The Sculptor By Scott McCloud

this book is maddening - on the one hand, its handling of artistic frustration and the desire to excel as an artist is intelligent and well-considered, but on the other hand, this story is just another in a long line of loser male protagonist is rescued by manic pixie dream girl stories. literally - dream girl is initially presented as an actual angel sweeping down from heaven, & male protagonist professes to dream girl i love you after having had a grand total of one full conversation with her; their relationship unfolds as predictably (and unrealistically) from there as you might imagine. meh. it's still worth a look if you can stomach that relationship as the driver for 75% of the story's action, because the book does bounce off some very intriguing depictions of the protagonist's struggle to best utilize his new found artistic powers. i wish we spent a lot more time on that side of the tale to be honest. Comics Graphic Novels This book ripped out my heart and showed it to me. Several times. Comics Graphic Novels I had high hopes for this book, since I loved Scott McCloud's Zot series, and think Understanding Comics is brilliant. But it was really disappointing.

My main complaints:


1) It fails the Bechdel test -- Meg never talks with any other women.

2) Meg is totally a manic (depressive) pixie dream girl -- David falls in love with her on sight. And then she becomes a madonna. She never gets to be a person.

3) In the real world, almost no straight women have a circle of friends consisting largely of their ex-lovers, all of whom get along just fine. Either this is pure laziness on McCloud's part, or Meg is far more interesting than either David or McCloud recognizes. And she'd be giving up far more by moving away from the city to live with David in the suburbs than he would.

4) I'm not convinced that a sculptor who chooses to work in stone would find it a gift to be able to mold it like clay. If David wanted to work in clay, he'd have worked in clay, damnit.

I give it 2 stars rather than 1 because I liked the drawings of the city and the people in it.

Comics Graphic Novels David Smith is giving his life for his art—literally. Thanks to a deal with his death grand uncle Harry, the young sculptor gets his childhood wish: to sculpt anything he can imagine with his bare hands.





I just want to mention that the art in this was stunningly beautiful. And not only that but Scott McCloud’s take on fate was very powerful.

Death gives our main character 200 days to live in exchange for the power to sculpt anything he can imagine.





But complications set in when David falls in love with Meg (after knowing her for less than 10 minutes).



I actually found it really hard at first to feel for the main character, he was very much the moody and brooding artist type (with some serious anger issues). And not in a compelling way.

I kept reading with the hope that his character arc would be redeemed yet, strangely enough, his behaviour just seemed to go downhill.

Especially when he threw himself into obsessing over a girl he knew for less than an hour. HOW can you say ‘I love you’ to someone you literally know nothing about????? I’m truly astonished at this.



I mean, I get that he’s feeling lonely and whatnot, but seriously?? In love???



David was just a really cringe-worthy guy that made me truly uncomfortable for a majority of the storyline (especially with his anger issues).



Maybe I would’ve liked David more if we hadn’t been introduced to Meg because once he got infatuated with her, I completely lost my enthusiasm.



Ugh, Mr. and Mrs. Special Snow-Flake. Like… what kind of heterosexual bullshit.



He’s self-absorbed, aggravating, cynical, and stubborn—I (still) for the life in me can't understand why Meg would want to be with someone like that.



Honestly, I just kept reading after that to see if David would really die. For that ending and the art I gave a full extra star because other than that, this graphic novel didn’t leave a lasting impression.












Simply put, the idea for The Sculptor was fantastic, but I didn't care for the execution.

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This review and more can be found on my blog. Comics Graphic Novels Completely blown away by this graphic novel. The best graphic novel I've read all year and I've read some pretty great ones. Comics Graphic Novels

Wow...damn...just wow. Comics Graphic Novels 10/21/18 Three people in the last year have read this review and asked me if I was all right in my head, given how wrong I was in my review. You know, this happens, that we disagree and like snowflakes, we sometimes disagree (wait, is that a mixed metaphor?!). My initial response was clearly somewhat affected by hearing McCloud on his book tour for the book, being impressed by his presentation, and also affected by my having used his classic Understanding Comics in my graphic novels and comics classes, year after year. I had never read anything in fiction from McCloud that I liked, and he had labored for years to make this One Great Novel, so I was sympathetic. But not on the basis of a through re-reading, but looking it through for an hour or so, I write this revision of my review, wondering now if I really ever liked this book as much as I said I did. Not many people talk about it now at all, though at a glance several of my Goodreads friends liked it a lot. But it feels like it didn't have the legs I thought it would have. Great art, less great story.

