The character Tom points out in the diner at 31 minutes is the same character from one of the stories in Rubber Blanket #1 who was looking in the sky for meteors (like he is in the comic). Even the town Asterios is in and some of the locations seem to be mirrored in that story. I met David Mazzuchelli last February before everything shut down and got Asterios Polyp signed, he confirmed for me it was the same character which was a really cool moment for me.
The tape he’s watching in the beginning isn’t sex with Hannah. He was watching the dinner he had with Hannah the first time she visited his apartment in 1985.
I remember thinking that Mazzuchellis biggest influence (especially with Daredevil and Batman Year One) was Alex Toth. But Frank Miller mentioned in an interview that Mazzuchelli considers his biggest influence to be Chester Gould. Which I can absolutely see in this. Not gonna lie, I adore his later stuff when he starts absolutely going into weird crazy experimenting with colour, inking, lightint, and all that.
Just listening to you guys gush about the comics you review reminds me of why I like the medium so much as well. Every time I feel reluctant to work on personal comic projects I always give your videos a watch and it cures the demotivation soon enough. Heard good things about Asterios Polyp, but now seems like a good time to actually read it.
You know what's sad? Some people completely disregard the MEDIUM just because its been linked to kiddie stuff for so long. And yet there are literally hundreds of comic books that are so fucking good, even way better than some classic novels or movies but hey, its for kids! That cant be!?!
LOVE that you are covering Asterios Polyp. I have been anticipating this since first finding you channel. The book rewards rereading. To clarify somethings mentioned, the "sex tapes" Asterios is watching at the start is actually Hana reacting to the meal Asterios made for her at 38:07. Both scenes have the same dialogue. As to the name question at 50:40. Polyp is implied to be short for Polyphemus, the same name as the Cyclops from the Odyssey. Asterios meaning star (or of the star). He ends up with one eye and being destroyed by the stars. Interesting considering his ideas on the Greek gods and fate. Also at 59:53, is Asterios' ear made of the initials RL (Richmond Lewis) ala Matt Groening's Homer? Every time I read this book I get something new out of it! Thanks for the great video and keep 'em coming!
im glad you made this comment cause I was also like hollup, those weren't sex tapes... that's another reason why I love this comic, everything is so purposeful
I've been seeing this around for so many years and have been wanting to read it. So looking forward to my first read through. Beautiful selection as always guys.
How did I miss this episode?? I finished this book recently! Thanks for posting. Fun fact, the guy in the diner at 31:14 is the same guy from the first ever Rubber Blanket story, Near Miss.
Very spot on regarding the “high society” McSweeny’s NYC party crowd. I’ve been to a couple of those…If you guys keep on Mazzucelli you should do “City of Glass” his adaptation of Paul Auster novel.
It is a masterpiece, and its an injustice that this work is so unappreciated. Been telling people how good it is but all I get is a shrug and a polite sure. Criminal I tell you Criminal. Please someone interview David Mazzuchelli don't let him become our generation's Steve Ditko.
My absolute favorite graphic novel of all time. A masterpiece in what you can do in the medium of comics/ graphic storytelling. Glad to hear it being embraced, and the commentary from you guys. Amazing!
just a few minutes into it-- not sure if you say it, but that title is put together masterfully- evocative of simple printing processes, and made legible with basic shape overlays... love this book! Never seen it before; guess I should stop typing and pay attention- thanks :)
Another take on Orpheus is Dino Buzzati's Poem Strip, a swinging sixties version of the myth from 1969, eventually published in English in 2009, designed specifically for the digest paperback format. Buzzati was, in addition to being an artist, also a novelist, playwright and journalist. Some of the linework, fine art referencing and design parallels what Mazzucchelli is doing (human figures made up of letters, subjective realities etc), but it also feels like a work by someone who hasn't quite figured out what comics are and is drifting in and out of the form.
CORRECTION: Asterios isn't watching a sex tape in the intro, he's watching footage of Hana enjoying a meal that he cooked for her. (We see this dinner they share together later on.) Love your channel, love this masterpiece.
We get trained by superhero comics to look for the good guy and bad guy but Asterios Polyp doesn't fit that frame. The fact that he can be such a jerk and so flawed but still be somewhat sympathetic is what makes him such a great character. He's a real human being. Asterios Polyp is a truly adult comic
What an episode! The book is really something else. Read it some years ago but could grasp why people would praise it so highly, then it hit me: this book is everything-sequential-art-can-do. This is really every concept of making comics and comic language applied. Also from what i saw in art schools whenever theres a art history class, IF you teacher is the freaky type, they would bust this book out always.
