Status
Call number
Publication
Description
"David Smith is giving his life for his art--literally. Thanks to a deal with Death, the young sculptor gets his childhood wish: to sculpt anything he can imagine with his bare hands. But now that he only has 200 days to live, deciding what to create is harder than he thought, and discovering the love of his life at the 11th hour isn't making it any easier! This is a story of desire taken to the edge of reason and beyond; of the frantic, clumsy dance steps of young love; and a gorgeous, street-level portrait of the world's greatest city. It's about the small, warm, human moments of everyday life...and the great surging forces that lie just under the surface. Scott McCloud wrote the book on how comics work; now he vaults into great fiction with a breathtaking, funny, and unforgettable new work"--… (more)
User reviews
This is a beautifully told story. David's frustrations as an artist are real; Meg's mental problems are handled well; the story paces along well with the knowledge of the finite time David has left (Why 200 days? That's the only question I really have.) McCloud's artwork and coloring is very well constructed and makes for a lovingly and well-crafted story and book. Highly recommended.
Life can be messy, unplanned, and awkward. We are born, our souls a birthplace of creativity, wanting to fight and push past a pedestrian existence by becoming or birthing something memorable. Tangible. A legacy of you. Driven by your need to create. Talents
"There is nothing to writing. All you do is sit down at a typewriter and bleed."
Our main character, David is driven to create. He’s down on his luck with an unfortunate reputation, no prospects, no creativity flowing, no money, no family, and not much going for him…until he gets a visit and bargain from Death. Death will guarantee the ability to create and be happy if for a price. Of course, there is a price.
Sometimes the way to happiness, success, fame, and insistent need to create is a multi-forked road. As humans we are flawed and unpredictable. What would you trade for each? What would not matter to you? We have choices to shape our future. This book simply journeys down a very human path, albeit imperfect, uncomfortable, and heart-wrenching. It’s a story I’ll be thinking of for a while.
Last but not least, the artwork tells a huge part of the story. If the artwork and direction was as on point, I doubt this would be as impactful.
I don’t have a solid rating for this one, yet. I’ll probably change this after thinking about this for a while.
Many thanks to First Second Books for my review copy in exchange for an honest review.
The book is beautifully rendered and ultimately heartbreaking. The Sculptor reminds us that despite suffering and loss, “life finds a way to keep growing.” Like David, we all have a limited number of days and we shouldn’t waste our minutes. My favorite panel: “Every minute is an ocean.”
David was a successful young sculptor until one of his sponsors ruined his life. Now he has hit rock
This book was well done but a bit depressing. It’s an interesting look at a lot of different topics. Among those topics are New York City, the artistic community, young love, and mental disorders.
I found the story to be incredibly engaging and read the whole book in one sitting. The whole time you are wondering what David is going to do with his newfound talent and then you are wondering if he will find a way out of the whole deal with Death.
The story is best described as a tragedy, it’s pretty emotional and depressing at times. This isn’t one of those books you read to feel better about life that’s for sure.
The illustration style is more cartoony than I normally like and it is done in just a few colors. It’s okay but not the best illustration ever. The story ends up overpowering the illustration so that you don’t notice the style as much as the book continues.
Overall this was a very engaging and well done graphic novel. It’s a very emotional graphic novel and in the end the story definitely overpowers the art here. I enjoyed it and am glad I read it. However I wouldn’t recommend reading it when you are feeling down; it’s pretty depressing and definitely not a happy feel good type of read.
Review: A lot of the stuff in the beginning and middle felt a lot like insider baseball - a lot of talk about galleries and art business and the desire to make a name for yourself, etc., so i felt like that kind of kept the reader (assuming the reader is not also an artist) on the outside. But there are a lot of more universal ideas - about love, and life, and death, and about leaving people and being left, and immortality and wanting not to be forgotten and about expressing yourself and leaving something of yourself behind, that get developed over the course of the story, and did speak to me more than the art-specific elements of the story. The artwork was beautiful, particularly when McCloud was using non-traditional angles or panels, and definitely towards the end, as David's art began to get larger and more elaborate. I also appreciated that the characters felt and looked and talked like real people (when they weren't being all pretentious about The Nature of Art, perhaps). Very good, and ultimately very moving, read. 4 out of 5 stars.
Recommendation: While I'm not quite in the same degree of raptures over this book that I think some people are, I definitely do think that it's a pretty impressive achievement for a first graphic novel (McCloud's other comics have all been non-fiction), in terms of the art but also in terms of the depths of story. Recommended for fans of coming of age or autobiographical graphic novels (it's not an autobiography, clearly, but it has a very similar tone and feeling to a lot of them that I've read.)
