Asterios Polyp [Hardcover]

It's hard to believe that Asterios Polyp is in fact David Mazzucchelli's first graphic novel, such is the artist's reputation as artist on the groundbreaking Batman: Year One with Frank Miller, his dazzling graphic adaptation of Paul Auster's City of Glass and his acclaimed work on his solo work on his Rubber Blankets series, but Asterios Polyp is indeed his first sustained narrative storyline as both writer and artist.

A brilliant and highly respected architect, albeit only being demonstrated on paper and in a lecturing capacity, Asterios Polyp comes to the realisation that his life and failed marriage has ultimately been unsatisfying. When his apartment building is destroyed in an accidental fire, Asterios is presented with an opportunity to start his life anew, even at this late stage, and disappears, taking up work as a car mechanic at the destination where fate takes him.

Not quite as linear as it sounds, Mazzucchelli depicts episodes from Asterios's past life in alternate chapters from his new life. The artwork is quite spectacular - clean and vibrantly dynamic, reminiscent of Will Eisner layouts but with the distinctly modern edge of Chris Ware's sense of design (one that extends to the beautiful format of the hardcover book itself). Mazzucchelli's forte however is in his expression of emotional states, using a minimal but distinct colour schemes and geometric shapes and patterns to mark contrasts and complements in the moods and sensibilities of each of the characters in a way that only a true artist of the graphic medium can achieve. The storyline however is somewhat episodic, and Asterios Polyp remains something of an enigma even by the end of the book, but this is an ambitious and impressive "debut".

David Mazzucchelli is a leading American illustrative artist, whose work elsewhere has been widely praised. This is the first major piece of work for which he takes sole responsibility. It tells the story of Asterios Polyp, a self-regarding and deeply anxious Greek-American academic architect, weaving elements of romance, satire and domestic adventure around a core of existential unease and philosophical speculation.

As a graphic artist, Mazzucchelli is well up to the task he has set himself. However, his achievement here is distinctly mixed. For me, the obvious weakness in the book resided almost entirely in the story elements and organization rather than the art. The author has organised his narrative around themes taken from ancient Greek philosophy and myth, which are rather selfconsciously introduced. In addition, Mazzucchelli has consciously invited comparison with celebrated writers of postmodernist fictions. Rather like Paul Auster, whose work Mazzucchelli has illustrated, he doesn't always recognise that this is a game that has to be played to the hilt or not at all. Toying with such recognizable elements is one thing: expecting a literate audience not to recognise second-hand or watered-down tropes is something else. Greater originality - a quality whose very possibility postmodernism tends to portray as a romantic fiction - is needed if cliches are to be revivified. Mazzucchelli is no Calvino, Bernhard or Borges, and the banality of the central story demands a textualist of that calibre - and, one suspects, the density of a real text.

Mazzucchelli has not taken the easy road here, and he should be praised for that. He has deliberately restricted himself to a limited colour palette based on the three 'printer's colours' - magenta, cyan and yellow - and a limited range of combinations, which means for example that in the absence of a true black he uses a deep, muted purple. There is no 'eye candy' here. I suspect some people will find the results unattractive, and the reader who dislikes raw cyan and magenta will certainly find no escape from them. It is almost as though the artist was so taken with the design conceit that he chose to disregard how harshly these artificial colours strike the eye when used separately rather than as tints and overlays.

Throughout the book the design elements are thoroughly integrated: the characters' speech bubbles, for example, are rendered consistently in shapes and font styles unique to each character, and there are a host of echoes and repetitions in the appearance and disappearance of significant objects. At times, this degree of obsessive organisation threatens to become schematic: the messiness and uncertainty of life, which are championed implicitly by other characters in the story and emerge as the unifying theme, threaten to disappear entirely. This is one of those stories in which no detail is ever accidental.

Asterios Polyp is very consciously clever - though not as clever as it thinks it is - and a little cold. Apparently the author laboured over it for nine years, and while one can hardly doubt the sincerity of the effort, the finished item does rather smell of the lamp.

As with anything by this artist, it is worth reading, and students of book design will probably be more impressed than I was. One need not pay attention to those who insist that it is 'the best graphic novel ever' - there are dozens of better candidates - to enjoy it for what it is: one of the better graphic novels to appear in its year of publication. However, I would suggest that the reader completely new to Mazzucchelli starts elsewhere: perhaps with City of Glass: The Graphic Novel or with Frank Miller's highly regarded Batman: Year One.

Exactly what my review's title says: "Wonderful graphic novel". It's deep, philosophically and esthetically very interesting. I really would like to read more stuff of this quality! I'm going to buy a couple more to gift some friends. No doubt: buy it!