The Geometric World of Asterios Polyp

I really enjoyed the way Mazzuchelli integrated a sense of semi-cubist deconstruction of characters.  I think it worked the best when Asterios was arguing with his wife and they were deconstructed down to shapes and Asterios was very geometric and blocky and his wife was more realistically shaded in.  I think this spoke a lot about their character where Asterios was more judgmental and rigid as a person while his wife was quiet and soft spoken.  Throughout the comic it was really easy to understand the mood that you were supposed to get from the panels with the simple color wash David put on it.

I think the little things in this comic really worked to make it a different kind of experience than other comics.  Almost every character had their own font ranging from Asterios' mother's cursive to Hana's tiny cute letters.  And all of the side character that were only in there for a few pages-- like the man who used to work at the car place-- were completely fleshed out.  Asterios overall wasn't really a nice guy, I mean I think he meant well but he got caught up in the fact that he seemed to know TOO much.  I've met some people like this myself and after awhile they can get to be really taxing.  Everyone else was very quirky in terms on every character seemed interesting and had their own likes and dislikes.  They weren't carbon copies of each other or anything.

I actually expected this comic to go a completely different direction from where it went.  I was somehow expecting Asterios to meet his brother or switch places with his brother or something, since Ignazio was the narrator.  I mean the constant nightmares Asterios had were creepy to say the least, but  I think that could've gone somewhere since that was never fully explained.  It's kind of like giving someone half a cookie. I want the whole cookie, not just morsels.

The sudden ending of this comic seriously almost gave me a heart attack.  I realize that the end of the world was eluded to throughout the comic through other characters, especially the man in the cafe, but it seriously threw me off in a bad kind of way.  It's like when you are doing theater improv and someone pulls out a gun in the game and it throws everyone off.  It kind of threw off most of the slow build for the comic and left the reader reeling.  

And another thing I wanted to mention that was a little bit odd was Asterios' design.  I really liked his face design and how his face was basically one curvy swoop, it was super appealing and also reflected his hard nature.