...sometimes the Orpheus and Eurydice myth ends with Orpheus dying. So though he failed to free Eurydice from Hades but they end up together in Hades. Some sort of Ancient Greek divine justice, I guess. ...For what it's worth.
The narration says that the last name was chopped daown to five letters. So, you can imagine the POLYPHONY in the chapter about the music and the theatre guy, or POLYPHEMUS, the cyclops with one eye, just like Asterios at the end. The colors can say something about the state of their relationship, when he wears red and she wears blue.
The whole book looks fascinating. That logo is crazy smart design. The more I look at it and imagine creating it myself the more impressed I am. Does anyone know if he created that too? I'm assuming he did as I'm seeing things in the book that have the same kinda scheme to it. 53:44 - As a kid from Kansas I relate real good to this. We had Mushroom Rock, Rock City, Indian Rock. HA! :D
I teach visual communication/graphic design at a high school. I’ve wanted to use Asterios Polyp as a text for years, but I think some of the content is on the cusp of being too explicit. Maybe one day
On that page about remembering things differently every time you remember them, where his parents dialogues' fonts are unique as well. His mother's are cursives and his father's on the greek alphabet style. Also notice how Asterios' speech bubble is rectangular-shaped.
In part visually reminiscent of Matt Wagner's cartoony, minimalist style on Grendel # 16, 17, 18, 19 (1987-88), if recast with cosmopolitan-academic, hubristically stuffed-shirt socialites from "New Yorker Magazine". Asterios' noggin resembles an LED lightbulb, or a rounded screw head -- at once illuminating and retentively dense; in either case, screw-on cranium: a replaceable appendage [/Everyman viewpoint character], fishbowl of cognition. 🤔💭💡 Aren't all of the characters Classist archetypes for the dysfunctional pantheon of Greek gods as if fallen to Earth, or terrestrial mirror-counterparts -- the book's central crater as a birth canal? ("Aw, Ursula says me an' her a' been together since the crack of time.") Asterios would presumably be a stand-in for Icarus 'playing with fire' (his lighter), solar conveyance running short on juice -- an astrally amputated Mysterious polyp: human offspring as downcast demi-gods. The eye injury seems to thematically echo the "Eyes of the Cat" Moebius short story, a metaphor for the artiste searching for new ways of seeing the world -- in this instance violent upheaval forcing a fresh perspective by narrowing Bulb-head Polyp's cyclops focus. I'll speculate that Noguchi, the name of Hana's cat, may be a Japanese portmanteau of "uchi" [home] jumbled with "uchi no ga" [ours] -- in transposed combination roundaboutly communicating 'our home': refer to Hana's dialogue wherever speaking of the cat, an avatar for the status of the marital relationship. I don't think Asterios expired short of his quest but is figuratively reborn at attaining his personal paradise: he still has the eye patch yet earlier in the story conveyed to Hana his mother's belief that, "fortunately, ...illness doesn't transcend death, so in Heaven everyone is whole again." (Besides, the scene pacing wouldn't make sense for the snowstorm to indicate abrupt death.) The plummeting asteroid double-page spread implies a progression of seasons [the timeline of one's life, vitality peaking in teens, ups and downs of emotional fortune] with snow on the trees representing the settled winter of their years. Yes, too many false endings: where the sculpted architecture of one lifetime is imminently due to be astronomically obliterated [though perhaps not as literally as depicted], we are comforted in golden hues that elsewhere the next-generation nascent homebuilder blossoms from an elevated rung, distant shooting stars nonetheless already taking aim to mark that life's eventual end... Overall, Asterios' tale seems something philosophized by a deist, neurotic, borderline paranoid-schizophrenic Romanticist having convinced himself that supernatural forces are conspiring to smite us for sadistic amusement: "Clash of the Titans" (1981) meets "Annie Hall" (1977).
when he covered the left page of the "asteroid" (also asterios reminds of the word asteroid) i thought about the fact that he doesnt have his left eye anymore and you could imagine him not seeing the asteroid if him asterios himself would be looking at that full two page panel. like an optimistic way of mentality i dunno. just thought of that. i have just finished this graphic novel and im amazed
I just bought the hardcover on the strength of this vid. The Kayfabe Effect! Also, I wanted to point you guys to a class DM did a few years ago that is incredibly enlightening: th-cam.com/video/oz3q8XQV7lU/w-d-xo.html
Asterios sounds like Stereo, and I think Mazzucchelli was playing with the idea of two parts forming one, like when one uses headphones to listen to music and the two parts are different but come together to achieve the same thing. Hence Asterios talks about twins, they turn out to have equal lives even though they are separated.
