Bottomless Bellybutton by Dash Shaw

wow wow wow wow wow wow

It's like if Chester Brown set out to do everything Chris Ware wishes he could do, but funnier.

Best book I have read all year.

I'm sold. Where?

on Fanta.

The only art comics publisher that's also a delicious fruit-flavored soda! Thx.

Wow, artist dude has his own weird ongoing (color!) on-the-online epic serial.

I had never heard of him before, it was just a happy bit of serendipity at the public library finding the book. (Well not really 'serendipity' proper bcz I was looking at the graphic novels section. They get like every new book!)

I really enjoyed this book too. It felt a lot more balanced and human(e) than a lot of somewhat similar indie books by established artists, and was not mired in sadsack misanthropy, even when it went to dark places. I especially enjoyed all the stuff with the youngest sibling, and really appreciated the sister character too.

Also, gotta say, for such a huge book, I zoomed through it. Read the whole thing in two sittings.

Funnily enough I also borrowed this from the library recently - really enjoyed it, some interesting new storytelling ideas/approaches - don't really see that it has that much in common w/ chris ware's work, and the artwork is nowhere near as good as ware's drawing

It shares the same obsessive detailing of minutiae as Ware's --- every detail of each person's backstories, all the house plans, coded letters. Certainly not the draftsmanship of Ware's drawing (which I find kind of distracting sometimes, actually --- it took me a long time to realize (and then to believe) Jimmy Corrigan hadn't been put together in Illustrator), or his extreme condensation of detail in space.

Hence the Ches comparison: same kind of thing he does (or did early on) with a lot of negative space on the page; loose placement of panels; itchy, narrow lines. Also totes had a "Ed the Happy Clown" looseness & weirdness, but matched his more intimate stuff, too. Full of those tiny one-panel surprise epiphanies that throw everything into a different perspective, esp. that one look at the youngest brother as seen from the perspective of his girlfriend. So good.

I liked that he just allowed some of the characters to be dumb, everyday dumbies without casting aspersions.

Also, gotta say, for such a huge book, I zoomed through it. Read the whole thing in two sittings.

― Dr. Perpetua, Monday, November 24, 2008

Cracking the coded letters slows you down though. But anyway, great book.

just bought, based as much on Abbott love as anything. Somebody owes me twenny fi if this sucks.

Okay, that was great; you get a gold star again, Ms. A. Far better than anyone's first book has any right to be. I read it in the recommended three sittings and it sat just right.

I definitely saw a lot of Chester Brown and a (kinder, gentler) Joe Matt in BBB's minimalism and deceptively simple art and dialogue, but there's something really unique going on here as well. The considerable bulk of the book ultimately was beside the point; dude just wanted a big enough canvas to work on. The utter lack of pretension is refreshing and makes up for whatever small sins of narrative slackness pop up. Recommended for Jonathan Franzen or Rick Moody fans.

Probably the best thing about this is that it's never cruel, always honest and expects a lot from the reader... all qualities that I'm discovering I value inordinately in fiction (and non-fiction!) these days.

The "do-i-look-like-a-weird-frog" moment kinda floored me.

I am checking this out, thanks for the recommendation!

Not his first book, Forks (earlier ones are "Love Eats Brains," "The Mother's Mouth" and the short story collection "GoddessHead"). But yeah, he's 25 years old...

Douglas, Fanta put those out?
25? Sheesh.

"Love Eats Brains" was Odd God, "Goddess Head" was Meathaus, "The Mother's Mouth" was Alternative Comics. And "Body World" is going to be Pantheon.

You written about this kid on the web d?

Doesn't so much deepen as accumulate. And the distancing flourishes that pop up every fifteen pages or so seem more decorative than anything. Nonetheless, pretty decent.

ALSO:
Did anyone else suspect that the Peter/Kat relationship was gonna end in a "Charlize Theron in Arrested Development season three" punchline? That would've been swell!

All I've done so far is a review of BBB in the Wash. Post. But I'm hoping to get to write about him more soon.

Oh, and he drew a Dr. Strange story, pages of which have been circulating for a bit: http://meathaus.com/2007/05/21/may-thine-amulet-never-tarnish/

lol o lol o lol, that's awesome.

Body Worlds, on his website, is freaking great but it also gives me flashbacks.

I'm glad I didn't put you out of a smooth quarter-hundred, forks.

t'was a piewedge o'hundo well placed

This came in the mail yesterday and I'm now almost halfway through and http://fluentin6months.com/images/mcdonalds.jpg

Any book that gets me to fully decode a love letter is something special.

Nice stuff, good recommendation. I tore through it in one long sitting tonight (still need to get around to decoding that last long letter, though). I feel like this would make a really boring, cliched arthouse indie film, but in this form it really works, especially the scattering of letters and bits of memories and minutia.

What about arthouse indie animation?

I just don't think it would work on film, especially all those flavoring transitional/pacing scenes, the juxtapositions and timing, all that stuff. But the story itself (divorcing parents, kids forced together for one last weekend with their new families, they all have different personalities and try to work it out) reminded me of The Royal Tenenbaums especially (which do I really like) and tons of movies I can't recall offhand.

Finally got around to reading BodyWorld - really good! I'm usually kind of let down by webcomics that are Eisner-nominated or have some kind of "critical acclaim" but this was definitely a step up from BBB (which I was already impressed by) in most ways. Very interested in Shaw's other work now.

dash shaw is one of the featured people at the ape show in san francisco this fall... kind of excited to see what he has to say.

Bodyworld, hubba 2x.

Bodyworld cover says NSFW on the spine. ^_^

haha! well, it is nsfw!

The Haunted High School

Only just read BBB (had been put off by the title, until I actualy saw the book and fell in love)--what an ace thing it is!

The Haunted High School = loooooooooooooooooooooool

^ troo

hay ladeeeez:

"If I run out of money, I’ll move back to Richmond, where I paid 200 dollars a month for a shitty room, and work as a figure-drawing model again for 12 bucks an hour. I drew all of Bottomless that way, but right now I have even more time to do whatever I want. I don’t know how long it’ll last."

from http://www.bigshinyrobot.com/reviews/archives/10987

the back and forth with dash and david mazzuchelli in the 300th comics journal is illuminating.
dude doesn't like David B, which I am surprised by and sympathetic to; says his work looks like illuminated script.

what does that mean

that the pictures compliment the words instead of working with them to create a story. I get the same problem with Pope's work. It's the difference between illustrating and cartooning.

i have to get cj 300. i've been putting it off, but those intergenerational interviews are a really fucking cool idea.

