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New School
In this brand new graphic novel from the acclaimed author of Bottomless Belly Button and BodyWorld, Dash Shaw dramatizes the story of a boy moving to an exotic country and his infatuation with an unfamiliar culture that quickly shifts to disillusionment. A sense of "being different" grows to alienation, until he angrily blames this once-enchanting land for his feelings of isolation. All of this is told through the fantastical eyes of young Danny, a boy growing up in the '90s fed on dramatic adventure stories like Jurassic Park and X-Men. Danny's older brother, Luke, travels to a remote island to teach English to the employees of ClockWorld, an ambitious new amusement park that recreates historical events. When Luke doesn't return after two years, Danny travels to ClockWorld to convince Luke to return to America. But Luke has made a new life, new family, and even a new personality for himself on ClockWorld, rendering him almost unrecognizable to his own brother. Danny comes of age as he explores the island, ClockWorld, and fights to bring his brother home. New School is unlike anything in the history of the comics medium: at once funny and deadly serious, easily readable while wildly artistic, personal and political, familiar and completely new.
340 pages, Hardcover
First published June 1, 2013
7 people are currently reading
447 people want to read
About the author
Dash Shaw
68 books193 followersDash Shaw is an American cartoonist and animator, currently living in Richmond, Virginia.
Shaw studied Illustration at the School of Visual Arts in Manhattan. He has been publishing short comics and illustrations in a number of anthologies, magazines and zines since his college years. In 2008 Fantagraphics Books published Shaw's first long format graphic novel, the family comedy-drama Bottomless Belly Button. Among his other notable works: BodyWorld (2010, Pantheon Books), New Jobs (2013, Uncivilized Books), New School (2013, Fantagraphics), Blurry (2024, New York Review Comics).
Shaw's animated works include the Sigur Ros video and Sundance selection 'Seraph', the series 'The Unclothed Man in the 35th Century AD' and the movies My Entire High School Sinking into the Sea (2016) and Cryptozoo (2021).
Shaw studied Illustration at the School of Visual Arts in Manhattan. He has been publishing short comics and illustrations in a number of anthologies, magazines and zines since his college years. In 2008 Fantagraphics Books published Shaw's first long format graphic novel, the family comedy-drama Bottomless Belly Button. Among his other notable works: BodyWorld (2010, Pantheon Books), New Jobs (2013, Uncivilized Books), New School (2013, Fantagraphics), Blurry (2024, New York Review Comics).
Shaw's animated works include the Sigur Ros video and Sundance selection 'Seraph', the series 'The Unclothed Man in the 35th Century AD' and the movies My Entire High School Sinking into the Sea (2016) and Cryptozoo (2021).
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 48 reviews
December 22, 2022
I read Dash Shaw to stretch my brain.
His aesthetic is pretty out there. Most of his illustrations are clumsy, thick-penned drawings, and occasionally he prints (screen-prints?) a color, or even a photograph, in the background.
His work is cerebral, and trippy, and makes me think. It's occasionally hard to follow, often twisted, and generally self-pleasuring.
THIS book is about a pair of brothers living in a world where Theme Parks are A THING. One mogul has created a time-travel-themed park on an X-shaped island out in the ocean somewhere. After some incident that I only vaguely remember (and yes, I read this entire volume in the last 48 hours), the older brother is sent by his parents to that Time-Travel-X-Shaped-Theme-Park-Island to teach the native peoples English so better to serve the amerikan tourists about to flock to their land. After some years, the younger brother follows.
I could go on, but you could read the summary. I usually don't even go that far in my plot-level description of the books I review*.
Anyways.......
The thing that made an impression on me here - and yeah, what usually makes an impression on me where Dash Shaw is concerned - is the wild aesthetic**. Here, it's the way he uses LANGUAGE, particularly.
He flexes his vocabulary between a fairly common, colloquial, candid speech ("So nobody has sex in high school cuz their moms are home all the time.") and a highly formalized, practically medieval way of speaking ("Answer me, gift of foresight! You MUST be able to see what cover my destiny holds!"), complete with an illuminated-style font.
