City of Glass

"City of Glass" was like no comic I'd ever read before, and just as Brad predicted last year when he mentioned it, I was really amazed by it. It's a really quick read with 'stripped down' art, but really complex in its story and meaning.

I've never read the original Auster story on which it's based, but have glanced at it a few times working at Barnes&Noble, but reading it, it's hard to imagine it wasn't originally intended for a the comic format to begin with. Karasik and Mazzucchelli, really used different types of word/picture combinations that you usually don't see in mainstream comics, and the result is quite effective. In fact, McCloud references "City of Glass" on p.137 in "Making Comics" with the Inderpendent panels such as the scene with the Auster family inviting Quin to dinner and his internal tormoil portrayed through pictures.
I think we can also see some Parallel combinations where the words and pictures don't seem to connect at all, like that entire sequence with Peter Stillman talking to Quinn and all the random images that have their own thought balloons.

Additionally, "City of Glass" uses many of the transitions McCloud mentions, not often utilized in American comics. We don't see too much action-to-action transitions associated with the superhero genre, but we do see a lot Subject-to-Subject, Scenes-to-Scenes, and even some Aspect-to-Aspect, and Non Sequiturs, like with Peter's Stillman's speech for the latter.

Going back to the idea that what appears a simple style actually contains complexity was something I was really impressed with. The scene where Quinn goes back to his apartment and sees that someone else now lives there, he later asks a series of questions, one of which is that girl the same one he met at Grand Central? Flipping back to those pages, sure enough, both girls are the same, or at least drawn to look similar to each other.

I had difficulty finding where Auster got his title from, the closest thing I could find was a 1952 Jazz composition called City of Glass, which may or may not have connection.

As for Ur-Lanauge and Ikonologosplatt, I had trouble finding those as well, except in relation to Spiegelman's introduction. But from what he wrote, I think he was talking about the language of comics before two of its basic building blocks (words and images) became separted, the proto or pure language of comics. Then Ikonologsplatt could be the pure collaboration between the two, since Spiegelman calls "City of Glass" modern Ikonologosplatt.