Man I don't get that re Pope at ALL

the words can at times be pointless or lame in Pope works, but the art is never illustrating them - his storytelling is all cartooning, it's the prose that's occasionally redundant ( and rarely that, just that he's not a GOOD prose or dialogue writer [and it's usually Popey enough that you get a good effect from it that different writing wouldn't - I'm thinking here of the Bugs in THB, for eg])

PS: drunk

the redundancy of text is another facet of the same problem. Illustrated text can certainly be done well (Hal Foster comes to mind immediately) but it's a different animal that cartooning.

cj300 is great. Chaykin vs HChe Anderson and Matt Fraction v Denny O' Neill are great. They're all great. I find CJ's criticism and reporting preachy and near unreadable but the reprinting of classic material and industry interviews make it a must-read every month for me.

man he is SO OFF about david b. at least re. "epileptic."

i know you and douglas love the guy but I can't really track him.

i'm not saying you need to bow before dude like he's the burning bush -- though i would definitely class "epileptic" top ten of the decade -- but there's so much of his stuff that's dependent on the visuals to "work" that i just think shaw's way off base. but at the same time, yeah: i suspect david b. would be an equally excellent prose author, whereas i can't imagine reading a mazzucchelli or shaw _novel_ and getting as much out of it as their comics.

(all of my david b. books are 100 miles away right now so i cant pull out specific examples so mea culpa.)

oh for sure.
not to be spoilery, but the "do you think you look like a frog" thing is only do-able in this medium. come to think of it, like 90% of polyp is impossible to imagine in non-comics form too.
fwiw, mazzucchelli loves david b

in shaw's defense, once i sit down and read "bodyworld" in one book-sized chunk, i'll probably end up rating it above "epileptic." dude's chops as a formalist are just freaky scary for his age.

his use of color alone just makes my head spin/heart swell. (and is -- potential heresy alert -- more radical/effective than mazzucchelli's in polyp.)

that's saying a lot. you know that mazzucchelli was his teacher for awhile, right?
i'm real excited to read bodyworld; i've avoided reading it online so i can get the one sitting read effect.

shaw's definitely TRYING to be more radical than polyp - the formal use of colour is actually pretty reserved [even obvious] in polyp, it's just that everything it's doing is stuff that no-one normally bothers, cares or tries to do in comics

yeah i guess it's just the philistine in me that reads "reserved" as "obvious," at least until i remember that 75 percent of what passes for "good color" in comics still looks like the artist/colorist wiped the pages somewhere unpleasant.

another way of saying it that's possibly less divisive/defensible: polyp's use of color: depicting emotional states. bodyworld's use of color: as much for dramatic/narrative effect as anything else.

nb: i'm on like my third bourbon (and approximately four hours of sleep) if this makes no sense/if i'm stating the obvious.

also "less divisive/_more_ defensible"

read Bottomless Bellybutton and Bodyworld yesterday. This guy is now my favourite person ever.

Going to go back and decode the stuff in Bottomless Bellybutton that I didn't bother with when I was reading it.

His collaboration with Ted Tom Kaczynski in the latest issue of MOME is pretty great. It's beautifully drawn, and has an intriguing digital dystopia setup which is bizarre but logical in a funny kind of way. The inhabitants are "living" as digital copies, but they're stuck in the Uncanny Valley which makes some inhabitants "bio-nostalgic" for their lives as hard copies (AKA, their human bodies). Any comic short that gets you to look up "Dyson sphere" on wikipedia deserves accolades imo. But then, it just...ends. It wraps up. Always leave 'em wanting more, I guess.

didn't know bodyworld was available yet, gotta get that

The hardcover isn't out yet. I think the release date is April. The online version has been available for free on his website, though.

yeah i just read it online. Will definitely buy it when it's available. Thought it was a great improvement on Bottomless, which i loved anyway.

Yeah...I liked BBB a lot, but I never thought that the same guy who wrote that would be producing these awesome sci-fi stories.

agreed!

the unclothed man in the 35th century AD is a pretty awesome sci fi story too... also, tom kaczynski is awesome in his own right - i've only read his mome stories, but they're all fantastic.

'Any comic short that gets you to look up "Dyson sphere" on wikipedia deserves accolades imo.'

It might be homage to this:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M1__ZyAOQuc

When Riker goes, "A Dyson sphere?", Picard goes, "I'm not surprised you haven't heard of it" then I swear he mutters "YOU IGNORANT AMERICAN" under his breath.

re: bottomless bellybutton, I read somewhere the guy just walked up to gary groth with no references and dropped a 40 pound manuscript on him and the next day groth called him up and said, "Hey you, I must publish this." How many times has this approach ever worked in comics?

is that true? he wasn't exactly a no-name before BBB came out, although he was a much smaller name.

tbh I had never read Bodyworld because I always figured I'd wait until the print edition came out, but my willpower broke down last night and I started reading it. This made me lol for some reason:

http://i50.tinypic.com/htd5w5.jpg

I don't want to skip to the end and ruin it, but can someone tell me if the full story is online, or does it cut off early?

(According to his bloggins he's also at work on a new comic called Torture Hospital.)

