![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() Mazzucchelli’s aesthetic choices, from his palettes of warms and cools to panel placement and gutter width, invite rhetorical scrutiny. ![]() The panel above illustrates the dissolution of Hana and Asterios’s relationship, and exemplifies how well Mazzucchelli unifies form and content: the dementedly-logical Asterios, depicted as a transparent combination of geometrical parts, exists in a world apart from Hanna’s penciled, pinkish, softly cross-hatched body. Hana, the young and sensitive sculptor, falls for Asterios despite his nearly unbearable ego and little patience for Hanna’s quiet artistic genius. Mazzucchelli’s main characters – protagonist Asterios Polyp (whose unusual last name was bequeathed to his father by a frustrated clerk at Ellis Island), his delicate wife Hana Sonnenscheie, and the ghost voice of his deceased twin brother Ignazio – interact in a kind of non-linear dream world which is both abstract and concrete.Īsterios, an architect and professor whose draftsmanship and design ideas are renowned, never builds any of his blueprints he drifts along in a kind of cerebral prison, trapped in a golden cage of self-infatuation. David Mazzucchelli’s first solo foray into graphic novels exquisitely blends a strong aesthetic voice and a complex, engaging story on the posturings of academia, the difficulties of intimacy, and the philosophy of design.Īnd to put it simply, one of the most visually provoking novels I’ve ever read. ![]()
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