This use of language communicates, in a way I've never seen before, COMING OF AGE. The younger brother starts out in a mental land of contrived presentation of self. He conforms to the expectations of his parents - nay, his native culture - and only finds himself once let loose in the wilds of X Island.
Dash Shaw's work is the stuff of academic essays. Of philosophical treatises. Of high-as-a-kite trips. If I was the type to reread books, I am CERTAIN I would gather deeper meaning each time I repeatedly read this book.
As such, and as I said at the beginning of all this, I read Dash Shaw because his works stretch my brain. He makes me think. HARD. He is an innovator - a genius who is NOT neurotypical. I admire his work, even when I struggle through it.
And for that, I must give him five stars.
*Sorry about the loquaciousness - Shaw tickles me verbose.
**He doesn't introduce any color, for instance, until Chapter Two.
His aesthetic is pretty out there. Most of his illustrations are clumsy, thick-penned drawings, and occasionally he prints (screen-prints?) a color, or even a photograph, in the background.
His work is cerebral, and trippy, and makes me think. It's occasionally hard to follow, often twisted, and generally self-pleasuring.
THIS book is about a pair of brothers living in a world where Theme Parks are A THING. One mogul has created a time-travel-themed park on an X-shaped island out in the ocean somewhere. After some incident that I only vaguely remember (and yes, I read this entire volume in the last 48 hours), the older brother is sent by his parents to that Time-Travel-X-Shaped-Theme-Park-Island to teach the native peoples English so better to serve the amerikan tourists about to flock to their land. After some years, the younger brother follows.
I could go on, but you could read the summary. I usually don't even go that far in my plot-level description of the books I review*.
Anyways.......
The thing that made an impression on me here - and yeah, what usually makes an impression on me where Dash Shaw is concerned - is the wild aesthetic**. Here, it's the way he uses LANGUAGE, particularly.
He flexes his vocabulary between a fairly common, colloquial, candid speech ("So nobody has sex in high school cuz their moms are home all the time.") and a highly formalized, practically medieval way of speaking ("Answer me, gift of foresight! You MUST be able to see what cover my destiny holds!"), complete with an illuminated-style font.
This use of language communicates, in a way I've never seen before, COMING OF AGE. The younger brother starts out in a mental land of contrived presentation of self. He conforms to the expectations of his parents - nay, his native culture - and only finds himself once let loose in the wilds of X Island.
Dash Shaw's work is the stuff of academic essays. Of philosophical treatises. Of high-as-a-kite trips. If I was the type to reread books, I am CERTAIN I would gather deeper meaning each time I repeatedly read this book.
As such, and as I said at the beginning of all this, I read Dash Shaw because his works stretch my brain. He makes me think. HARD. He is an innovator - a genius who is NOT neurotypical. I admire his work, even when I struggle through it.
And for that, I must give him five stars.
*Sorry about the loquaciousness - Shaw tickles me verbose.
**He doesn't introduce any color, for instance, until Chapter Two.
December 19, 2016
This is a re-read and a new review. The first read, two years ago, was ONE star, because I wasn’t impressed with it. Didn’t get it. Experimental comics. But I think it was Chris Ware who said Dash Shaw is the future of comics, and he might be right, but that is the struggle, to see the future, eh? To try and get the new and nto see it as just dumb, but insightful and new? Do I understand David Foster Walllace as well as I did Joyce? Did I understand Pynchon at first? (No.)
Dash Shaw tells of two brothers who grew up in the nineties on X-Men and other sci fi . One brother travels to Clockworld, a theme park on an island, and makes a new life there. The other brother tries to talk him into coming home. Uh, it’s new comics, with a bold thick pen and splashes of color I still don’t see a pattern for, so it feels trippy and fun and weird, and interesting, or more interesting this time around. He’s sort of combines the familiar (2 bros, x-men, growing up) and also strange (one bro is prescient, maybe a little crazy), but it IS basically some kind of brother coming-of-age story. It’s at the heart of it about family and brothers fighting and loving each other, but a new way of telling these conventional things, with weird language at times visually and in the dialogue.
This is visually interesting and sometimes still seems to me psychotically random, like it was being developed as it went. Why did this begin to get interesting to me as a way of storytelling? I think I just started to read more poetry comics, art comics and so on. And now I liked it quite a bit, but still will only give this 3.5 stars. Maybe two years from now I will recognize it as genius and give it 5 stars.
