“Asterios Polyp” by David Mazzucchelli came out back in 2009 and I wrote a little review of it (The First) . Then I reread it in 2020 and wrote another piece on it (The Second). Here we are near the end of 2025 and I just reread the book (graphic novel) again and I’m going to write another piece about it. This book grows on me more and more as the years go by.
Asterios Polyp is the name of the main character in the book. The story takes place in the year 2000 after Asterios turns 50. It could be said that this is a mid-life crisis book but I’d say that 50 is not mid life. He’s a little too old for a mid-life crisis. Plus you’re usually still married for one of those and Asterios isn’t married anymore at the beginning of the story. At least I suspected he wasn’t. That isn’t really revealed until later but it is hinted at.
This book really isn’t about the plot but it’s about the questions it asks. That said the plot starts with a lightning strike that burns down the building that holds Asterios’s NYC apartment. His answer to this crisis is to get on a bus and leave for parts unknown heading upstate. From there were get flashbacks to Asterios’s past and looks at how he starts living a new life in the small town he landed in.
Asterios is a smart and successful person. He is an architect who has won awards and is well known. But he is referred to as a paper architect. For whatever reasons none of his buildings have ever been built. He has made his living for most of his life teaching architecture in a college in Ithaca NY. He’s lead a good life.
From his earliest days drawing superhero comics for Marvel and DC Mazzucchelli has been an excellent visual storyteller. His layouts and drawings have always been terrific and they still are here. It looks nothing like his moody superhero drawing but I love it. Sometimes he uses illustrative richness and sometimes he breaks things down to there basics and presents things in a graphic design way. He’s really good.
The main character in Asterios’s life is, of course, his wife. We see her in flashback as he meets her in the 1980s. She is a fellow professor at the school and she is an artist who teaches sculpture. She’s younger than him and a little shy and he’s the star at the school. It’s an opposites attract situation as he is a little rigid and formal while she is looser and more chaotic.
The other characters are the family that Asterios stays with when he gets off the bus. He gets a job as a mechanic’s assistant at a small car repair shop. We get to see his brains as he hits the local library to read car repair books before he starts the job. Who among us would have the confidence to do that?
Asterios meets the wife and child of the man as he rents a room in their house. The wife, like Asterios, has a big personality. She is a believer in Astrology, past life, and other New Age sort of stuff. It’s not like they clash or anything because Asterios seems to want to be less rigid and open himself up a little bit.
Another word on the art. I remember reading back in 2009 that Mazzucchelli drew Asterios’s face with ellipse templates. He wanted to keep his face the same throughout the book. He wanted it to have rigidity. I really didn’t notice that the first time I read it but I sure notice it now. Mazzucchelli also does some stuff like draw Asterios and his wife differently when they argue. Asterios gets drawn in blue line with lots of mechanical drawing to his form. Almost like an architect’s blueprint. Hana gets drawn with sketchy lines and shading emphasizing her artistic-ness.
The book also has a narrator. When Asterios was born he also had a twin brother who was stillborn. The ghost of his twin brother is our narrator. He tells us things about Asterios that we otherwise would not know because Asterios isn’t big on revealing his feelings.
One more important character is a NYC playwright, Willy Ilium. He bursts onto the scene uninvited and offers Hana an opportunity to build sets for his plays. He a weird and intrusive person who is a bit of an NYC artistic type who would be right at home in a Christopher Guest film. He even seems to be a bit of a flamboyant gay stereotype except he’s always making passes at and saying inappropriate things to Hana. He’s an irritation to their marriage.
There are scenes in the book that interrupt the narrative flow (even as it skips between time frames) and give us symbolic insights into the happenings in Asterios’s life. His dead brother plays a part in some of these scenes. There is a ten page chapter that shows scenes of Asterios and Hana’s marriage. It’s just showing us the normal stuff that goes on. It gives us a glimpse into their everyday lives.
Immediately following that chapter comes a wordless twenty page section that is about the breakup. It’s drawn in a darker and moodier art style and appears to be about Asterios attempting to rescue Hana from hell. The three headed dog Cerberus appears at the beginning. There are even a couple of dance sequences that seem to reflect Willy Ilium’s choreography. Asterios is not able to save Hana so I guess that’s the breakup.
That’s just the basic framework of the story. Lots of other things happen too. There are no page numbers on the book but the internet says that it’s 344 pages long. There are lots of things to contemplate and that bring up the nature of life and how we live it.
Sometime a few months ago I posed a question to Paulo and Wilson on our Friday night YouTube Live show. I asked what book do they think could be taught to high school kids much like any classic book is taught? Not a college class because I think I can teach a college class in any number of comics and graphic novels. Anybody in that class would want to be there and, of course, be interested. High school students would be different. A lot of them might not want to even be there so the book has to have a lot in it for them to dip their toes in. I think this is that book. I could convince at least half the class to like it;
“Asterios Polyp” is one of those books that I can pick up, thumb through, and be captivated by as I read just one of the scenes. It’s truly a favorite of mine and gets five out of five stars. An all time classic.