Todo abruma

by Dash Shaw, Txuso Fernández Abella (Traducción)

Un hombre no puede decidir entre dos camisas para una boda. Un modelo de dibujo al natural se plantea dejar el modelaje. Una mujer se cuestiona la elección de sus nuevas gafas. Un hombre entra en un banco de niebla mientras conduce y no sabe cómo regresar a casa.

Dash Shaw convierte la duda en torno a las decisiones cotidianas en emocionantes momentos de suspenso, y captura con humor y ansiedad la esencia de la vida, en una estructura única que se pliega hacia un desenlace lírico y emocionante. Todo abruma reafirma a Shaw como uno de los grandes historietistas contemporáneos.

Genres: Graphic Novels, Comics, Fiction, Short Stories, Graphic Novels Comics, Comix

480 pages, Tapa dura

First published August 6, 2024

About the author

Dash 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).

Reviews

[Rod Brown · Rating 2 out of 5]

Ooh, a literary graphic novel! You can tell it's literary because it repeats words and themes regarding fog, art, and infidelity as it descends into and rises back up through nested narratives of people just getting through their everyday lives. And because it is boring.

[Alexander Peterhans · Rating 5 out of 5]

A collection of intimate character portraits, each one moving into another, as if the reader is a camera, drifting from person to person. Shaw has a knack for judging the exact right moment to jump from one character to the next. The connecting tissue seems to be some sense of alienation, not knowing your place in the world.

And most impressive of all, it's quite a light read. Just a beautiful book.

(Thanks to New York Review Comics for providing me with a review copy through Edelweiss)

[Drew Canole · Rating 5 out of 5]

Dash Shaw's new epic, this was a surprise to see on the shelves. I always enjoy Shaw's comics and this was no exception. Maybe recency bias, but this may be my favourite of his to date. It's so good, I now want to go back and re-read all of his comics once again.

It reminds me of movies like Slacker, where the story jumps from character to character. A man deciding on a dress shirt asks the sales lady a question -> she responds by telling a story of how she was engaged but interested in this guy -> this guy tells her a story about how he wanted to quit modeling -> in that story we get his teacher telling us a story -> etc. etc. Then after getting introduced to a ton of characters, we loop back out of the stories and finally get to the original guy - who I basically forgot about by the end of the comic.

Shaw nails the jumps between each character, none of the stories overstay their welcome and they all feel relevant enough to each other that it never feels like a just a device to tie together disparate short stories. There's also panels that help remind you of the story structure in subtle ways. It's a book that could feel a tad academic, but it's actually a really light enjoyable read.

Shaw has a knack for characters and illustrating simple yet profound thoughts.

[Bob Fish · Rating 5 out of 5]

Masterfully narrated puzzle of seemingly random but meaningful slices of lives. So good!
With Blurry, Dash Shaw delivers one of the best graphic novels of the 2020s.

https://youtu.be/SW7HqQWsv6w

[Méli · Rating 5 out of 5]

ADHDers telling a story be like:

[Rick Ray · Rating 4 out of 5]

Blurry is the newest comic from Dash Shaw, and it's a big one. At nearly 500 pages, Blurry isn't quite the size of Shaw's previous work, Bottomless Belly Button, but this ends up being a similarly breezy reading experience despite the length. Also similar to Bottomless Belly Button is the emphasis on more character-driven storytelling with little in the way of an overarching plot. The cover alone serves to deliver the premise - a flashy, neon-colored patchwork of characters form the basis for which the concept behind Blurry is delivered. The opening flap of the book reveals a cast sheet of ten characters who comprise the entire narrative, with each being introduced by tangential connections to one another. The characters all deal with similar mundane trivialities, including but not limited to, choosing between styles of glasses or shirts, career dilemmas and infidelity. Some of these choices are clearly more impactful than others, but as framed in Blurry, Shaw makes it apparent that in the grand scheme of things, the choices don't really matter. The state of indecision defines the characters and how they interpret the fork in the road makes up a lot of what makes this a truly humanizing portrait of the ordinary portions of our lives.

The entirety of Blurry can be described as a stream of consciousness narrative. There are no chapter breaks or clear transitions as we flow from one character to the next. Most of the connections between characters are slight at best, mostly just as passing friends or acquaintances, each dealing with their own issues that have no impact on the others. By description alone, you'd imagine that Blurry is a bland read, but the dry humor and grounded dialogue somehow keeps things pretty riveting. Admittedly, there are some characters less interesting than others, and with ten to juggle, it's easy enough to point out sections that aren't quite as enjoyable as the rest. A little past the halfway make was where I did feel the story begins to drag, but it was still worth powering through to the end to see how it all coalesces together.

The elevator pitch to this book may not be enthralling, but it's still another strong Dash Shaw outing that is as brilliantly unique as the rest of his output.

[Marina Alonso · Rating 4 out of 5]

Tiene un encanto difícil de explicar.

[Carmen · Rating 2 out of 5]

Todo abruma me ha abrumado.
Lo mejor de todo fue terminarlo.