2/14/15, My original review, now somewhat amended upon reflection:

This is a Big Event in the Year in Comics, without question. And I am not sure of how I feel about all aspects of it, but wth, let me just share some first thoughts.. I should say I was present last Friday night at McCloud's Chicago Humanities Festival presentation at the Chicago Art Institute, where I got my copy, and I loved his talk, his honesty, and the glimpse he shared into the hard and obsessive work he put into the process of making this 488 page brick of a book, a serious effort by one of the masters of comics (theory). I went with a lot of students and former students and didn't have the chance to talk with them (or him!) afterwards, but it was clear that many of us were excited to read the book.

Why? Because Scott McCloud wrote Understanding Comics and Making Comics, the essential guides that all teachers and artists rely on, just plain classics, the best stuff on the topics available, without controversy. He also did, among other things, Zot, which I never really got into, so I was suspicious he was better at teaching about comics than making them himself. I mean, you need a story. Does he have one? Then I knew this was labeled a romance which gave me pause; not my fave genre. Though I also knew this story was about art-making, duh, from the title, which I liked, and I like meta stuff, allegories of art-making. And then, in his presentation he made it clear about 80% of the portrayal of Meg is based on his wife, and 40% of his portrayal of artists David Smith is based on him, so there is this Maus/Blankets memoir aspect to this Big Book, which I admit I am a bit of a sucker for.

And now, having read it, I also see this is a view of art and relationships that shows the flays and challenges of these endeavors, though as a romance, does make it finally look like the endeavors are potentially happy ones. McCloud admits he has had difficulties with social skills and particularly with relating to women, but in this love story he makes it clear (in the presentation and in the book) that he an David Smith struggle mightily with intense self-obsessions AND are also deeply committed to the unstable and loving persons who are their wives.. He's got his issues, she's got hers, and they are largely annoying throughout, but David Smith is especially annoying for much of the book as a narcissistic, self-absorbed artist who prefers art to love. Many great artist biographies bear similarities, like Picasso, a genius artist and world class jerk, but Smith is not even close to being a great artist.

David Smith is a self-centered, fame-obsessed artist who would give up his life for his art, and makes a dramatic (and romantic, of another kind) deal with Death (in the form of his dead Grand Uncle Marty), that gives him some artistic superpowers within a time constraint for doing that art, but he does--over time, finally--manage to balance his obsession with fame/art with his love for and commitment to his wife, in my view.

The Faustian deal is sort of a cliche, and maybe especially for artists, and Meg is a kind of ethereally unreal crazy cool theater girl that everyone seems to fall for, another kind of cliche, but in the end, I lean to giving him some sweetness points for honoring the spirit of his wife in and through and possibly above his art. In a way this is a love letter to McCloud's wife, and their more important creation of a family, and if that is too sappy and cliched for some, I get it, but I ultimately still found it moving in places in spite of these potential limitations. McCloud as tortured artist saved by love? That's the story. So you've heard that one, okay. But is it just meh? I don't think so. I mean, he calls it a romance, so I think you gotta give him his due for working within a genre. But in looking at it again, I am not convinced it is entirely successful. Neither Smith nor his wife are all that memorable.

I said I was skeptical about his being able to tell a story in comics, a real story, given that fact that for twenty years he has essentially been known as a comics theory genius. But the art here is breathtaking on every level, and in it he's putting on a clinic of art-making in his story about art-making. And the finish, set up only in part by the Deal, still manages a couple surprises, a couple twists. I liked it quite a bit. It's ultimately a meditation on time and making use of the limited number of days we are alive to live the best life possible. I gave it 5 stars on first reading and now, 2 1/2 years later, maybe informed by time and distance from it and wider reading in graphic novels, think it is maybe a 2.5 star story, with a 5 star art credit. Comics Graphic Novels We're so proud to have published this graphic novel!

Scott McCloud is one of the most thoughtful people in the comics industry we know -- he literally wrote the book on comics, after all! And with THE SCULPTOR, he takes all that knowledge abotu how comics works and fuses it seamlessly into a wonderful, engaging, magical narrative.

