Images With(In) Books

I’ve always found reading graphic narratives to be a daunting task, mostly because I haven’t read many. Graphic narratives requires equal attention to the graphics and the narrative, which is something I find difficult. It’s interesting to think how the process of creating a graphic narrative differs from writing or drawing on their own; the graphic artist must consider what he wants emphasize in art and downplay in writing, and vice versa. Similarly, I think graphic narrative literacy is very different from that for literature or art.

That said, I wholly enjoyed Asterios Polyp. In particular, I really liked the aspect of Greek Mythology woven throughout Asterios Polyp, from the unromanticized Aristophanes dialogue to the echoes of Odysseus and Penelope in Asterios and Hana. I’d definitely be interested in rereading the book, since I’m aware that I spent more time with the words that the pictures on my first read.

Asterios Polyp explores the concept of duality. How once becomes who they are. This can be seen throughout the comic. The sections within the book display sevens from Asterios Polyp’s life. The book seems to tell a narrative about how this Professor came to be what he is now. Through out the book we constantly see how Polyp interacts with other of the opposite personality. A good example is his wife, the artist. While it was sort of explained how their relationship worked, one could easy expect conflict. This is likely why when we find out he is divorced it is not much of a surprise. We as readers see the many flaws the character has and how he came to develop them. Was he always this way or did his environment, while growing up, affect him?

The idea of nature vs nurture has been a well known debate. I like to think that both have an equal power in development. In Polpy’s case, I think it the same. What do you think?

I have been thinking a lot about Asterios Polyp and how binaries function in the story.  Asterios categorizes things in twos, which manifests itself in many different ways in the graphic narrative. The binary of Asterios and Ignazio, the twins, pervades the whole story. Additionally, Asterios and Hana form a visual binary that blends together when they meet; Asterios is drawn in blueprint style to represent the way he thinks, while Hana is draw with soft, red lines to represent her emotion and personality.  At the end of the story when Hana and Asterios reconcile, the colors become vibrant and their drawing styles align. The destruction of this binary shows Asterios’s character development and newfound ability to empathize and relate to people as a result of his journey.

“Asterios Polyp”by David Mazzucchelli takes place, for the most part, within two dimensions. Obviously some aspects of shading come into play when Mazzucchelli made the graphic novel in order to give it some three-dimensional aspects, but it is mostly two-dimensional. However, when we put on the 3-D glasses, the graphic novel truly became something of three dimensions. While some of the pages did not jump out at me as much as others did, the ones that did jumped out a lot. Not only does this bring to life certain aspects of the page that might have gone unnoticed before, but it emphasizes the things that do not jump out as well by creating a three-dimensional border of sorts. This could be a very interesting way of viewing the graphic novel, whether or not Mazzucchelli had this in mind when he created it. Regardless of this, the color in the book speaks to the scenes as well. When things are good, the colors are vidid and bright. But when things are bad, Mazzucchelli utilizes darker and more washed-out tones. This creates an overall aesthetic to the graphic novel that lets the reader know what is going on even before they read the text.

I think juxtaposition plays a very important role in the narrative of Asterios Polyp. One part showed the natural human side of a married couple in an intimate fashion (in 2 pages only) that is truly transparent and unforgettable. I think comics like Asterios Polyp are a powerful representation of the idea of narrative, there is a great reliance on the ability of the audience  to make conclusions about the structure and the characters. I appreciated the fact that there was a strong sense of characters, i could imagine how each character sounded like in reality mostly because of the articulated facial expressions.

I did not really understand why and how Asterios’ twin showed up and controlled everything instead of him (it would be great if anyone reflects on that).

“On his mother’s side he was more than mortal. He was the son of one of the Muses and a Thracian prince. His mother gave him the gift of music and Thrace where he grew up fostered it. The Thracians were the most musical of the peoples of Greece. But Orpheus had no rival there or anywhere except the gods alone. There was no limit to his power when he played and sang. No one and nothing could resist him.