[Przemysław Skoczyński · Rating 4 out of 5]

W coraz ciekawszej bibliografii Shawa, „Blurry” zdecydowanie bliżej jest do obyczajówki spod znaku „Bottomless Belly Button” niż bardziej odjechanych „New School” i „Bodyworld”, co jednak nie znaczy, że jest konwencjonalnie. O ile formalnie jest dosyć przejrzyście (regularny układ czterech kadrów na stronę) to treść może chwilami dezorientować. Sam potrzebowałem dwóch lektur, by wszystko poukładać w głowie, bo autor piętrzy treści, stosując kompozycję szkatułkową i na niej budując fabułę. Jest więc historia w historii, która odwołuje się do kolejnej historii itd. Poszczególne opowieści dosyć naturalnie z siebie wypływają, dążąc do zamknięcia zakończonego swoistym „Chocholim tańcem”.

Wszystkie te perypetie artysta w sposób mistrzowski spina, w centrum stawiając rozważania na temat dokonywania życiowych wyborów i możliwości zmiany. Decyzje, które pozornie wydają się bardzo banalne (np. wybór odpowiednich okularów), potrafią uruchomić mechanizmy wywołujące konsekwencje narastające jak śnieżna lawina. Mgła funkcjonuje tu najczęściej jako metafora, symbolizując chaos w jakim wszyscy się poruszamy przy podejmowaniu nawet najbardziej błahych kroków. Przy okazji nie pierwszy raz Shaw udowadnia, że ma wielką umiejętność kreacji różnorodnych bohaterów z krwi i kości, których cechy można przypisać do określonych typów osobowości.

Jeśli chodzi o grafikę, jest raczej przejrzyście. Autor przyozdabia komiks dosyć „miękką” kreską, rzadko eksperymentując, choć ciekawe rozwiązania stosuje przede wszystkim, gdy akcent pada na ruch. Wynika to najprawdopodobniej z doświadczeń Shawa jako animatora.

Wydarzenia opisane w „Blurry” mogłyby się zakończyć na setki innych sposobów, bo jak mówi jeden z bohaterów „nie ma złych wyborów”. Ja najwięcej frajdy miałem z podążania tropem kolejnych powiązań i relacji. Choć początkowo odbierałem najnowsze dzieło Amerykanina, jako zbyt „wymyślone”, dziś nie mam wątpliwości, że dostaliśmy właśnie jeden z najważniejszych komiksów tego roku.

[Mack]

RIP Ipanema, Kuba Kuba I miss you

[Sidik Fofana · Rating 5 out of 5]

SIX WORD REVIEWS: Everyday art lives in kaleidoscopic mosaics.

[Hassan · Rating 2 out of 5]

It’s one of those serious, “literary”, slice-of-life graphic novels that the New York Times will celebrate, but most people will ignore. I actually ended up liking it more than I thought I would. The nested structure is a bit of a gimmick but it works. Pretentious, sure. But you can tell this guy has some talent.

[Peter Landau · Rating 5 out of 5]

Interesting story and the simple lines work well with it.

[Aran Chandran · Rating 4 out of 5]

In this nested stories of an ensemble set of characters, Shaw tells us it’s okay to be a little indecisive or aimless, and you never know how other people could inspire or nudge you in your decisions.

He also shows how a little decision could lead to bigger changes or stronger reinforcement of the current personal narrative.

We are constantly deciding who we are and can be and it’s many actually seamlessly tiny decisions and stories people tell that seems to influence us and helps us find our way through our fog.

[Isabella Schepisi · Rating 4 out of 5]

this novel illustrates how interconnected people are through inception after inception of slice-of-life style antedotes. while it was mostly interesting and well-connected, there were a few stories that i struggled to find relevance to. i asked myself "why should i care about this? how does this even apply to the narrative?" a handful of times.

[Chris Brook · Rating 4 out of 5]

Hadn't heard about this. Saw it on The New York Times list of the Best Graphic Novels of 2024. Released via New York Review Comics, this was a dense tome (around 500 pages) of interweaving stories and characters.

[Rumi Bossche · Rating 4 out of 5]

Read my first from nyrc

Also my first from Dash Shaw, very cool looking hardcover with great quality paper a slice of life comic that jumps between characters, very good, original, and a welcome style change between the Superhero stuff i read.

[Mikey P-B · Rating 3 out of 5]

An interesting graphic novel of stories, within stories, within stories, that unfold, and then re-fold, in a labyrinthian web of sonder. The author captures the insecurity and doubt that comes with being an adult, in a witty and original way, but maybe wandered a bit too far into the mundane.

[Dan Cassino · Rating 4 out of 5]

Beautifully realized set of interconnected stories, linked by small decisions that could be big -or not- presented as cliffhangers. The folding and unfolding of the narratives are astonishingly well done.

[Matt · Rating 4 out of 5]

4.5

Another masterpiece from comics genius Dash Shaw, only docked half a star because we didn’t get to see his wonderful use of color!

[Jenna · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was fine. Interesting structure, but pretty dull story.

[Kyle Pennekamp · Rating 5 out of 5]

One of the best graphic novels I've read in some time.