Dash Shaw tells of two brothers who grew up in the nineties on X-Men and other sci fi . One brother travels to Clockworld, a theme park on an island, and makes a new life there. The other brother tries to talk him into coming home. Uh, it’s new comics, with a bold thick pen and splashes of color I still don’t see a pattern for, so it feels trippy and fun and weird, and interesting, or more interesting this time around. He’s sort of combines the familiar (2 bros, x-men, growing up) and also strange (one bro is prescient, maybe a little crazy), but it IS basically some kind of brother coming-of-age story. It’s at the heart of it about family and brothers fighting and loving each other, but a new way of telling these conventional things, with weird language at times visually and in the dialogue.
This is visually interesting and sometimes still seems to me psychotically random, like it was being developed as it went. Why did this begin to get interesting to me as a way of storytelling? I think I just started to read more poetry comics, art comics and so on. And now I liked it quite a bit, but still will only give this 3.5 stars. Maybe two years from now I will recognize it as genius and give it 5 stars.
September 10, 2018
This is a really odd comicbook. I'm not really sure what to make of it. The plot is straight-forward enough to begin with. The protagonist is a young, religious boy - and I think his characterization is accurate enough, he's quite strange. The boy's older brother goes to a strange country to teach English to the natives that will begin working at a theme-park tourist destination. The book was interesting to me specifically because I was looking into teaching English in China this summer (a friend of mine is going, but I backed out at the last second because I'm fearful).
The art seems really awful at first, and then the coloring is just broad single-colored paint strokes over the entire panel, or page. I'm not sure if there's some significance to the colors, or why some panels are colored and others are not. It seems random. [update: just watched an interview with the author and he said compared the colors to a soundtrack in a film. "The comic can make sense in black and white line drawings. And the color can be a huge abstract force that is hitting against the scenes"]
It somehow kept me interested enough to come back to it, and over a week's time, about 20 minutes per day, I read the thing. So it wasn't interesting enough for my usual one-sitting reading style, but interesting enough that I actually came back to it (usually if a book doesn't hook me enough to read it in a long sitting I'll just forget about it).
I think it had to do with the strange-ness of the whole thing, but the ability of the author to keep it grounded enough that I was legitimately interested for the plot - I wanted to see if something strange would actually happen.
This book is a story about brother-hood and self-identity hidden within a strange form of communication. I'm reminded of the story-telling abilities of my friend who had Asperger's.
The art seems really awful at first, and then the coloring is just broad single-colored paint strokes over the entire panel, or page. I'm not sure if there's some significance to the colors, or why some panels are colored and others are not. It seems random. [update: just watched an interview with the author and he said compared the colors to a soundtrack in a film. "The comic can make sense in black and white line drawings. And the color can be a huge abstract force that is hitting against the scenes"]
It somehow kept me interested enough to come back to it, and over a week's time, about 20 minutes per day, I read the thing. So it wasn't interesting enough for my usual one-sitting reading style, but interesting enough that I actually came back to it (usually if a book doesn't hook me enough to read it in a long sitting I'll just forget about it).
I think it had to do with the strange-ness of the whole thing, but the ability of the author to keep it grounded enough that I was legitimately interested for the plot - I wanted to see if something strange would actually happen.
This book is a story about brother-hood and self-identity hidden within a strange form of communication. I'm reminded of the story-telling abilities of my friend who had Asperger's.
October 15, 2015
This another strange and heavy artifact by Dash Shaw. I am intrigued by the highly mixed reviews it drew from fans and new Shaw readers alike. People seem to respond strongly to him in one way or another.
"New School" is at times very writerly, at times filmic, at times has the condensed fury and release of an exploding graffiti masterpiece enacted in the middle of the night. There is a wild immaturity that turns angry and mean and there is a lot of coming of age soulfulness.
Though the story is jarring and its elements don't necessarily gedemptify (gedempt in Yiddish is something like when the soup slow cooks long enough that the flavors all come together), it explores with curious passion, moments of sibling rivalry, profound outcasty loneliness and agitated xenophobia.