It's all online, but from what I understand the print version has extra, new or revised material, so you might just want to get that one if you can wait.

http://i49.tinypic.com/24xna0y.jpg
Last thing I'll mention this before actually reading all of it, promise. :)

man i really want that book!

http://dashshaw.blogspot.com/2010/03/making-abyss-mocca-show.html

Kinda tempted to head out for his appearance, though I'm always too lazy to show up for these things... haven't been to a Mocca thing in years.

dieball trophy!

http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_7kulKsz6MeQ/S6FJoAHDQtI/AAAAAAAAAXc/VSztOGXuDtk/s1600/dash_composite.jpg

planning on seeing him sign bodyworld april 13 at the strand; any other ny'ers wanna go with me?

ditto for me in SF/berkeley!

well, on april 26th - 28th, not on the 13th (obv)

Oh hell yes – Body World came in the mail today. The title page says it's "Intended for the 'ideal reader'" and to read it "naked in bed."

ha ha, i got that today too <3. acne novelty library.
have not gone further than the first few pages, while i finish up something else; kinda curious to see if unfolding the map is as integral as intended. it is a weird shiny object.

having read it on the internet i would say no, but maybe try and read it with the map in mind just to please ol' dash.

also i must buy this!

bought my signed copy yesterday it's kind of scaring me a bit in its monotlithicness

also got it in the mail 2 days ago.

mine should come in on monday... he's doing a few signings in the bay area, so i'll be sure to bring it. if anyone else is dying for a signed copy, let me know!

http://www.movieline.com/2010/04/new-sundance-lab-projects-include-ondi-timoner-dash-shaw.php

with james cameron mitchell!

Lots more about The Ruined Cast, including a 4-minute teaser. It looks AWESOME. holy shit.

Expected to be released 4Q 2011, let the countdown begin!

btw this thread should maybe be renamed "Dash Shaw's Bottomless Bellybutton", or something that incorporates his name to make it easier to search for ilx0rs of the future

btw, what did everyone think of Bodyworld? I really loved the first 3/4 of it or so, but tbh I thought it started tailing off a bit at the end. Still one of my fav things he's done so far, though.

btw, did anyone else pick up the The Unclothed Man in the 35th Century compilation? There's a story in there about people of the future living in some self-contained spaceship with many floors in a system designed to prevent inbreeding that's probably my very favorite thing of his that I've seen.

Satellite CMYK was the name of the short I was referencing with the people living in the isolated floors, btw

Also, (sorry I'm on Dash Shaw overload today) there's a decent interview here.

I especially like this, which is basically an awesome unwritten epilogue to Bodyworld:

That said, if there was a telepathy-inducing drug, I think it should be experimented with, in a controlled environment, and I would definitely want to try it. But it's dangerous because if it becomes too widespread, it would lead to a hive mind, which is what happens in "BodyWorld." However, eventually, after the hive mind has become the norm, then people would find ways to "shield" their bodymind from the other members of the hive and things would return to almost exactly the way things are now, pre-telepathy. But that would all happen many years after the "BodyWorld" story ends.

And also this little bit about how his animation work is affecting his comics:

oing animation increases your sensitivity to your body, because you have to think about how you walk and move. You have to do a million little drawings for the most mundane things. You could do a comic like that, but it'd take a lot of pages and very little would happen, which is I guess what "Bottomless" is like. Now that I'm doing animation more, my comics are getting leaner, tighter, and more detailed. If you do a hundred drawings of someone sitting down for an animation, you want to work on one detailed comic page next, to keep yourself balanced.

I thought bodyworld was fun and well structured but showed his need to mature as a writer... he got away with some silly scripting in bellybutton but it felt a bit strained and precious at times in bodyworld
that said: i'm so excited this guy is on the scene. hope he doesn't become a filmmaker

name-checking P. Chung twice - nice! wouldn't have guessed that as influence

btw, did anyone else pick up the The Unclothed Man in the 35th Century compilation?

I bought UNCLOTHED MAN this week, just thinking it was a collection of miscellaneous Shaw shawts. Imagine my annoyance when, removed from plastic shrinkwrap, the inside flap helpfully explains that it's 20% storyboards for a cartoon I can't watch, and 80% stuff I already have. Fuuuuck off, helpful bookshop.

― Oh boy, Midgard! That's where I'm a Viking! (sic), Saturday, 1 May 2010 18:12 (4 weeks ago)

You can watch the ifc stuff free online, although none of them look nearly as cool as the trailer to his new film imo

I watched all of Unclothed Man online and thought it was amazing.

IFC even started geoblocking their podcasts a few years ago!

sic, you can't watch these?

http://www.ifc.com/unclothed-man-in-the-35th-century-ad/

unclothed man also collects his blind date short story, which is one of my favorite things of his. when i went to see him talk in berkeley, he talked about how there was going to be a whole book of these, based on pages from a blind date tribute website that he had bookmarked, but when the website went down and he couldn't get in touch with the page administrator, he gave up and moved on to other projects.

he's working on a new book in addition to the animation stuff, so i don't think the printed page is in danger of losing him just yet.

sic, you can't watch these?

hmm, I tried, but after two minutes of buffering-and-playing, the ad before either Schrodinger's Shaw or a message saying that this content is unavailable in my area had made it from 31 seconds remaining to 21 seconds remaining.

BTW I should have said that Satellite CMYK was indeed great, in Mome. There was a high-school-set one that struck me the most from his contributions, though. I suppose I might as well actually turn the pages of the hardcover and read it again.

he got away with some silly scripting in bellybutton but it felt a bit strained and precious at times in bodyworld

disagree! found bodyworld a real leap forward in art and script! opinions!

got my copy of bodyworld yesterday and re-read it last night in bed (but not naked). The vertical format - which i found interesting and novel to start with, then somewhat suspicious and cumbersome, and finally it just felt natural - is cool, and the book just looks great.

I liked the way that the fluoro orange ink on the left-hand side, where the spine would normally be, made satisfying snapping noises as I opened each fresh double-page.

i keep moving house and whenever i come across this thing tucked away in a pile of books i'm sure that it's the nicest shiny-brown object i own

as a banana slug farmer, I still agree with you

I finished editing the layouts for the new book I’m working on. I started working on this comic last year, simultaneously with the animation, but after going to the Sundance Screenwriters Lab (for The Ruined Cast) I decided to scratch what I’d done on the comic and script it all out- like a comic script, all words, and then from that I did the layouts in sketchbooks.

This is the first long book I’ve completely laid out and scripted beforehand. Usually I’d start with an outline or piece together and rearrange separate scenes, but I’ve tried a lot of different ways, and I’ve written scripts for shorter comics before.

http://i54.tinypic.com/2whgvna.jpg

PUMPED

"Ruined Cast" is one of those things where it's like they scanned my brain to figure out just what I'd like most to exist in the world w/out consciously realizing it. I am stoked. And also excited for whatever comic comes out of that epic stack of scripts!