“In the deep still woods upon the Thracian mountains
Orpheus with his singing lyre led the trees,
Led the wild beasts of the wilderness.

“Everything animate and inanimate followed him. He moved the rocks on the hillside and turned the courses of the rivers….

“When he first met and how he wooed the maiden he loved, Eurydice, we are not told, but it is clear that no maiden he wanted could have resisted the power of his song. They were married, but their joy was brief. Directly after the wedding, as the bride walked in a meadow with her bridesmaids, a viper stung her and she died. Orpheus’ grief was overwhelming. He could not endure it. He determined to go down to the world of death and try to bring Eurydice back. He said to himself,

“With my song
I will charm Demeter’s daughter,
I will charm the Lord of the Dead,
Moving their hearts with my melody.
I will bear her away from Hades.

“He dared more than any other man ever dared for his love. He took the fearsome journey to the underworld. There he struck his lyre, and at the sound all that vast multitude were charmed to stillness….

“O Gods who rule the dark and silent world,
To you all born of a woman needs must come.
All lovely things at last go down to you.
You are the debtor who is always paid.
A little while we tarry up on earth.
Then we are yours forever and forever.
But I seek one who came to you too soon.
The bud was plucked before the flower bloomed.
I tried to bear my loss. I could not bear it.
Love was too strong a god, O King, you know
If that old tale men tell is true, how once
The flowers saw the rape of Proserpine,
Then weave again for sweet Eurydice
Life’s pattern that was taken from the loom
Too quick. See, I ask a little thing,
Only that you will lend, not give, her to me.
She shall be yours when her years’ span is full.

“No one under the spell of his voice could refuse him anything. He drew iron tears down Pluto’s cheek,
and made Hell grant what Love did seek.

“They summoned Eurydice and gave her to him, but upon one condition: that he would not look back at her as she followed him, until they had reached the upper world. So the two passed through the great doors of Hades to the path which would take them out of the darkness, climbing up and up. He knew that she must be just behind him, but he longed unutterably to give one glance to make sure. But now they were almost there, the blackness was turning gray; now he had stepped out joyfully into the daylight. Then he turned to her. It was too soon; she was still in the cavern. He saw her in the dim light, and he held out his arms to clasp her; but on the instant she was gone. She had slipped back into the darkness. All he heard was one faint word, “Farewell.”

“Desperately he tried to rush after her and follow her down, but he was not allowed. The gods would not consent to his entering the world of the dead a second time, while he was still alive. He was forced to return to the earth alone, in utter desolation. Then he forsook the company of men. He wandered through the wild solitudes of Thrace, comfortless except for his lyre, playing, always playing, and the rocks and the rivers and the trees heard him gladly, his only companions. But at last a band of Maenads [women] came upon him….They slew the gentle musician, tearing him limb from limb, borne along past the river’s mouth on to the Lesbian shore; nor had it suffered any change from the sea when the Muses found it and buried it in the sanctuary of the island. His limbs they gathered and placed in a tomb at the foot of Mount Olympus, and there to this day the nightingales sing more sweetly than anywhere else.”

I must admit that I was taken off guard by the incredibly dark ending of Asterios Polyp. Then again, should I really have been surprised? It’s not like any of the works we have investigated this semester left me feeling cheerful. We started off with Books of Hours in the beginning of the semester, which was not overtly dark. However, as we progressed in our discussion, darker elements of the illuminations started to reveal themselves. Moreover, we began discussing the underlying themes of many of the Books, including social injustices and other societal letdowns. We moved on to My Name is Red, which was riddled with the murder of people and the betrayal of longstanding notions of what it meant to illuminate – a dark theme indeed. Hoping for a change in pace, we moved to prints. One could only imagine how much more dark things would become. Our studies of Goya led us to Los Caprichos, a set of prints filled with dark humor and grotesque images. As if the prints themselves weren’t enough, the film Goya en Bordeaux was quite disturbing. So, we moved on to the study of collages – a style of art that I had cherished since my childhood. Surely, the collages in Max Ernst’s Une Semaine de Bonte will provide relief from the dark nature of the works we had studied thus far…right? As it turned out, the collages were eerily similar to Goya’s work, packed with grotesque imagery and filled with societal critique. Next up was Amphigorey, a collection of works with cats on the cover! How could a book with cats on the cover have anything dark inside? Cue The Gashlycrumb Tinies. Alas, we moved to Asterios Polyp. The narrative started off a little shaky but generally progressed to what was shaping up to be a happy ending. And then:

