Week 11: Comics as temporary literature

At first comics were regarded as something that makes you lazy. I still remember my mother nagged me when I read comic books that she said they will disturb my school work degrading my GPA. Until comics get officially accepted as an art, there were many hardships and many artists challenged themselves but never gave up. Today, combined with details of art and sophisticated narratives, the terminology “graphic novels” were created. One of the greatest artists who exploited the field of graphic narratives is David Mazzuchelli, who created “Asterios Polyp”.

In summary of the story, Asterios Polyp, a protagonist who has a successful life as an architect, loses everything he has through a disaster in a day. Then he travels to a town named Apogee, which defines a climax, to find out who he is, was, and has been. He looks back his previous 50 years of life and figures out what was really important to him, especially his memories with Hana, Asterios’ ex-wife. Then he realizes how egotistic he was before, and tries to go back to Hana passing through a harsh blizzard on the journey.

This comic consists of multiple themes such as a true meaning of life, character versus self, and art of architect. These types element cannot be shown in other forms of art but only comics. The author has reached a new level of the comic filed, utilizing words, art styles, cuts, or speech bubbles. For example, the fonts in characters’ words represent their characteristics, and delicate nuances from their speech bubbles. Also, even without words, the audience could understand through the arts.

David mainly focused on narrative fonts. Every single character, including extras, contains their own fonts based on their characteristics, like everyone in the world has individual voices. Because of his ethereal details, I felt as if I could hear their voices while reading his graphic narrative. Even a single line and color scheme, he uses as a tool to describe situations that characters are facing with. Asterios, with a cold-minded and logical personality, goes with a bluish outline. On the other hand, Hana who has affable and sensible characteristics follows with a pink color. The best visual scene I get fascinated is a moment that these two characters fall in love together. The two contrast colors coordinate each other by overlapping their lines and become one.