Bottomless Bellybutton by Dash Shaw

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.

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.”