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. I know this is sounding harsh, but it really isn't if you read this without expecting to care much for the characters, but only to be stimulated by the visual representation of ideas. And as I haven't got any kind of background in gender studies or feminist theory, I don't feel comfortable talking about what feminists think of this book or that one. In effetti il romanzo è una satira perfettamente elaborata di un certo tipo di pensiero: dialettico, lineare, polarizzante, sistematizzante, architettonico, acutamente estraniato ed incorporeo. I thought it was boring - an educated, middle-aged white man feels like his life has fallen apart so he jumps ship and tries to start over again.

Innanzitutto ‘Asterios Polyp’ è la tollerante storia di un essere umano non priva di una salutare diffidenza verso gli assolutismi formali. 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 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.Mazzucchelli’s work has all but abandoned the realistic musculature and architecture that made him stand out from his superhero peers. This brazenly original and complex work is easily one of the year's best novels, graphic or otherwise.

Ma anche la storia è arricchita di innesti: Calvino, Nietzsche, Joyce, Shakespeare, Hegel, Hesse, Escher, Parmenide, Bakunin, il cubismo, i pitagorici, ontologia, morale, estetica, cinema, psicanalisi, astrologia, religione, e sopra tutto, il mito di Orfeo. Reality, perception, and memory play a huge role in Mazzucchelli's work here even as they do in everything I've yet read by Ishiguro.The visual style used to contrast the small-town escape from his previously elite life are what you'd expect: curves, visual ellipses, and informal open-framed illustration versus squares, cubes, angles, and tight frame composition. Mazzucchelli has populated this book with a varied cast: narcissistic (and often insufferable) egomaniacs; a neglected beauty taken mostly for granted; a plain, hard-workin’ mechanic who drops many a Norm Crosbyesque malopropism and many more. Aggiungiamo che gioca anche col lettering, assegnandone uno per personaggio e mutandolo a secondo degli stati d’animo. Wat is feit en wat is fictie, het rationele systeem tegenover de willekeurigheid der dingen en vele andere tegenstellingen in de kunst, muziek, het leven passeren de revue.