When I returned from class today, I cracked open The Arrival to get an idea of how we would be ending the semester. I had high hopes for a work free of any dark themes. Admittedly, I only skimmed a few pages, but I have a feeling I will be left with the same sentiment. Looking back on the semester thus far I think that the most cheerful work that we investigated was The Secret of Kells. Considering how this movie involves the entire town being ransacked and burned, one could only imagine what the remainder of the semester entailed.

Something that struck me about Asterios Polyp are the many ways that Mazzucchelli creates visual and textual elements that tie his narrative together. I find the first few pages that depict Asterios’s cluttered apartment extremely interesting. The effect of panning created by the progression of panels with speech bubbles that begin with dots in the first panel and eventually become the words “mmm…oohh…that’s good…” reminds me of the way film techniques guide the viewer’s eye and perception of an entire scene in exactly the way the filmmaker plans the progression of detail. The ambiguity in the following panels that depict Asterios in his bedroom watching VHS tapes also felt like something that might happen in a film and reminds me of Gorey’s purposeful use of innuendo and sexuality to distract from the reality of what is happening in the scene. The use of small images to demarcate the beginning of each new chapter also adds to the effect of coherence in the narrative; for me, it was a more subtle and less distracting way of introducing a new idea. I also appreciated Mazzucchelli’s use of color to tie the narrative together. Not only is it visually engaging, but the use of color associates certain sections of the narrative with different emotions. For example, the first time Asterios and Hana meet is illustrated in pink, red and purple, which are, in our culture, colors traditionally associated with romance and passion. Even though Mazzucchellli jumps from Asterios’s present life to his past, the different sub-narratives add coherence to the narrative by explaining aspects of Asterios and other characters’ pasts, which glean insight into their present situations.

It was extremely satisfying to see the image my partner and I created in last weeks digital workshop printed out on paper in class. Something about seeing the image move from the computer screen onto the paper was very rewarding and inspired me to play with adobe illustrator while I was working in the library today. My second experience with adobe illustrator was fun, however, it brought to my attention how difficult it is to work with the program if you do not have any immediate access to help. I watch the tutorials on blackboard and several on youtube but I was unable to be as productive as I was during the initial class. It helped me realize how complex the illustrator program is, and how one would need an entire course built around learning the program to understand how to navigate without concern. I really want to use the adobe illustrator program for part of my final project but I realize that I am going to need a lot of practice if I want to produce the image I envision.

One of my favorite parts about Asterios Polyp (and graphic novels for that matter) is how everything seems to be placed with purpose, and therefore, much of the author’s intent came across as more deliberate to me. For instance, comparing Asterios Polyp to Songs of Experience by William Blake, I found Asterios easier to interpret. For example, one of the panel progressions discussed in class was the all yellow fire that blazed and took over Asterios’ apartment complex. Comparing panel by panel, the fire increases in size to a completely yellow panel that is larger in size, depicting the growing scale of the fire. The gutter space is deliberate, and the use of color is straightforward. I felt like I understood Mazzuchelli’s intent. However, as we analyzed with The Sick Rose, some of Blake’s work is ambiguous and I wondered if I was doing too much work as a reader to try to put meaning in his images. Overall, I enjoy graphic novels the most out of all the content we have analyzed thus far because I felt closer to the author and found myself reading the cues of the gutters, the panel size, and the colors like a code.