NOT ALBUM OF THE WEEK

Asterios Polyp by David Mazzucchelli

This past week I read this graphic novel called Asterios Polyp. I could have read it in one day's time but I didn't because it was so great that I wanted to space it out and be able to read that shit for many days. Anyways I just finished it and wanted to let everybody know that it ruled. The author/illustrator David Mazzucchelli has been talked about before as 'the master with no masterpiece' and now that shit is out the window cause Asterios Polyp is most definitely a masterpiece. Mazzucchelli drew Batman:Year One, written by Frank Miller. He also has done a bunch of other shit since the early 80s including City of Glass and some Daredevil, Spider Man, and Star Wars comics, New Yorker covers, anyways he's been around the block lots of times. He's also done this anthology with Richmond Lewis called Rubber Blanket. Anyways he took a break from stuff for a long time to work on Asterios Polyp, and damn it shows because that shit is thorough. The story follows an architect named Asterios Polyp, who has lived a strange and frustrated, calculated life and how he tries to reconcile all that shit, it is a good story. But the way that story it is illustrated really rips. This dude is a drawing master and it feels unlike a graphic novel because of that. The colors and layout of the book are very on point and excellent, plus the quality of the paper and the book itself are top notch. It has a thick hardcover and is thick enough between its pages to be a very pleasing object altogether, which sort of mirrors its content in that Asterios Polyp is obsessed with shape and form. Anyone interested in spot on artistic vision and then execution of said vision should take note because to me, this joint exhibits the rarity of some shit being exactly how it ought to have been. And so you should go get it (unless this sounds like something that you cannot handle).