I interviewed with Mike Chen in 1994...I remember him lamenting about former students going on to animate for beavis & butthead and complaining about Liefeld being popular.
Polyp comes from Polyphemus which is a Cyclops and an enemy of Odysseus. This same Polyphemus is in another greek myth where he kills Galatea's lover. Asterios ends up wearing an eyepatch after being attack by a drunk. Asterios comes from asteroid.
Asteroid Polyps? Ya, many people over the years have developed polyps the size of an asteroid. But with a little medical attention, it usually clears right up.
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The character Tom points out in the diner at 31 minutes is the same character from one of the stories in Rubber Blanket #1 who was looking in the sky for meteors (like he is in the comic). Even the town Asterios is in and some of the locations seem to be mirrored in that story. I met David Mazzuchelli last February before everything shut down and got Asterios Polyp signed, he confirmed for me it was the same character which was a really cool moment for me.
A cool little detail is Asterios' left handed, and Mazzucchelli never misses showing it (even in such details as tying his necktie).
The tape he’s watching in the beginning isn’t sex with Hannah. He was watching the dinner he had with Hannah the first time she visited his apartment in 1985.
I remember thinking that Mazzuchellis biggest influence (especially with Daredevil and Batman Year One) was Alex Toth. But Frank Miller mentioned in an interview that Mazzuchelli considers his biggest influence to be Chester Gould. Which I can absolutely see in this. Not gonna lie, I adore his later stuff when he starts absolutely going into weird crazy experimenting with colour, inking, lightint, and all that.
I wonder if Polyp correlates to Polyphemus at all, especially considering the eye injury suffered by Asterios.
Just listening to you guys gush about the comics you review reminds me of why I like the medium so much as well. Every time I feel reluctant to work on personal comic projects I always give your videos a watch and it cures the demotivation soon enough. Heard good things about Asterios Polyp, but now seems like a good time to actually read it.
You know what's sad? Some people completely disregard the MEDIUM just because its been linked to kiddie stuff for so long. And yet there are literally hundreds of comic books that are so fucking good, even way better than some classic novels or movies but hey, its for kids! That cant be!?!
LOVE that you are covering Asterios Polyp. I have been anticipating this since first finding you channel. The book rewards rereading. To clarify somethings mentioned, the "sex tapes" Asterios is watching at the start is actually Hana reacting to the meal Asterios made for her at 38:07. Both scenes have the same dialogue. As to the name question at 50:40. Polyp is implied to be short for Polyphemus, the same name as the Cyclops from the Odyssey. Asterios meaning star (or of the star). He ends up with one eye and being destroyed by the stars. Interesting considering his ideas on the Greek gods and fate. Also at 59:53, is Asterios' ear made of the initials RL (Richmond Lewis) ala Matt Groening's Homer? Every time I read this book I get something new out of it! Thanks for the great video and keep 'em coming!
im glad you made this comment cause I was also like hollup, those weren't sex tapes... that's another reason why I love this comic, everything is so purposeful
I've been seeing this around for so many years and have been wanting to read it. So looking forward to my first read through. Beautiful selection as always guys.
I remember this came out in highschool and I bought it based on batman year one alone. Had no idea what I was in for. Heck of a experience.
How did I miss this episode?? I finished this book recently! Thanks for posting. Fun fact, the guy in the diner at 31:14 is the same guy from the first ever Rubber Blanket story, Near Miss.
the in synchronous "rest in peace" is in his mum's typeface, as they remember her and quote her at the same time.
Very spot on regarding the “high society” McSweeny’s NYC party crowd. I’ve been to a couple of those…If you guys keep on Mazzucelli you should do “City of Glass” his adaptation of Paul Auster novel.
It is a masterpiece, and its an injustice that this work is so unappreciated. Been telling people how good it is but all I get is a shrug and a polite sure. Criminal I tell you Criminal.
Please someone interview David Mazzuchelli don't let him become our generation's Steve Ditko.
Great book! I read it not long after it was released and marveled at how Bergman/Kurosawa cold his character was.
My absolute favorite graphic novel of all time. A masterpiece in what you can do in the medium of comics/ graphic storytelling. Glad to hear it being embraced, and the commentary from you guys. Amazing!
