ex-wife, Hana.
His wallowing is interrupted by a bolt of lightning which sets his apartment (and existence) aflame, and sends him spiralling onto a journey of self-reflection and realization.
Mazzucchelli has made a beautiful, elaborate construction that coyly juggles style and content in a way few cartoonists are capable of
The balance of the book's 344 pages tracks Polyp as he attempts to forge a new life in a town called Apogee, while a narrator (his still-born twin brother) provides us with flashbacks of the architect's first 50 years on Earth. This narrative is inter-woven with ruminations on everything from Greek mythology, ontology and the history (and purpose) of design, to meditations on style versus substance, and the possibility – or impossibility – of real love.
Yes, it's a bit complicated. So fair warning to those who are accustomed to a less demanding species of graphic novels (such as, say, Persepolis); you may find Asterios Polyp a bit bewildering at first blush. But make no mistake, Mazzucchelli has made a beautiful, elaborate construction that coyly juggles style and content in a way few cartoonists are capable of.
There is so much going on in Polyp that it not only holds up to repeated readings, it kind of demands them. (I read it three times, and each time I made dozens of thrilling little discoveries.) The first thing most readers will twig to is the story's parallels with the Odyssey, Homer's epic prose-poem: from Polyp's headquarters in Ithaca (New York) and his residence at the water-logged home of an Earth-mother named Ursula Major (a dead ringer for Homer's witchy Circe), to Willy Illium, Polyp's chief antagonist – Ilium being a Latin derivative for “Troy.”