<3 Dash Shaw

"Ruined Cast" is one of those things where it's like they scanned my brain to figure out just what I'd like most to exist in the world w/out consciously realizing it.

Definitely. Frank Santoro contributes, too! It's going to be awesome, there's no way around it

frank santoro is awesome. i've emailed him back and forth about buying books and art from him, and there's this really noticeable and funny trend in his tone going from REALLY EXCITED THAT I'M INTERESTED IN HIS ART to just. barely. tolerating. me. he's still awesome, though.

Dash Shaw photographed for L'Uomo Vogue

he gets a groomer now?

bit of a dash shaw reference/influence in the new Chris Ware book, Lint, I think. Just a bit?

Dash posted some character model sheets from the Ruined Cast (still really excited for this btw!) this morning. Character model sheets are pretty much my favorite thing to look at in the world, I think.

http://i52.tinypic.com/2nb7qkk.jpg

http://i51.tinypic.com/103x160.jpg

http://i52.tinypic.com/oktxqw.jpg

I like Jose's full, puffy lips. They look satisfying to draw.

me too. Jose's my fav out of the three. I had the following exchange with Dash on his blog:

ZS
December 6, 2010 at 10:37 am
These model sheets are so fun to look at. I especially love Jose and his chiseled jawline. If you have any more I’d love to see them!

Dash Shaw
December 6, 2010 at 10:49 am
Thanks, ZS. I’ll post more later. Some of them get pretty sloppy, though. Mostly I try to keep everything very simple and generic-looking, knowing that when different people draw the same person it’ll always move a little off-model. If it’s generic, like a house style, everyone can shoot for the same face and it’ll end up a little wonky in its consistency (which I like) while still being recognizable as the same character.

:D

I should write Dash Shaw a letter.

Yesterday I went with the family to see Rabbit Hole, new movie w/ Nicole Kidman and Aaron Eckhart directed by John Cameron Mitchell from Hedwig. It was OK. As my girlfriend described it "grief porn". But at some point you see a hand drawing these designs and it looked interesting but you weren't sure who was doing it. A bit later they start drawing faces and I immediately thought "that looks just like Dash Shaw's style" but it was pretty basic and I thought it was a coincidence. Later you see the complete drawings, a full comic book a character was drawing called "Rabbit Hole" and soon as they showed it I knew immediately it was his. The character in the movie even describes the comic, something about parallel universes and a teenager with a double looking for his father or something. In other words, a Dash Shaw comic. It looked great, I hope they release it!

Yeah I saw the drawings in the trailer and thought "D. SHaw???" I missed Mitchell's name in the trailer or I probably would have made the connection bcz they're both doing "The Ruined Cast." I want to see it in spite of it looking like 90 straight mins of a divorce (iirc?).

I didn't even put the Ruined Cast thing together. I can't believe how excited I am for the Ruined Cast. And in general I can't believe how excited I am about Dash Shaw. Been a long time since any kind of artist has affected me this way.

Anyway, divorce issues are there, but it's more about coping, or not coping, and people's various ways of coping. It has some funny bits and some melodramatic bits. It's worth watching I suppose but not a priority.

wait...what's the deal with Rabbit Hole? I didn't know about any of this! Is Dash Shaw (the real person) putting out a comic called Rabbit Hole? Or did they just use some of his drawings in the movie? Sorry, feel like a dummy here, totally hungover.

yes. http://blog.electricantzine.com/dash-shaw-hands-and-art-in-rabbit-hole

thanks!

also, that post pointed to a video that Dash put up on the Ruined Cast blog once that's cool:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fcbHwS_hDBk

http://www.strandbooks.com/strandicon

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/999818113/the-ruined-cast-an-animated-feature-by-dash-shaw-0?ref=recommended

The Ruined Cast has a kickstarter thing going now:

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/999818113/the-ruined-cast-an-animated-feature-by-dash-shaw-0?ref=recommended

Along with the list of things you "get" if you donate at various levels (i'm probably going to splurge and go for the $40 to get a ltd. edition print from the film+digital download of film on release day+signed postcard - rich people may want to donate $1000 and get themselves drawn into the movie itself), it also includes this description of the project:

The Ruined Cast is a hand-drawn animated feature I’ve written and am directing. It’s my first attempt into feature-length animating. I’ve been tamed, beaten, and trained by producers John Cameron Mitchell (director of Hedwig & The Angry Inch, Shortbus and Rabbit Hole), Howard Gertler (Shortbus & Bobcat Goldthwait's World’s Greatest Dad) and Biljana Labovic (Bill Plympton’s Idiots & Angels) to bring this to the screen. The video above is a teaser meant to prematurely arouse you for a movie night that is two million drawings away from completion.

I’ve also been developing the project at the scenic Sundance Institute’s Screenwriting & Directing Labs. It’s been a loving, collaborative environment in which I’ve honed the script and learned to mercilessly manipulate actors and crew.

What’s the story?

Michael Malone has created an enclosed scientific community, Argus, where he experiments on the population and the members of his own family. His latest experiment is a personality-altering cosmetic shell. If you don the shell of another person, their personality seeps into you. Aided by gross overdoses of Jamais Vu pills, which give you the experience of feeling something for the first time (as opposed to déjà vu), you can be completely reborn in a new personality. When he loses a test subject in this new process, his control over Argus and his family begins to unravel. His art student son finds and hides the escaped test subject and plans to overthrow his father’s work!

uh, multiple weird things in that post of mine just now, sorry. for some reason even with stupid posts like this i end up trying to write it several different ways, with different versions of the post, and then sometimes i forget to clean up the mess before hitting the "submit post" button.

Oh man, I've never wanted to throw $$$ at anything so bad.

I funded 50 bucks. It's not a lot of time to raise that much money, but I kinda think there's two kinds of projects on Kickstarter. The ones nobody really cares about that raise a little money from family and the ones everyone already loves and will raise more then they need.

or not.

$40 for an image from the film seems like a good buy

and he's at the strand in half an hour!