I paused on each page and read. I want this. Somehow never heard of this, but I want it.
This is my favorite comic of all time! Wilson mentioned by Tom is my favorite Clowes book. I’m so excited about this video!!!!!❤️❤️❤️❤️🙏❤️😊
On the re-read, Asterios is driving a Saab, the universally-recognized car of architects.
just a few minutes into it-- not sure if you say it, but that title is put together masterfully- evocative of simple printing processes, and made legible with basic shape overlays... love this book! Never seen it before; guess I should stop typing and pay attention- thanks :)
Yes. This is absolute masterpiece.
Ain’t watched the vid yet but been waiting to see yous do this and here it is. Utter classic. Beautiful book
Another take on Orpheus is Dino Buzzati's Poem Strip, a swinging sixties version of the myth from 1969, eventually published in English in 2009, designed specifically for the digest paperback format. Buzzati was, in addition to being an artist, also a novelist, playwright and journalist. Some of the linework, fine art referencing and design parallels what Mazzucchelli is doing (human figures made up of letters, subjective realities etc), but it also feels like a work by someone who hasn't quite figured out what comics are and is drifting in and out of the form.
I love that he asks for a ticket as far as his money would let him go, and end up in Apogee (the farthest point of a planet in his orbit)
CORRECTION: Asterios isn't watching a sex tape in the intro, he's watching footage of Hana enjoying a meal that he cooked for her. (We see this dinner they share together later on.) Love your channel, love this masterpiece.
Just noticed I wasn't the first to point this out...Carry on, thanks for all that you do!
We get trained by superhero comics to look for the good guy and bad guy but Asterios Polyp doesn't fit that frame. The fact that he can be such a jerk and so flawed but still be somewhat sympathetic is what makes him such a great character. He's a real human being. Asterios Polyp is a truly adult comic
I've been waiting for their take on this - nice analysis and brilliant book!
What an episode! The book is really something else. Read it some years ago but could grasp why people would praise it so highly, then it hit me: this book is everything-sequential-art-can-do. This is really every concept of making comics and comic language applied. Also from what i saw in art schools whenever theres a art history class, IF you teacher is the freaky type, they would bust this book out always.
...sometimes the Orpheus and Eurydice myth ends with Orpheus dying. So though he failed to free Eurydice from Hades but they end up together in Hades. Some sort of Ancient Greek divine justice, I guess. ...For what it's worth.
The narration says that the last name was chopped daown to five letters. So, you can imagine the POLYPHONY in the chapter about the music and the theatre guy, or POLYPHEMUS, the cyclops with one eye, just like Asterios at the end.
The colors can say something about the state of their relationship, when he wears red and she wears blue.
I think some part of the Polyp surname comes from "Polyphemus" the cyclops. which tracks with the ancient greek stuff. And, well...you know
15:09 Where did the Image "anchor" term came from, an interview?
The whole book looks fascinating. That logo is crazy smart design. The more I look at it and imagine creating it myself the more impressed I am. Does anyone know if he created that too? I'm assuming he did as I'm seeing things in the book that have the same kinda scheme to it.
53:44 - As a kid from Kansas I relate real good to this. We had Mushroom Rock, Rock City, Indian Rock. HA! :D
I'd love to see you guys do a Mazzuchelli interview!. This was one of my favorite episodes of yours!
that black and white dream sequences mirrors the night he left new york with the dog and the lady vometing
One of the greatest graphic novels in my opinion
This is such an inventive looking comic. Just down to the cube as a thought bubble coming from Asterios is genius.
I teach visual communication/graphic design at a high school. I’ve wanted to use Asterios Polyp as a text for years, but I think some of the content is on the cusp of being too explicit. Maybe one day
Mazzucchelli is an academic himself. He taught at RISD (from which he was an alumnus), so he is familiar with the academic world.
Hard agree- the lettering is often overlooked and it’s as singular as the characters.
On that page about remembering things differently every time you remember them, where his parents dialogues' fonts are unique as well. His mother's are cursives and his father's on the greek alphabet style.
Also notice how Asterios' speech bubble is rectangular-shaped.
I can't believe that this is Mazzuchelli. I had not heard of this before but glad it's on my radar.
Wow, thank you so much for this
In part visually reminiscent of Matt Wagner's cartoony, minimalist style on Grendel # 16, 17, 18, 19 (1987-88), if recast with cosmopolitan-academic, hubristically stuffed-shirt socialites from "New Yorker Magazine".