You guys should definitely check this one out! Comics Graphic Novels WOW this took a dark twist I was not expecting! I'm just a huge fan of graphic novels that are LONG because it's so nice to see character growth and to have time to explore bigger plot arcs and intricacies that are lost on you in littler series, or shorter stand-alones. This stands alongside Blankets as one of my new favs, even though I didn't find myself going WOW at the end of this one. The art and dialogue and everything was just mediocre, but it's the characters and the story that really drove this home for me. Although the weird sculptor powers in exchange for death was pretty weird and it was executed strangely and unclearly, I loved how this book showed so vividly the topics of failure and frustration and poverty and overcoming hardship, and it was especially enlightening about the art community and the struggles that upcoming artists face every day. It was definitely a graphic novel that I connected with, but there were just some plotting issues that dragged this down for me because of the strangeness of it, like I said. Comics Graphic Novels David Smith is a New York sculptor who’s in a bad way: he’s broke, and his patron’s dropped him. He meets Death, in the form of his dead uncle Harry, and makes a deal: David’s life in exchange for the ability to sculpt anything with his bare hands in any material for 200 days. David is literally giving his life to his art. Then David falls for Meg, an actor, and tries to undo his pledge.

The Sculptor was one of the most pretentious, self-important, twee, annoying, and bloated comics I’ve ever had the displeasure to read. I’m baffled that this is getting rave reviews because there’s nothing here to warrant that.

David Smith (a bland name for a bland person) is a complete narcissistic tosspot. A whiny, immature dick with pathetic ideals who can’t get his head out of his bumhole and join the rest of us in reality. Sculpting is everything man, if I can’t make art, I don’t wanna live! Etc. He lives off other people’s money and rants about how everyone in the New York art scene is a hack except him. This is what passes for a “grown-up” these days?! He is the most punchable comics character I’ve come across in some time – and I’ve recently read comics featuring racists and rapists!

Joining David on his oh-so-precious quest to produce art is Meg, the generic manic-pixie-dream-girl, who floats around NYC dressed as an angel, performing in the street because reality can be magical toooooo. Later she’ll do Shakespeare in the park because arrrt is niiice and Shakespeare is, like, awesome. They fall in love and about 400 pages of this interminable 500 page book is devoted to the two making the googly eyes at one another. Make that two completely punchable characters!

So that’s the book: David sculpts “edgy” stuff out of everyday materials – lampposts, the pavement, the sides of buildings – because his hands are magic now, and then he and Meg go through the usual stereotypical romance drivel. It’s superficial, unconvincing, and utterly phony. Cliches abound: the tortured artist cliche, the deal for his life/soul with a supernatural entity cliche, playing chess with death cliche.

The question is, why is this 500 pages long? It’s such a simple tale that did not need to be this lengthy. Did we need extra-long sequences about being Jewish? Did we need to hear about the intrigues of David’s art dealer’s love life? Did we need to see David and Meg’s ridiculous courtship when we know they’ll hook up? When it’s not unnecessary, it’s predictable, and it adds up to nothing special. It’s long because “important” books are long and that’s all.

Sure, the art is pretty and I suppose it’s an accurate representation of the intensity the urge to create can be. Like his most famous book, Understanding Comics, McCloud can tell a story through pictures well. But the story is so full of vapid melodrama and po-faced claptrap that it doesn’t read like it was written by an experienced cartoonist in his 50s and more like an art student who hasn’t had to face any real challenges yet. I mean, how simplistic is the view that you can either have a good life or make good art - you CAN have both, many great artists have managed it! And this idea that jobs aren’t for real artists is nonsense. You know TS Eliot worked in a bank when he wrote The Wasteland?

It’s such a douchey overtly arty book, I kept wanting to see David and Meg get twatted instead of succeed. It reads like the lamest indie movie – think Garden State-level insipidness. Understanding the technical side to comics is one thing; having a story worth telling is another. The Sculptor is a storytelling disaster because McCloud doesn’t come up with anything original and isn’t a good enough writer to delve beneath the surface to find anything of substance.

The worst part about the manic-pixie-dream-girl scenario is that the female character never really becomes a character – she’s there to act as a catalyst of real change in the male character’s life. Without going into spoilers, after reading this, if you’re not familiar with it, look up Gail Simone’s “Women in Refrigerators” theory – it’s shocking that McCloud would utilise something this hackneyed and clueless in his “important” comic.

The Sculptor proves indie comics can be just as shallow, childish and rote as anything starring superheroes. Comics Graphic Novels

Scott McCloud Ú 2 Summary

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.