Wld maybe throw in for the $150 pkg if Justin3 & ytth hadn't already hooked me up with an Unclothed Man... decorated by Shaw.

Also those 'thank you' portraits at the end of Bottomless Belly Button make me think whoever has the disposable $1k probably will not be disappointed.

$40 for an image from the film seems like a good buy

Plus a signed postcard and digital download of film!

knowing my luck, the image from the film that i get will be an extreme close-up of poolwater or something, just a flat grey-blue

http://www.globaltotaloffice.com/textiles_finishes/large/DF_94_GreyBlue.jpg

limited edition still!

i threw in $40 as well. 25K is a lot, but i hope he gets it.

this is off the subject of dash shaw, but still comics related: this is the most recent kickstarter i donated to.

everyone should at least watch the video - it's pretty rad.

i love bodyworld soooooooo much

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8W9xtzY5Lmw

yo shaw fans... desert island is selling an awesome bodyworld print for $15 on eBay right now... http://www.ebay.com/itm/Dash-Shaw-BodyWorld-hand-printed-and-signed-art-print-/220946476470?pt=LH_DefaultDomain_0&hash=item33716fadb6#ht_500wt_1313

this used to be way more expensive, and it's really cool (and enormous).

also zs - did you ever get the print from the ruined cast kickstarter sent to you? i got mine pretty recently, and i have to say, it was great but totally not what i was expecting.

I got the ruined cast print as well. I dont' know where I'll put it, it doesn't go anywhere in my place! I've met the guy who does a lot of Dash's and Desert Island's printing, he just moved his shop to a bigger space in brooklyn and had an open studio party thursday night:

http://havenpress.com/

How did you guys hang your Dieball prints? nails? tape? psychic spells?

i never hung mine! it's in a folder of prints i just "had to have" but never got around to hanging. for most stuff, unless it was really expensive, i put it in a poster frame.

Hung it up with some tape and my wall is looking MIGHTY FINE right now. Wish I could've afforded the kickstarter Ruined Cast print while it was available.

I think Bodyworld is what helped me understand the insaniac later poetry of William Blake.

so, i didn't realize that he pretty much abandoned his old website(s) and started a tumblr at http://dashshaw.tumblr.com/. He's actually been updating it pretty frequently, sometimes with new information about his animated film and forthcoming book, sometimes with older videos he's done, old cover art, etc. this is probably old news for those who pay more attention than i do, but:

• New book coming out via Fantagraphics in Spring 2013! New School. Lots of information here
• Also a comic book called 3 New Stories. Some limited information at the previous link.
• His animated film, The Ruined Cast, appears to have a new title: Shell Game.
• Sounds like making it has been a crazy process. In this entry he talks about redrawing all the storyboards, drawing 20 minutes of animation in color only toss it all out and start over in black and white.

oh cool! glad he has a new book, like i sorta appreciate dipping into news about his animation, &c, but it feels at a tangent from how concretely exciting i found the couple of books. like i might just think it's cool or something.

update just sent out to the Ruined Cast kickstarter supporters:

We made a new short film! Seraph! Part of the Sigur Ros Valtari Mystery Film Experiment! It's playing at Sundance later this month. Hey, if you backed us to receive an original drawing from the feature, but would like an original drawing from this too, please let us know and we will mail you one! I sleep next to stacks of these drawings and I'm eager to send them to backers...

Also, other news: I have a new personal tumblr! dashshaw.tumblr.com

The longer animation is chugging along. I hope you liked Seraph... But do you like comic books too? You should! I have a bunch of new comic books coming out in April. A graphic novel called New School that took me years and years to make, plus a couple zines (New Jobs and Family Feud) and also a comic book called 3 New Stories.

The short film, Seraph, is embedded in the message, but here's the link: http://vimeo.com/valtarifilmexperiment/mitchell-dash

Haven't been able to watch since I'm at work.

dash shaw follows me on tumblr now! he probably follows everyone else back, but still :) :)

he follows me too, and i was also excited about it. high five!

hey, crabbott or z s or others, did any of you pickup the new dash shaw? it's called NEW SCHOOL or something, is set in the 90s & costs $40 & looks really good. I could read a new dash shaw book right now.

new school is really good, but i liked bodyworld better. there's something about new school that feels a little unfinished - i get what he was trying to do, but (and this is weird to say about a 350-page book), but it could have used about 100 more pages of development in the middle. i like that he's trying stuff graphically that no one else in comics is doing right now. at some point he's going to bust out an absolute masterpiece, and it will be amaziing. new school doesn't quite get there, but it's still one of the best books i've read this year. (i'm a huge fanboy, though, so if you're lukewarm on him, you may not like this as much.)

hey! thanks ytth. that's really interesting. i still feel sorta torn by bodyworld, like it maybe had some similar kind of lacunae that could have existed differently. but then it's nice for someone to be working casually & freely in that medium. flicking through the new one made it look lovely, those kinda weirdly brash rauschenberg-coloured spreads in the middle. i hope i get to pick it up. out of curiosity & totally permitting you to go off-topic, what else did you read this year that you liked?

the new dash shaw

He has three new books this year btw, all with "New" in the title

Dash talking about his new books.

I have meant to buy New School for a while but I want to get it from the comics store in town I like and haven't had a chance...

it pains me to say, but i was pretty let down by New School. i don't share ytth's overall enthusiasm, but i do agree with this...

there's something about new school that feels a little unfinished - i get what he was trying to do, but (and this is weird to say about a 350-page book), but it could have used about 100 more pages of development in the middle.