And it is as if all the emotions, frustrations, insecurity and sense of adventure one feels when trying to construct a novel come out in the play of this chilling and subtly sci-fi-ish adventure. So maybe it is part "Wrinkle in Time" with some playful and violent element of artist's memoir in here? I couldn't say for sure, but I enjoyed the stream-of-narrative consciousness quality, a lot of classic, archetypal characters in a very unclassic story.
"New School" is at times very writerly, at times filmic, at times has the condensed fury and release of an exploding graffiti masterpiece enacted in the middle of the night. There is a wild immaturity that turns angry and mean and there is a lot of coming of age soulfulness.
Though the story is jarring and its elements don't necessarily gedemptify (gedempt in Yiddish is something like when the soup slow cooks long enough that the flavors all come together), it explores with curious passion, moments of sibling rivalry, profound outcasty loneliness and agitated xenophobia.
And it is as if all the emotions, frustrations, insecurity and sense of adventure one feels when trying to construct a novel come out in the play of this chilling and subtly sci-fi-ish adventure. So maybe it is part "Wrinkle in Time" with some playful and violent element of artist's memoir in here? I couldn't say for sure, but I enjoyed the stream-of-narrative consciousness quality, a lot of classic, archetypal characters in a very unclassic story.
January 12, 2014
--Can't understand all the bad reviews for this one. Especially the ones mystified by the straightforward & entertaining story. Anyone who's a fan of Dash Shaw's "Bottomless Belly Button" or "Body World" should enjoy this.
--It's partly set in a slightly alternate reality where people talk in stylized exclamations! They're easily excitable!!!
--Avant garde theme parks. An idea whose time has come.
--The most unique color design I've ever seen in a graphic novel - layering paint and collage over the black-and-white ink sketches in fascinating ways. Opens up new possibilities for color treatments.
-Libraries overlooking the ocean. Another timely idea.
--The main characters voyage to the hermetic island kingdom of X and come to feel like they're in a dystopia. There's an interesting ambiguity here about whether the protagonists are really the problem in this scenario.
--Like "Bodyworld," this one flails when it comes to the ending. But the rest of the book is so assured that I'm mostly willing to overlook it.
--It's partly set in a slightly alternate reality where people talk in stylized exclamations! They're easily excitable!!!
--Avant garde theme parks. An idea whose time has come.
--The most unique color design I've ever seen in a graphic novel - layering paint and collage over the black-and-white ink sketches in fascinating ways. Opens up new possibilities for color treatments.
-Libraries overlooking the ocean. Another timely idea.
--The main characters voyage to the hermetic island kingdom of X and come to feel like they're in a dystopia. There's an interesting ambiguity here about whether the protagonists are really the problem in this scenario.
--Like "Bodyworld," this one flails when it comes to the ending. But the rest of the book is so assured that I'm mostly willing to overlook it.
February 14, 2014
New School felt purposely random in order to test the limits of artistic expression. I felt as though the point was to leave the reader feeling confused and disappointed as a way to highlight the almost stream-of-consciousness, childishly crazed, sharpie graphic art. At times, the font was very difficult to read due to the crazed sharpie action. Hasn't edgy art been done for the sake of trying it a long time ago? This book was on NPR's list of the best books of 2013. Sometimes I get the impression that some critics equate the feeling of huh-weird-ridiculous-random with it must-be-awesome-cuz-I-don't-get-it-and-I-don't-want-to-be-the-dumb-kid-who-admits-they-don't-get-the-joke/"avant-garde"-art. But, of course, that's just my opinion.
September 24, 2013
I'm going to have to think about this book for awhile. And reread it. It's certainly a unique approach to comics storytelling, and I'm sure there are things I did not get the first time around. Most prominent, and possibly most challenging to reading, is Shaw's use of color and background patterns throughout the book. Again, I have to go back through and read his coloring to better understand it.
January 17, 2023
Visually engaging and intruiging. Despite Dash Shaw's frequent foray into unusual formalisms, his attachment to classic comics is quite apparent and it makes for quite an interesting end product. In New School, we are introduced to a kid visiting his elder brother who lives in an island commune known as Clockworld. The main character has a very ~1950-60s vernacular (perhaps due to his love for classic sci-fi and Stan Lee/Jack Kirby X-Men comics), making for an interesting clash against the other characters who speak in regular 90s colloquialisms. He tries to convince his elder brother to give up his life in Clockworld and return home, but finds that his brother is quite entrapped in the strange living conditions.
