New Realities: The Comics of Dash Shaw (Critical Cartoons)

Dash Shaw is one of the most restless cartoonists of recent decades, constantly evolving in how he approaches the comics page. In the years since his breakthrough graphic novel Bottomless Belly Button, he has continued to create acclaimed, idiosyncratic comics, varying his uses of line and color as well as shifting from domestic realism to sci-fi farce to historical fiction. But some concerns in Shaw’s work remain constant. His characters live within their own personal realities, often failing to connect or even communicate. Comics as different as the dystopian spectacle BodyWorld and the geek-culture comedy Cosplayers become sites of clashes between incompatible mindsets―with Shaw adapting his cartooning to capture new varieties of confusion, alienation, and more. In New Realities, critic Greg Hunter (The Comics Journal) follows the through-line across this adventurous body of work.

Greg Hunter is a writer based in Minneapolis, Minnesota. He edits graphic novels for young readers and has contributed comics criticism to The Comics Journal, The Rumpus, and other publications.

Dash Shaw lives in Richmond, VA. He was a 2010 Sundance Labs fellow and a 2014–2015 Cullman Center fellow at the New York Public Library. A cartoonist, animator, and illustrator, he was born in Los Angeles and attended the School of Visual Arts. He is the author of Discipline (2021), Bottomless Belly Button, Body World, and many other comics, and graphic novels. He is also the director of two animated films, My Entire High School Sinking into the Sea and Crypto Zoo.

Dash Shaw lives in Richmond, VA. He was a 2010 Sundance Labs fellow and a 2014–2015 Cullman Center fellow at the New York Public Library. A cartoonist, animator, and illustrator, he was born in Los Angeles and attended the School of Visual Arts. He is the author of Discipline (2021), Bottomless Belly Button, Body World, and many other comics, and graphic novels. He is also the director of two animated films, My Entire High School Sinking into the Sea and Crypto Zoo.