...except that i don't understand what he was trying to do. he made a decision to have the main character speak in a purposefully exaggerated formal old fashioned way, but i don't think it ended up being nearly as funny or interesting as he thought it would be. i also found it difficult to get interested in any of the main characters. in bottomless bellybutton i was so sympathetic toward the frog teen, and recognized elements of myself and others in the rest of the characters. in bodyworld (still my favorite dash shaw work - i'm a bit obsessed) the oddball psychotropic professor was so enjoyable to watch, just the epitome of a slimeball. but New School...i just didn't care what happened to them!

agreed that it's a beautiful book, though.

to be less of a downer, here was a recent post on dash's tumblr that is going to cost me some $$:

I’ve been working on this tonight. I’ve just been thinking about possible presentations. I made a list of single comics that I could easily talk about, each one, for over an hour. So this isn’t my “favorite comics” list… it’s my “I can ramble on endlessly about this book, without any encouragement at all, and bore everyone” list. As of September 4th, 2013, 11pm, off the top of my head. Here you go:

Ayako / Tezuka

Inner City Romance by Guy Colwell

X-Day by Setona Mizushiro

Paying for It / Chester Brown

Underwater / Chester Brown

City of Glass adapted by Mazzucchelli / Karasik

Vengeance Squad / Pete Morisi

Ninja by Brian Chippendale

Wilson by Daniel Clowes

Ranma 1/2 by Rumiko Takahashi

Black Blizzard by Yoshihiro Tatsumi

bodyworld was dope in a lot of ways, but it still sort of left me unsatisfied... like the idea of the next phase of human consciousness being an anti-individualist hivemind nightmare could have somehow been pushed in a more interesting direction. i think i will check out the new one.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8epyx7pt184

i haven't watched all of this yet, but 16:45-23:00 is worth watching if you've ever read his wheel of fortune/blind date/family feud stuff, where he basically just transcribes an episode, straight up. i found these to be pretty much profoundly boring to read through, but listening to him describe his thought process gives it a bit more meaning.

to go back to zs's criticism of new school, here's my thinking on the book. some of this is from my own rumination, although reading some interviews with dash shaw also helped clarify some of his thematic choices. two that stick out are: 1) he taught english in japan as a teenager, and so alot of this book comes from personal experience (although obviously it isn't an autobiography). 2) he was trying to capture what it's like as a teenager when everything that happens to you is the most important thing that has ever happened to anyone, and a lot of the book makes more sense if you think of the narration as limited to what's in danny's head. this is interesting in comics in general, since above-panel narration is often clearly either 1st person or omnicient 3rd person, whereas speech bubbles are associated with whoever is speaking them. it messed with my head a little to try to view the entire comic as something that is limited to danny's perspective, but it works. the overwrought speech stems from this as well - it's meant to convey danny's heightened sense of the significance of everything he says. i realize his dad also talks this way, but to me that illustrates familial bonds in danny's mind, which is why it's significant that his brother stops talking like this after being on X for a while - to danny, even the language spoken by the two brothers illustrates the dissolution of family bonds. and, in a book where much of the plot is driven by teaching language to others, this disconnect between the brothers is pretty ripe for further unpacking.

i also like how clockworld compresses history and time into a single plane where everything that has ever happened is frozen in place so that people can interact with it in whatever way they want to. this is a counterpoint to the teenage perspective where everything happens so fast that it's difficult to make sense of it beyond basic emotional reactions. part of what i wish the book did more of - namely, world building on X - might not be necessary if you begin from the idea that danny's perspective drives the narrative, since he doesn't put together what life is like on X outside of what he sees in each moment. still, his transition from loving X to hating it and rebelling against clockworld is awfully abrupt, even considering the above issue of perspective/narration. the climax doesn't really ring true for me, since a lot of the action is brought about by choices the character made that didn't read as being arrived upon genuinely. (there's some overwrought language for you.) but, as i said in my earlier post, i really liked it, because even through its shortcomings it offers up so much for further discussion and consideration. it's ambitious and even a little groundbreaking, and it reinforces dash shaw's position as one of the most intelligent and creative cartoonists currently working. at some point he's going to come out with an absolute materpiece and it's going to blow my mind to bits.

xpost

interesting list! was always put off guy colwell's work by his very creepy Doll comic, maybe his 'realist' stuff is more interesting. don't know X-Day by Setona Mizushiro at all - always interested in gd new manga recommendations, will have to check it out (love Tezuka and Tatsumi, obv). the pete morisi is a bizarre choice - morisi's own backstory (policeman by day, comic book artist by night) has always struck me as being much more interesting than anything he ever actually wrote/drew - find his artwork incredibly stiff and obviously derivative of ppl like alex toth and george tuska. wilson wld not be my clowes choice.

i will cosine

Paying for It / Chester Brown

Underwater / Chester Brown

City of Glass adapted by Mazzucchelli / Karasik

Wilson by Daniel Clowes

Ranma 1/2 by Rumiko Takahashi

Black Blizzard by Yoshihiro Tatsumi

man, know what i just remembered the other day? The Ruined Cast. his kickstarted animated feature length film (with help from frank santoro). i donated money to this back in April 2011. the last email update on it was from october 2013, and all it talked about was some other short film he was working on (not ruined cast) and the last update that even made a passing mention of the film was from january 2013. meanwhile, the website that he used to post work-in-progress stuff on - http://ruinedcast.com/ - isn't even live anymore.

uh

he seems to have migrated here: http://dashshaw.tumblr.com/

New book: http://www.fantagraphics.com/images/stories/previews/docsds-preview.pdf

yeah that looks innaresting
i think i read the last couple from the library & don't know if a mid-length thing is going to materialise there
also the lecture z s posts upthread is really good! there's a really wonderful section where he talks about david mazzucchelli's theory of the dumb line

man, know what i just remembered the other day? The Ruined Cast. his kickstarted animated feature length film (with help from frank santoro). i donated money to this back in April 2011. the last email update on it was from october 2013, and all it talked about was some other short film he was working on (not ruined cast) and the last update that even made a passing mention of the film was from january 2013. meanwhile, the website that he used to post work-in-progress stuff on - http://ruinedcast.com/ - isn't even live anymore.

i'm not sure if i finally managed to trigger this kickstarter update or not, but the other day i noticed that dash shaw finally got a twitter account, so i asked him if the ruined cast was still a thing or not. he answered "Yes but on hold. New movie with different producers is all drawn, now in editing/sound/redrawing phase. Updates forthcoming."

then, on saturday, they finally sent out an update to all the people who kickstarted the movie back in 2011:

Dear backers of The Ruined Cast,

We realize it’s been awhile since we’ve updated you, and we appreciate your patience. And we don’t want to bury the lead here — Dash is making something, audiovisual and animated, that he is very excited to share with the world.