This is undoubtedly a weird book. There's a lot of oddities in the way Dash Shaw renders panels and page compositions. There are sudden streaks of colors that don't have any context to fall back upon. The linework can go from thick to scratchy with a few panels. It's all very jarring, but it fits the off kilter tone to the book really well. I don't think everyone will buy into Shaw's experimentations, but it really worked for me.
This is undoubtedly a weird book. There's a lot of oddities in the way Dash Shaw renders panels and page compositions. There are sudden streaks of colors that don't have any context to fall back upon. The linework can go from thick to scratchy with a few panels. It's all very jarring, but it fits the off kilter tone to the book really well. I don't think everyone will buy into Shaw's experimentations, but it really worked for me.
August 12, 2021
Mind-bending!!
August 20, 2013
Dash Shaw -- officially the Handsomest Comics Artist in the World and writer of one of my favorite doorstops, "Bottomless Belly Button" -- may have lost me on this one. On the surface, "New School" is about a young man whose parents send him on a mission to the amusement park Clockworld (located on the mysterious island of X and run by a potential madman) to retrieve his brother, who went there to work a couple years ago and never returned. But why do the young protagonist and his parents speak a language that's an odd mix of Olde English and Martin from the Simpsons? Are the Xians, pacifists with conservative values, the heroes or the villains? What the heck is going on?! I'm sure I could develop some theories if I gave it time (something either for or against capitalism, something about the power of language, something about history vs. progress), but I just wasn't into it enough to care.
February 2, 2015
I hate to keep bringing attention to Shaw's straightforward drawing style with each book of his I read, but it remains both what makes his work appealing – and helps him release material more frequently than many of his peers – and what keeps it from reaching the next level.
As with the narratives of Bottomless Belly Button and BodyWorld, the story of two brothers and their experiences at a foreign theme park called ClockWorld moves with an enviable nimbleness. Shaw aids his Sharpie-like illustrations by playing with color overlays and image underlays, but I still found myself wanting something more visually diverse.
As with the narratives of Bottomless Belly Button and BodyWorld, the story of two brothers and their experiences at a foreign theme park called ClockWorld moves with an enviable nimbleness. Shaw aids his Sharpie-like illustrations by playing with color overlays and image underlays, but I still found myself wanting something more visually diverse.
June 29, 2015
Look I know Dash Shaw is a master of his craft and an innovative user of color and a teller of weirdness in stories to perfection but I feel so eh about his attitude to the world and his colonial tweeness that I just come away with a less than great taste in my mouth -- shares some of the ooh foreign land these guys are jerks but hey, identify with them anyway, business that characterized Arsene Schrauwen. Feh, boys. That's all I have to say.
September 22, 2015
This book is carefully crafted, very funny, and extremely unique. It was one of the most fun books I have read in sometime, and the elements some seem to have found frustrating I found refreshing and well utilized in building layers into the story. I have never seen anything like it, and it is a wonderful example of boundary pushing in graphic storytelling. If you are interested in this medium at all I highly recommend at least trying this book
July 30, 2016
What an odd and wonderful book! Perhaps Danny's motivations are unclear, or seem to not warrant his actions, but then again, there's nothing very clear about being an adolescent. It's one of the craziest and most confusing experiences in many peoples' lives. At an intuitive level, the various themes and characters and things-left-unsaid/discovered...of of this works very well for me. And damn, I love that art.
December 1, 2013
The coloring in this book gave me a headache and was really disorienting. That may have been intended, but it did not make for something I could read more than half of. I was excited to read this because I loved Bodyworld so much, but I felt disconnected from the story, annoyed with the colors, and unimpressed with the smudgy, child-like artwork.
February 11, 2018
I had a lot of trouble comprehending this story. I would guess that Shaw is heralded as a genius of the medium but I felt like this book was way over the top arty for my tastes. The actual illustration and colouring are powerfully rendered but I just couldn’t get into the story. Sorry. I may try reading this again sometime because the high quality of the art makes it worthy of a second attempt.