Asterios' noggin resembles an LED lightbulb, or a rounded screw head -- at once illuminating and retentively dense; in either case, screw-on cranium: a replaceable appendage [/Everyman viewpoint character], fishbowl of cognition. 🤔💭💡
Aren't all of the characters Classist archetypes for the dysfunctional pantheon of Greek gods as if fallen to Earth, or terrestrial mirror-counterparts -- the book's central crater as a birth canal? ("Aw, Ursula says me an' her a' been together since the crack of time.") Asterios would presumably be a stand-in for Icarus 'playing with fire' (his lighter), solar conveyance running short on juice -- an astrally amputated Mysterious polyp: human offspring as downcast demi-gods.
The eye injury seems to thematically echo the "Eyes of the Cat" Moebius short story, a metaphor for the artiste searching for new ways of seeing the world -- in this instance violent upheaval forcing a fresh perspective by narrowing Bulb-head Polyp's cyclops focus.
I'll speculate that Noguchi, the name of Hana's cat, may be a Japanese portmanteau of "uchi" [home] jumbled with "uchi no ga" [ours] -- in transposed combination roundaboutly communicating 'our home': refer to Hana's dialogue wherever speaking of the cat, an avatar for the status of the marital relationship.
I don't think Asterios expired short of his quest but is figuratively reborn at attaining his personal paradise: he still has the eye patch yet earlier in the story conveyed to Hana his mother's belief that, "fortunately, ...illness doesn't transcend death, so in Heaven everyone is whole again." (Besides, the scene pacing wouldn't make sense for the snowstorm to indicate abrupt death.)
The plummeting asteroid double-page spread implies a progression of seasons [the timeline of one's life, vitality peaking in teens, ups and downs of emotional fortune] with snow on the trees representing the settled winter of their years.
Yes, too many false endings: where the sculpted architecture of one lifetime is imminently due to be astronomically obliterated [though perhaps not as literally as depicted], we are comforted in golden hues that elsewhere the next-generation nascent homebuilder blossoms from an elevated rung, distant shooting stars nonetheless already taking aim to mark that life's eventual end...
Overall, Asterios' tale seems something philosophized by a deist, neurotic, borderline paranoid-schizophrenic Romanticist having convinced himself that supernatural forces are conspiring to smite us for sadistic amusement: "Clash of the Titans" (1981) meets "Annie Hall" (1977).
when he covered the left page of the "asteroid" (also asterios reminds of the word asteroid)
i thought about the fact that he doesnt have his left eye anymore and you could imagine him not seeing the asteroid if him asterios himself would be looking at that full two page panel. like an optimistic way of mentality i dunno. just thought of that.
i have just finished this graphic novel and im amazed
I just bought the hardcover on the strength of this vid. The Kayfabe Effect! Also, I wanted to point you guys to a class DM did a few years ago that is incredibly enlightening: th-cam.com/video/oz3q8XQV7lU/w-d-xo.html
I mentioned this graphic novel to Brett Lewis (The Winter Men) as one graphic novel all discerning #GenX aficionados should read.
The first time I saw this book it made my think of Tezuka adult mangas. I don't know why. Anyone else see that too?
One of my all time favorites!!!
Asterios sounds like Stereo, and I think Mazzucchelli was playing with the idea of two parts forming one, like when one uses headphones to listen to music and the two parts are different but come together to achieve the same thing. Hence Asterios talks about twins, they turn out to have equal lives even though they are separated.
I haven’t even watched the video yet, but, yes, this book is fantastic.
I interviewed with Mike Chen in 1994...I remember him lamenting about former students going on to animate for beavis & butthead and complaining about Liefeld being popular.
This is a truly masterpiece
Very true! It's an amazing book
Orpheus and Eurydice
You need to read The Passport by Saul Steinberg.
Am I really the only one who found the ending wonderfully, slapstickally (!) funny? That's the way I took it - he wanted us to laugh.
Note the character is designed to face left or right, never head on, much like the characters personality
100% agree i love this graphic novel
Polyp comes from Polyphemus which is a Cyclops and an enemy of Odysseus. This same Polyphemus is in another greek myth where he kills Galatea's lover. Asterios ends up wearing an eyepatch after being attack by a drunk.
Asterios comes from asteroid.
I got a tin-tin and mr.x vibe from this book
Asteroid Polyps? Ya, many people over the years have developed polyps the size of an asteroid.
But with a little medical attention, it usually clears right up.