Asterios Polyp, David Mazzulcchelli

My first encounter with this book was in class, and I have t say I stopped paying attention for a good twenty minutes as soon as I opened it.

What immediately drew me in was the main character's design. Asterios's profile is so thoughtfully portrayed, so clean cut and descriptive. It is a perfect impression of the realistic type of face he would have. That in itself made me interested with out reading a word.

Next on the list is the narrator, Asterios's stillborn twin brother, Ignacio. Limited omniscient narration is certainly my favorite, if narration is needed at all. And to use one so close t o the main character

I can't talk abut this book without mentioning the play with type. It was very interesting, and really, the only time I've seen different texts for different characters work well. More often than not it wrks better in thery. Establishing each character's vice by their fnt seems like a fantastic idea. in thery. My best example of this failing (in a published wrk) wuld be Batman: Arkham Asylum. Struggling with reading the Joker's dialogue only hindered the experience. I found myself annyed, skipping dialogue, and only skimming parts. Mazzulcchelli used separate fonts right. Subtle, but effective. It was something that did not pull me out of the experience, but helped me have another way of recognizing each character. It also helped fuel one incredible scene in which Asterios and Ignacio seem to flip between each other's lives.

Less subtle, but incredibly effective is the portrayal of each character's individual view of the world, portrayed through style. Asterios, when in his own world, is geometric, cylinders, cubes and the like. His wife, Hana, is tiny, thin lines that make a whole. The idea itself is nothing new, but the use of it was so interesting and useful I don't really care. The characters are often portrayed in a simple style, but as on as they begin to have trouble understanding each other, or their differences separate them, they revert into their own styles. It never got old or gimicky.

And if the execution wasn't enough, the story is interesting! Again, it's nothing new, but each character has so much life and believably that it's not a problem.

I have to read it again.


REVISTED 05/2010

I passed through the library a while back and couldn't be stopped from picking up ASterios Polyp again. This time, without stopping to read the whole way through, I skimmed it and looked at pages that caught my attention.

The limited color scheme really caught me this time. I believe it used only a robin's egg blue, lavender, magenta, and yellow. I'm not sure why these colors were chosen, but there were of course patterns to be found in how they were used. Asterios was usually represented in blue, while Hana was in magenta. Interestingly, the yellow always seemed to signify present day, or a striking difference between Asterios's very real past, and his dream like present. It's worth noting that the first time we see a distressed, worn out Asterios, he appears in yellow, watching his building burn. And yet in the past and dealing with Hana, he appears in blue and purple lines. Whenever Asterios meets his brother Ignacio, the two are in yellow, and most of the environment of his new found friend's home is also covered in yellow.

OF Course I'd noticed these things before, but never with any real clarity beyond how appealing it was to me. I was interested to find that the use of color was exactly as we're told to do, to create contrast, and subconsciously direct the reader. (for example, as soon as I see Asterios in yellow and yellow alone, I know we are in a dream sequence) Mazzulcchelli is killed in using color, and I think that it is a huge force in the success of this book.