December 26, 2013
This book was just so. weird. I think the idea behind it had interesting potential. The artwork is gorgeous BUT the coloring makes it hard to read or even see what is going on in the panels, which hampers the storytelling.
September 22, 2013
I love how Dash Shaw has always managed to cross the borders of what defines a comic book, meanwhile telling a captivating story. While 'New School' is, again, a book full of surprises, I feel a bit underwhelmed in comparison with his former work.
October 12, 2013
Yeah... Uhm... Weird. Hated the dated way in which Danny spoke. Sounded weird and pretentious. Maybe that was the point. Being a strange person in a strange land doesn't mean you have to be an asshole.
April 5, 2014
I wasn't to keen on this. The aesthetics didn't really help the story for me.
June 22, 2016
The use of colour was the only good thing about this, which was behind the bad drawings that looked like they were done with a Sharpie.
January 30, 2018
What a beautiful book. Dash Shaw books are quickly becoming my go-to when I want to have a really fun time reading, but also spend the next week thinking hard about the book after I've finished it.
March 28, 2023
This is a really big book! I'll divide my thoughts in two categories: the art and the story. This contains minor spoilers too.
First of all, I like the art — well, not everyone likes it and it just might be my wide taste. Anyway, the coloring was jarring but I loved it too. There were panels that I thought had clever placing of colors. However, some had what I thought was out of place. I try to figure out the meaning every time I wonder, 'why is this color in this scene? ' Especially at the end where they weren't just colors (but some images)! Furthermore, what made me like this placement of colors was the fact that it added more to the tension or lightness of the scene.
Now, the story for me was kind of wonky. Two brothers: Danny and Luke the older one. I thought Danny was schizophrenic at first, at some point I linked the colors to how he views the world. Then came the Pinocchio book which is nothing big to the story. Though it felt as a reference to me — and to what was really happening to the two brothers. I still can't tell if the story was supposed to be real or not — the former sure, but there were questionable moments.
Aside from that view, I actually just saw it as a dramatic relationship change between the two. And while this found meaning is easy, I can't help but wonder what was Danny's precognition for? It definitely added to the story and wrote his fate, but then what? I thought there was nothing else to that. He experienced what he saw and nothing, he took a peek to the future and I wasn't too much astounded.
Overall, this was a weird exploration for the two characters: Danny Andrews and Luke Andrews. All-in-all, this was a 3 star exploration for me.
First of all, I like the art — well, not everyone likes it and it just might be my wide taste. Anyway, the coloring was jarring but I loved it too. There were panels that I thought had clever placing of colors. However, some had what I thought was out of place. I try to figure out the meaning every time I wonder, 'why is this color in this scene? ' Especially at the end where they weren't just colors (but some images)! Furthermore, what made me like this placement of colors was the fact that it added more to the tension or lightness of the scene.
Now, the story for me was kind of wonky. Two brothers: Danny and Luke the older one. I thought Danny was schizophrenic at first, at some point I linked the colors to how he views the world. Then came the Pinocchio book which is nothing big to the story. Though it felt as a reference to me — and to what was really happening to the two brothers. I still can't tell if the story was supposed to be real or not — the former sure, but there were questionable moments.
Aside from that view, I actually just saw it as a dramatic relationship change between the two. And while this found meaning is easy, I can't help but wonder what was Danny's precognition for? It definitely added to the story and wrote his fate, but then what? I thought there was nothing else to that. He experienced what he saw and nothing, he took a peek to the future and I wasn't too much astounded.
Overall, this was a weird exploration for the two characters: Danny Andrews and Luke Andrews. All-in-all, this was a 3 star exploration for me.
August 9, 2017
There's a part towards the end of cartoonist Dash Shaw's inscrutable graphic novel, "New School," where his protagonist, Danny, a teenager sent to the mysterious island of X to retrieve his missing older brother, looks at the madness around himself and says, "What is happening? Why?" For me, that right there is the perfect way to describe the experience of reading "New School."
