Asterios Polyp (Pantheon Graphic Library)

About this book

The triumphant return of one of comics greatest talents with an engrossing story of one mans search for love meaning sanity and perfect architectural proportions. An epic story long awaited and well worth the wait. Meet Asterios Polyp: middle-aged meagerly successful architect and teacher aesthete and womanizer whose life is wholly upended when his New York City apartment goes up in flames. In a tenacious daze he leaves the city and relocates to a small town in the American heartland. But what is this escape really about? As the story unfolds moving between the present and the past we begin to understand this confounding yet fascinating character and how hes gotten to where he is. And isnt. And we meet Hana: a sweet smart first-generation Japanese American artist with whom he had made a blissful life. But now shes gone. Did Asterios do something to drive her away? What has happened to her? Is she even alive? All the questions will be answered eventually. In the meantime we are enthralled by Mazzucchellis extraordinarily imagined world of brilliantly conceived eccentrics sharply observed social mores and deftly depicted asides on everything from design theory to the nature of human perception. Asterios Polyp is David Mazzucchellis masterpiece: a great American graphic novel.