There are fascinating digressions on aesthetic philosophy, as well as some very broad satire, but the core of the book is Mazzucchelli's odyssey of style-every major character in the book is associated with a specific drawing style and visual motifs, and the design, color scheme and formal techniques of every page change to reinforce whatever's happening in the story. After the structure of his own life falls apart, he runs away to try to rebuild it into something new. Asterios Polyp, its arrogant, prickly protagonist, is an award-winning architect who's never built an actual building, and a pedant in the midst of a spiritual crisis. His long-awaited graphic novel is a huge, knotty marvel, the comics equivalent of a Pynchon or Gaddis novel, and radically different from anything he's done before. It is undoubtedly one of the best novels of the year.For decades, Mazzucchelli has been a master without a masterpiece. This is a book that stands with works by Updike, Roth, and other giants of American literature. Why does a rearview mirror block Polyp's eyes in the scene where his (future ex-) wife asks him if he'll look after her when she's old? Is the narrator-Polyp's twin brother, who died in the womb-completely unreliable? The more you study Polyp, the more there is to discover. Polyp reportedly took 10 years to make, and the book is so layered with bold artistic choices that it will create students as much as readers. Mazzucchelli illustrates concepts with the natural ease that other masters of the form use to draw action: A conversation about duality is as engaging and dynamic as any epic Jack Kirby superhero battle (even as the narrator notes that duality 'is best suited to children's stories, or comic books'), and a dream sequence about the Orpheus myth- Polyp bursts with references to art and literature, from Calvino to Aristophanes to Rothko to Mies to Francis of Assisi-is drawn in a primal, scratchboard style that brings the raw emotional center of the book right up to the surface for one melodramatic moment.

Polyp and several other characters, most notably his nemesis, choreographer Willy Illium, are usually viewed, Dick Tracy–like, in profile, to indicate their single-minded view of the world. It's impossible to describe the story without praising Mazzucchelli's art: He uses color, text, and innovative page layouts with mod flourishes to push the story forward and backward in time.

Polyp graphic novel