Dash Shaw's work is nothing if not unpredictable. For every "normal" comic he makes, like say "Bottomless Belly Button" or "Cosplayers," he tends to produce a more experimental work, something like "BodyWorld" or his curveball animated feature "My Entire High School Sinking Into The Sea." "New School" is firmly in the latter camp. Combining story elements involving amusement park rides, late 1990s blockbuster movies, and an exotic culture, with seemingly random artistic flourishes like collage and paint swatches, "New School" is frenetic and tough to get a handle on. Shaw's characters speak in weird affectations, his lines are so bold that they border on being crude, and his panels are fractured in ways that shouldn't work but mostly do. I didn't love it but I also didn't hate it, mainly because my head was spinning too much while reading it for me to properly get my bearings.
His more straightforward comics will always be my favorites, but you have to admire Dash Shaw's fearless willingness to get weird. "New School" IS weeeeeird... but it's also kind of wonderful. Or is it? I dunno. I think maybe Dash Shaw melted my brain.
Dash Shaw's work is nothing if not unpredictable. For every "normal" comic he makes, like say "Bottomless Belly Button" or "Cosplayers," he tends to produce a more experimental work, something like "BodyWorld" or his curveball animated feature "My Entire High School Sinking Into The Sea." "New School" is firmly in the latter camp. Combining story elements involving amusement park rides, late 1990s blockbuster movies, and an exotic culture, with seemingly random artistic flourishes like collage and paint swatches, "New School" is frenetic and tough to get a handle on. Shaw's characters speak in weird affectations, his lines are so bold that they border on being crude, and his panels are fractured in ways that shouldn't work but mostly do. I didn't love it but I also didn't hate it, mainly because my head was spinning too much while reading it for me to properly get my bearings.
His more straightforward comics will always be my favorites, but you have to admire Dash Shaw's fearless willingness to get weird. "New School" IS weeeeeird... but it's also kind of wonderful. Or is it? I dunno. I think maybe Dash Shaw melted my brain.
March 25, 2018
Zany use of saturated color and brushstroke to tell a story about brothers travelling to a made-up country to teach English to workers launching a historical theme park (more like Busch Gardens than Disneyland, I think?). It's really about their relationship, as far as I can tell... all the other characters seem peripheral. The fact that it all takes place in a made-up country but the childhood references are very specific (Jurassic Park, 90s bands) is kind of odd. I kind of took away just an "Americans behaving badly don't even realize it and think people aren't giving them *enough* respect" theme from the book; dunno if the artwork is deliberately hard to follow for a reason connected to that theme...
September 28, 2019
Kupiłem tę cegłę za grosze w londyńskim antykwariacie. Przeczytałem i mnie dosyć konkretnie kopło, ale bardziej na zasadzie zaintrygowania i zadziwienia, niż odkrycia najważniejszego komiksu świata. Tak naprawdę nadal nie wiem co tu jest najistotniejsze. Czy młodzieńczy bunt i inicjacja bohatera, czy może kwestia zetknięcia z innymi kulturami, brak możliwości porozumienia czy coś jeszcze innego. Dziwny, odjechany komiks z fabułą na granicy snu, poszukującą formą i fantastyczną grą kolorami. O chłopaku, co potrafił przewidzieć fabuły filmów, które jeszcze nie powstały i wyruszył do odległej krainy X, by odnaleźć brata. W sumie polecam.
November 30, 2024
plot wise this is solidly meh but oh my godddd Shaw is just so good at narrative devices and format features... The use of differences in dialogue styles to denote separation between characters and the blackletter fonts accentuating Danny's social differences and the penmanship and the ludicrous SCALE of this book I felt like I was paging through an illuminated manuscript it's the size of a small coffee table. so brilliant i am a shameless Shaw yes-man I think he could pee into a blank notebook and I'd find something game-changing to rant about. brill
August 12, 2018
"Ótima história de amadurecimento, queria ter tido um irmão mais velho pra perseguir e atormentar assim. Dash Shaw é foda: traço original, de uns trabalhos pra cá vem usando umas espécies de backgrounds que trás um efeito muito bacana pro fluxo e estética do quadrinho, ganchos muito bons tbm, enfim, um dos melhores que nós temos.
June 28, 2018
3.5/5
March 14, 2021
Enjoyable in parts, could’ve been 100 pages shorter.
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