David Smith, a man with a name that could get lost in a crowd of similarly named people, simply wants to show his art to the world. There's a lot of good stuff in here about creating art, who it is created for, and whether it matters how much of an impact it makes on the world. This is the portrait of an artist who feels he has failed. Who knows that he has the capability, and wants his shot so badly that he's willing to give up everything. Even his life.
Cue our female lead, and the reason that David's whole planned out deal falls into disarray. Meg is the exact opposite of David. Compulsive, carefree, and living life with her whole heart on her sleeve. What ends up happening between them isn't always pretty. It's real life, and that's why it's so important to see that on a page. We love romance, we love happy endings, but sometimes we forget the things that happen in between all of that,
These panels are perfection, too. The art that David creates comes to life on the page. His city, the one filled with thousands of nameless people, stretches across full page spreads and looms over everything. I admit I'm pretty biased, because I love Scott McCloud, but that doesn't change the fact that this graphic novel is excellent.
Actual rating: 4.5 stars
Ouch. My body was not ready. When I pick up graphic novels, I expect something kinda fluffy. I mean, I first got into them with manga and my favorites are shoujo romances. The Sculptor has a couple
The Sculptor is about this guy David who’s a painter. Haha, just kidding. He’s a sculptor. Ever since he was a kid, sculpting has been his dream. Now 26, David’s dreams are all but crushed. His family, who he loved, have all died by this point and he’s down to just one friend. His art career had a brief surge of popularity followed by crushing ignominy when his patron dropped him hard. David doesn’t have any money left and the lease is almost up on his apartment. He feels hopeless.
This is why, when his dead Uncle Harry shows up in a diner to offer him a deal, David accepts. David trades all of the rest of his life for one year of sculpting, in which he’ll be able to truly live his dream. Though he didn’t realize it, the true dream was to be able to sculpt metal and stone with his bare hands. David basically becomes a superhero and it’s so cool, though he actually doesn’t use his powers that way at all.
Everything for David is about his art. Though I’m not an artist, I love stories about people with the compulsion. David sees promise in everything and remembers things in artful statues in his mind. One thing I thought was so cool was that all of the sculptures, even the ones that looked like nothing were a clear, particular event for David. He’s a bit like Hercules, in that he trades his future for fame. When he can’t get popular even with his new ability, he becomes a rogue sculpturer, leaving creations around the city.
He also, of course, falls in love while doomed to die in a year. His love interest, Meg, is awesome. She starts out sort of MPDG-ish, I think, but she’s actually manic depressive. I just love the way their romance evolves, from him declaring himself in love with her the third time they meet and how adorable their first time was. I became very very attached to these people. They’re funny and real and I was rooting for them.
The one thing I’m not as sure about is actually the premise. I love it, but I also feel like there was something more I wanted to know about Harry’s character. Why does death get involved like this? What’s the point? It stands alone without that, but I was left with questions and curiosity.
The Sculptor surprised me utterly, made me fall in love, and broke my heart. Just so good.
The unique plot develops soundly, but too predictably. Readers may hope that Uncle Harry would offer a finely tuned chance for redemption.
Readers may further wonder
If you had 200 days left to live and a magic sculting skill, what would you do with your time?
Fantastic storytelling.
But I eventually saw it on sale and decided to pick it up. Then it took me months to get around to
I started it last night, and was pissed off that my eyes wouldn't stay open long enough for me to complete it in a single sitting. It was absolutely stunning.
The art is deceptive, slightly cartoonish, but my God, when run in conjunction with the storyline, it becomes, at times, breathtaking.
And then there's the story. A simple one, fairly easily figured out, no real surprises whatsoever...and yet, it packed punch after punch.
I didn't like this graphic novel, I adored it.
I'm only pissed that it took me as long as it did to actually read it.
This is a big, ambitious graphic novel. Beautifully illustrated and well-written. David is mostly an, anguished, angry, unpleasant, character but the author still makes the story sing.
If you are a GN fan, this is a must read. If you have not tried one, this might be a good place to start.
Aesthetically, The Sculptor is really masterful, and I enjoyed it the more for having read McCloud's comics treatise, Understanding Comics. I loved how he used the
As an unflinching tragic fable about life and art and our pained, ill-advised, inspired attempts to make meaning out of them, this book was very moving. Tragedy doesn't always work for a modern reader - we get cranky about the characters' tragic flaws and wish they would only problem-solve their way out of the abyss. McCloud's characters, however, were too carefully drawn and his story too profound for me to read David Smith's story with anything but a sense of doomed inevitability.
This is a big, big story about art and existentialism. It is probably Scott McCloud's masterpiece - but it's the first work of his fiction I've read, so I look forward to reading his backlog and what he creates next.