It’ll be another project distinct from “The Ruined Cast,” with a distinct (and wonderfully distinctive!) producing team. While the creative development of “The Ruined Cast” proceeded beautifully due to the incredible, meaningful support of you, the backers, the financing of the film, as is often the case in the indie world, has taken some time.

In the midst of this, Dash has had the opportunity to make another movie, based on his own original script, that will show off the techniques and storytelling skills that have evolved over the course of developing “The Ruined Cast” (and this film will be the basis for the rewards for backers at the $25 and above levels). It’s a full-time endeavor, which requires putting “The Ruined Cast” on hold. We hope to circle back to “The Ruined Cast” after this new feature is completed (and we would of course provide that as an additional reward if it moves into production).

At its heart, the campaign was about getting Dash to the point of making his first feature — and that’s where he is right now. It's already drawn, is currently in the sound/editing phase, and he expects it to be ready in 2016 (when we said the work was painstaking, we weren't kidding!)
He couldn’t’ve gotten there without your support and patience, for which we’re deeply grateful.

We'll reveal details of the project as they're announced — we promise it will be worth the wait.

Our best regards and in deep gratitude,

Team Ruined Cast

in other words, you ain't getting your movie or your money back, but please give us more cash?

we don’t want to bury the lead

savages

the thing with that project is that the goals and and the rewards didn't align. they were trying to raise money to put together a pitch to financiers, but they were promising downloads of the final movie. still, it sounds like there will still be a movie, and if they do finish the ruined cast, backers will get that as well. so, it doesn't sound to me like they're doing the dreaded "this project won't happen and no one is getting refunds" update that you sometimes hear about years after the fact.

fao karl malone

CLOUGH: The influences you've listed on your comics is staggeringly varied, with film being as important as any cartoonist. How does the work of non-cartoonists influence you, especially filmmakers?

SHAW: Freshman Year at S.V.A. I made a filmmaker friend named Andrew Lucido and he introduced me to a lot of great filmmakers. Tarkovsky, Kiarostami, Bruce Conner, Michael Snow, Bella Tarr, etc., and I worked at the SVA film library for three of my four school years, so I got a strong education there too, and started going to the Anthology Film Archives and stuff like that. I'm interested in beautiful sequences, different people's ideas of what a beautiful sequence is. Andrei Tarkovsky: hate the dialogue. Best to just not read the subtitles, or turn them off, if you ask me. But I love the elemental things in his movies. Water! Smoke! Fire! Just these flowing, beautiful things of nature. "BodyWorld" and "Bottomless" and all of mycomics have these things. They're already abstract, right? Water is just wavy lines. Sand is just dots. It can be drawn a million different ways. Also the "flowing" style of the sequences, like water. Someone asked Tarkovsky why there's so much water in his movies and he said "because water is the most beautiful thing in the world." I like that answer. "The Mirror" is his best. And I like that he did Science Fiction genre stories. Abbas Kiarostami: tied with Chris Ware as greatest living artist. Kiaostami's camera is like a sketchbook. He captures sequences of reality that are so beautiful, and it appears so effortless. It's as if his camera "just happened" to be there, and it "just happened" to be this beautiful unfolding of a sequence. Like Henri Cartier Bresson, only instead of catching a moment of dynamic symmetry, Kiarostami catches moments of sequential beauty. Like Chris Ware, he's obsessed with the beauty of the world. A real humanist, too.

->

Just got New School in the mail today. Cosplayers on its way.

robert redford could be a dash shaw drawing i think

http://i2.cdn.turner.com/cnnnext/dam/assets/130118111645-robert-redford-story-top.jpg

Hah. Just finished Doctors. AMAZING.

so good

lol, redford is TOTALLY a dash shaw drawing.

also, thanks for that link, schlump! just seeing this now for some reason.

that's a really, really good interview (http://highlowcomics.blogspot.ca/2013/08/the-dash-shaw-interview.html)

http://studygroupcomics.com/main/category/contributor/dash-shaw/
complete "remastered" bodyworld

Whoa - didn't know anything about it! I've been bad about following his stuff recently, or really following anyone's work. Bodyworld remains my favorite of his, by far. Has he talked about the "remastering" of it anywhere? It'll be interesting to do a side-by-side comparison with the book to see what he's changed.

also just seeing this; yeah i really like reading him talk. i love that whole tangent he pursued about david mazzucchelli's dumb line. did you read doctors, yet? hey also did abbott read doctors yet. doctors is great.

+ i just bought cosplayers but haven't looked at it yet. there's a new one in the comic-book-day free comic book, too, i think.

I haven't read Doctors yet! ...but I just added it to my cart, so, soon. :)

whoa the remastered version of BodyWorld somehow even more depressing
i don't remember that last chapter / epilogue at all?

Read Doctors today - great story & art. I liked BBB but this is pretty great too.

doctors maybe gonna be a movie:
http://comicbook.com/2014/10/20/doctors-graphic-novel-picked-up-by-fox-david-goyer-producing/

did anybody get his free comic book day comic? i work saturdays, it is hard to be schlump, i showed up & they were all gone, i also just read #cosplayers i & am mad to be deprived of a sequel

i meant to say, i just read doctors! i kinda fell behind on his stuff but upon the last thread revive i got a copy. it's really great, one of my favorites of his. wish it was longer but that's not the worst feeling.

hey i am so pleased. isn't it great? i like it as much as any of the others, i think. whenever he's talked about his next book it's sounded like he's moving away from the 'dumb line' style of doctors & new school, & i'm almost sad; doctors felt so imaginative & reverberative, i think in part because it was so open & mixed up & spacy. i really hazily remember just the ambient sense of propriety in the woman at the beginning's home & life, or the weird beautiful spin off vignette of one of the guys who worked for the company walking around town thinking to himself about finding love. just so rich for something so succinct.

it's kinda greedy given that he's more prolific than other people, but i wish there was just an infinite conveyor belt of these books. i think he's concentrating on animation? did anybody see any of his animation stuff?

Cosplayers #3 was a FCBD exclusive?!!?

