Week 11: Comics as Contemporary Literature

Asterios Polyp by David Mazzucchelli is a graphic novel is about a professor and architect who lives in New York. The novel follows his life with scenes from his past and childhood. The mix of past and present and showing Asterios’ life and personality, ultimately portrays how a person becomes who and what they are.

The portrayal of who Asterios is and how he became like this is shown through the illustration style. Each character has thick and thin lines and seem detailed but not too detailed. An interesting aspect of this graphic novel is that the illustrations are not in black and white like how most graphic novels have been. I think the use of mainly purples, blues, pinks and sometimes yellows, makes this story unique and stand out compared to other graphic novels. I also think that the use of these colors adds emotions to the story differently. It makes it seem soft yet gloomy. Another thing I noticed is that each character has a distinct text bubble. It is interesting to me as it makes it feel like each shape of the text bubbles correspond to each character’s personality. For instance, Asterios’ text bubble is a simple, plain and kind of boring box.

I really enjoyed reading this graphic novel, even though it was a bit long to read. The colors and illustrations made it more engaging and I hope to read more graphic novels like this one.