Week 11: Comics as Contemporary Literature - Asterios Polyp

This week I read Asterios Polp by David Mazzucchelli. I absolutely loved the style of this story and spent so much time admiring the artwork on each and every page. Asterios Polp is a middle-aged architect and teacher, whose life is totally flipped upside down when his New York City apartment goes up in flames. With a determined attitude, he leaves the city and relocates to a small town in the American heartland, and we then begin to learn more about what happened both after and before his apartment was destroyed. However, something I found really interesting is that the story isn’t told by Asterios himself or from a third person perspective, it is told by his deceased twin brother, Ignazio. Also, as the story unfolds, it moves back and forth between the present and the past, and we begin to learn and understand more about Asterios’ character and how he has gotten to the point of where he is now. We are also introduced to Hana, who is a first-generation Japanese American artist, who is now no longer in Asterios’ life, and we learn why she was driven away as well as how they get back together. Each character is drawn with a very different style, which I think is a really unique touch to this graphic novel. It seemed to display that each character had their own story, and the more they got closer and connected, the more their styles merged.