Asterios Polyp

I see this as a love story, and - among many other things - a story about the communication challenges that we experience because of our differences. The way humans interact with each other is visualized with such elegance! But what I loved the most is that his novel has a living and breathing soul, a true soul that you can see much better in the second part. I found myself to be really moved towards the end. And also I think I found a certain kind of wisdom, that sees through selfish attitudes and behaviours as something that needs to be overcome and understood, in order to grow up.

Everything about Asterios Polyp is dense, and slow, and meticulously planned and executed. It is easily the most beautiful graphic novel I've ever seen. Each vignette has a specific palate, most using only two or three colors at a time--in fact, it isn't until the book's very last chapter that Mazzucchelli uses full four-color spreads--and there is no black in the book at all. Each character's speech is written in a unique font, one which is clearly representative of that person's personality. The story itself is full and rich, the characters multifaceted and real, and everything is augmented and reified by frequent digressions, both visual and described, on perception, human behavior, physics, philosophy, mythology, spirituality, metaphysics, and on and on. 

This is a story of redemption, of sorts, not only in the moral sense but in the graphic, on the level of visual design, a narrative and thematic utilization of the graphic in "graphic novel" that I would love to see taken up more in this genre.