#2, but uh-huh!

it's this

http://40.media.tumblr.com/1239bc34c766116b42c5f66423de4f9d/tumblr_ngrbrrDDWO1reptzmo1_1280.jpg

in this

http://40.media.tumblr.com/977ece76d86e07466a0d69630f1e4f12/tumblr_njkr4fGpMk1r3vmmyo1_1280.jpg

really must find:

http://36.media.tumblr.com/f3c8aec14e5180622be5522058ccf384/tumblr_nfthakffBn1reptzmo1_1280.jpg

Thr third frame is so good

I bought #2 in America last September though

feel bad whenever i remember i left this ^ hanging, ty for correction, i will try to find. am about to read the free comic book day story. maximum dash in my life.

http://dashshaw.tumblr.com/post/140752905076/i-wrote-directed-the-animated-feature-film#notes

I asked multiple Fanta employees if there was a way to get the FCBD book when I was back in Seattle late last year, to no avail

Was that what happened to The Ruined Cast? I backed it on Kickstarter and never heard anything about it.

Last update from him on it was back in February 2015,

Sorry I just saw these... I am told the producers are sending an update this weekend. Obviously there is a lot to report so I will leave it to the letter to fill in. It is still going but on hold. New animation with different producers will satisfy dvd+ rewards. New animation is all drawn, currently in sound/editing phase, but still a year away. Update forthcoming and it's more in-depth than this... Thank you,

Cosplayers now to be a hardcover, boooo

can't rly figure out what it is, is it the prev comics & something new or ???

presumably the 2.5 existing issues + new

i am urging the representatives of this board to put partisan politics to one side & declare themselves Hyped for this release

there is the all-nouveau quaker thing forthcoming also

Created by acclaimed cartoonist Dash Shaw and published this month by Fantagraphics, Cosplayers is a weird book. It’s not a paean to the creative skills of folks who make their own Batsuits and Iron Man armors, and it doesn’t use them as the butt of dork-snickering jokes, either. Originally released in single issue form from 2014 to 2016, the linked vignettes in Shaw’s new graphic novel use cosplay to explore areas where the membranes between fantasy dress-up and IRL personality tensions are most porous.

http://io9.gizmodo.com/dash-shaws-graphic-novel-cosplayers-delves-into-the-wei-1786814010

^ i liked this + am hyped to pickup cosplayers christmas

also hey what is this v bottomless bellybutton wave sketch-
http://dashshaw.tumblr.com/image/154405575281

I ordered the Cosplayers collection ages ago, was supposed to get it before xmas and got two to give one as a gift, but it's been pushed back.

6 years ago i contributed to dash's The Ruined Cast kickstarter - his first feature animated film. today i got this update:

Hi Everyone,

Thanks so much for all of your patience!

Sometimes the path from a film’s development (which this campaign supported) to production takes unexpected turns. In this particular case, along the way to putting together The Ruined Cast, Dash had an opportunity to make another movie, also written by him, applying the techniques and lessons learned during the work that you supported.

The outcome of this campaign meets — and hopefully you’ll agree, exceeds — the bar that we intended, of Dash making his first animated feature film.

The movie is My Entire High School Sinking into the Sea, which played to rave reviews over the past several months at the Toronto International Film Festival, the New York Film Festival and Fanastic Fest. It opens on 4/14 at the Metrograph in NYC and the Nuart in Los Angeles. Dash will be at the Metrograph screenings throughout opening weekend. The other theatrical dates are listed on this site:
https://www.highschoolsinking.com/

here's the trailer:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BdGKrvM9KgE

starring...jason schwartzman? lena dunham? reggie watts? maya rudolph? and...susan sarandon??

really looking forward to this

"just jump - i'm buff enough to catch you!"

lol

apparently 6 years ago i backed the project at the "A limited-edition print of an image from the film suitable for framing!" level, so looking forward to getting my susan sarandon print in the mail!

I backed it 6 years ago too, but I got a poster already for it, printed by a guy I later ended up working with a bit.

oh hey this is showing in my city next month, must remember to go see

i haven't kept up with this dude's work since bodyworld

Doctors and Cosplayers are both great

http://www.tcj.com/curating-the-metrograph-bookstore/

i'll try to find some of those. probably should've made the effort to see him this weekend at the Metrograph

whoa, that's awesome forks, thanks. i've been reading through his other articles on tcj.com:

http://www.tcj.com/dash-shaw-day-one/ (discipline)
http://www.tcj.com/dash-shaw-day-two/ (cosplayers)
http://www.tcj.com/dash-shaw-day-three/ (high school sinking)
http://www.tcj.com/dash-shaw-day-four/ (u.s. premiere of high school sinking at fantastic fest)
http://www.tcj.com/dash-shaw-day-five/ (more thoughts about fantastic fest)

(i put what they're about in parentheses). they're really well written, just a casual look into his process and what he's thinking about as works on various projects. for example, this bit describing his work on high school sinking:

When I first started making longer animations (the IFC webseries I did in 2009) I would only storyboard. I’d read that that’s what Miyazaki did. He’d storyboard and then people would write scripts based on his boards. That made the most sense to me, as I believed film was primarily a visual medium (something I no longer think).

However, in order to get other people involved (like actors, and producers, and editors) I had to start writing scripts for them. I spent years writing scripts for different projects and went to the 2010 Sundance Screenwriting Labs and did a lot of back-and-forth working and reworking scripts only to have them change dramatically once I storyboarded them.

Now what I’ve arrived at is this: I write a script (which takes a year or two), show it to some people, and then storyboard it and then rewrite the script based on the storyboards. The storyboarding happens in the middle and I consider it part of the scriptwriting process. Jason Schwartzman told me that when he was offered The Grand Budapest Hotel, he was sent simultaneously the script and a private Vimeo link to a drawn animatic of the entire movie with Anderson doing all of the voices. When I heard that, it completely made sense to me… Movies are so complicated and expensive, and screenplays are difficult to decode. You have to in some way completely visualize it and have something to show to get other people involved and on the same page. Especially when you’re making an animated thing with an unusual aesthetic, it’s nearly impossible to just hand someone a screenplay of it. I was only able to get the High School Sinking cast after I had the majority of the film drawn. I was able to show producers and other people sections of the movie and say, “This is what this is — I’m making this thing and I want you involved.” Which is a completely different position than “Here’s a word document describing something I want to make.”