BodyWorld (Pantheon Graphic Library) - Hardcover

Shaw, Dash

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 030737842X ISBN 13: 9780307378422

Publisher: Pantheon, 2010

Synopsis

From the astonishing imagination of Dash Shaw, visionary author of Bottomless Belly Button, comes a darkly fantastical graphic novel about a small town, a lowlife botanist, and a mysterious plant with strange powers.

It’s 2060, and a devastating civil war has left the country in shambles. Professor Paulie Panther–botanist, writer, and hopeless romantic–arrives in the experimental forest town of Boney Borough to research a strange plant growing behind the high school. As he conducts his research, he befriends some of the local residents: Miss Jem, the alluring science teacher; Billy Borg, Boney Borough’s star athlete; and Pearl Peach, the rebellious schoolgirl. Paulie soon discovers that the plant, when smoked, imparts telepathic powers. But when he shares this remarkable drug with his new friends, he finds that they’re not interested in mind-expansion. In fact, it appears that Paulie’s brash individualism might not be at all welcome in a town that prefers conformity to eccentricity.

Nominated for a 2009 Eisner Award and with a bold, innovative design, BodyWorld is a mind-blowing blend of science-fiction, classic high school drama, and futuristic what-if. It is at once funny and fearless–and sure to be the graphic novel event of the year.

About this title

About the Author

DASH SHAW grew up in Richmond, Virginia, and studied at the School of Visual Arts. A prolific cartoonist and animator, he is the author of the 2008 graphic novel Bottomless Belly Button. He lives in Brooklyn.

Reviews

Starred Review. A fantastic follow-up to Shaw's widely praised first full-length graphic novel, 2008's Bottomless Bellybutton, Body World treads very different territory. Boney Borough is a pastoral planned community in a dystopic future, where everyone knows each other's names and young romance blossoms at the high school die-ball games. But like all idyllic suburban communities, Boney Borough has a drug problem, and a newcomer, tweaked-out drug researcher Paulie Panther, takes advantage of it. Panther discovers a new kind of plant in the woods outside town, that, when smoked, allows people to telepathically experience one another's bodies and minds. Introduced to the local youth, the drug wreaks havoc with Boney Borough in some very unusual ways. First published as a serial comic on the author's Web site, the print version has added scenes, with gorgeous full-color pages to be read from top to bottom, as if you were scrolling through the story from beginning to end. This is key for the climactic scene, which unfurls in one extended panel. Shaw's willingness to experiment with his drawing style pays off particularly in pages portraying the effects of the drug with abstract blurring and melding of images. Another brilliant work that is sure to attract loads of attention and praise this year. (Apr.)
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*Starred Review* Shaw changes genre and tone from the not unplayful but serious realism of The Mother’s Mouth (2006) and Bottomless Belly Button (2008), folding sf and high-school romance into a grunge-noir continuum sprung from the ancient trope of the stranger coming to town. The burg in question is rigorously plotted (in a perfect square) Boney Borough, and the newcomer is Professor sic Paulie Panther, an experiential drug researcher (i.e., for all practical purposes, a professional addict). He comes to inspect a mysterious two-lobed plant growing on the local high-school campus and, as things unfold, to get involved (well, almost) with curvaceous teacher Jem Jewel and later with new grad Pearl Peach, whose athletic swain, Billy-Bob Borg, is already dismayed at her dumping him. If all those alliterative names don’t immediately give it away, the first few pages clarify that this is a black comedy on the lines of 1980s cult film Repo Man, which it most directly resembles in its space-alien conspiracy (the plant’s a Trojan horse) that never physically breaches the plot’s surface (the aliens never appear). Deploying color seemingly pasted-in à la hip 1950s advertising and UPA cartoons (especially impressive in scenes distorted by the plant’s mind-and-body-melding effects) to his trademark art-brut-meets-computer-animation drawing style (his protagonist’s name is probably a tip of the hat to stylistic forebear Gary Panter), Shaw shows himself as adept at dire comedy as he is with midlife and family crises. --Ray Olson

Edition details

• Publisher: Pantheon
• Publication date: 2010
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 030737842X
• ISBN 13: 9780307378422
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 384