[Benny · Rating 4 out of 5]

EDIT 16/5/25: Had a lot of time to think about this comic and its actually freaking epic. one extra star idk why i was so mean initially. I think I was clouded by disappointment that this wasn't another New School but Blurry is excellent in its own right. Leaving the og review below so hubris can make a fool of me
-
Not my favourite of Shaw's work, much less experimental than Bodyworld or even BBB but there's a real cumulative power in this book. Following each of the meandering stories doesn't start paying off until the halfway mark where things start to resolve, like climbing down to the bottom of a well and climbing back up again - structured like a stack of Matryoshka dolls, each story houses the next and is held in suspension until the next one finishes. Glad I read it but when I pick up a Dash Shaw I'm looking for WEIRDDDD and this was not so much. good in its own right, exceeds at what it sets out to do, just not my usual cup of tea

[Elena · Rating 4 out of 5]

3.5 but i liked it ! cool structure imo

[Brittany · Rating 4 out of 5]

How I Came to Read This Book: I did a bit of self-research on the best graphic novels of 2025 and this one popped up. I borrowed it from the library.

The Plot: This is a Russian nesting doll of a story (in fact, it cannily references that very concept) about the little ripple effects of our interactions with each other than can inform other futures. Starting with, simply, a man who has been invited to his (sort of) estranged brother's wedding and is torn between two shirts, prompting him to run into a woman who apparently went to middle school with him. This woman recounts a story of engaging with a former coworker at a restaurant, who himself was a former figure model, and taught her the lessons of forcing change upon oneself, a lesson indirectly imparted on him from the art teacher that taught the figure drawing class he posed for. Said teacher was suffering because the woman he was having an affair with forced him to change his life without his say so, herself inspired by a moment in her past when she felt like killing herself over a failed relationship, only to cross paths with an author full of self-loathing and doubt as she recounted her surprising path to publishing success, across two planes. An author who was somewhat driven to write from her encounters with another writer, with possibly predatory intentions, that seemed to be imparting his will on another female writerly type (who, *spoiler alert* is actually the wife-to-be of the guy in the first story). And said female writerly type recounts the moments that led her to become a comparative literature major, as opposed to a creative writer, or a philosopher, or a child psychologist, as she's working part-time as a nanny for a film producer. And it's that film producer who indirectly connects a lot of these threads together in a full circle way, dovetailing all the way back up the chain to our first guy, who's just trying to pick out a shirt.

The Good & The Bad: This book just pulls you along, plain and simple. It took me a moment to realize how it worked, and when you were transitioning from one character's story to the next, but once I got into it, it was hard *not* to keep slipping along in each of their tales. The book worked for me on two levels then; I found each individual story pretty engrossing (some more than others - and, I'd argue, the author would feel similarly based on how much time he spends in each story), but I also found the way you drive into the heart of the story and then crawl back out of it really magical too. The weird little ways these stories intersect, and how they're able to resolve themselves independently, but also influenced by the story (or stories) you've just read. It's a neat, subtle trick.

The artwork is pretty straightforward here for the most part - classic cartoonist, devoid of colour. It's also probably the most starkly "real" of all the graphic novels I've read. There's a fair bit of nudity and sex involved. But that's also what made it great; these felt like little vignettes into people's lives. Ordinary people, that is.

Two things I didn't love: There's flashes back to a relatively meaningless storyline from the beginning; involving our "guy buying a shirt's" wife (girlfriend?) and meeting up with a friend and debating between ice cream flavours. We keep on getting interjections back to this story throughout and I don't really get why, and the resolution to it doesn't really do anything either - it doesn't fit the flow of the rest of the book to be honest, and feels like it sits independently of the butterfly effect.

Also, the ending is kind of wackadoo. I mean, it's partially a cute, abstract nod to a meaningful part of Fiona's story, but it just kind of felt flat for me. I don't know what a perfect ending would have been, and I get the nod to negative space and finding meaning in the space between the stories as an overall metaphor, but it would have been nice to have some sort of more meaningful breakthrough for our first characters.

Of all the stories, I thought Christie's was the most interesting by far, but I also enjoyed Fiona's, and Malaa's, to a degree. Malaa surprised me in this idea that when you let danger come for you, you realize how much it's not really there at all. And Christie's thoughts were interesting too; the self-doubt, the questioning. Still, a very neat book overall.

The Bottom Line: An effortless read that takes you through the slippery ways in which we're all interconnected in a style that belies how difficult it is to actually make that a reality.

Anything Memorable?: Not especially.

2025 Book Challenge?: Book #7 in 2025.

[Titus · Rating 4 out of 5]

The most interesting and impressive thing about this comic is its narrative structure, where one character tells a story about their life and then a character within that story tells a story about their own life, and then the same happens again and again. The result has been compared to matryoshka dolls, which makes sense, with each anecdote nestled inside another, but to me the effect feels more like a fractal – zooming in on a small detail of the story and discovering an individual with a life just as complex and important as the earlier story's narrator. It's a cool idea, and it's executed very well.

The individual stories are all about their respective narrators feeling lost and aimless in life, so the main thing I took from it is a sense that, although everyone has unique situations and struggles, we're all similarly adrift, with self-doubt basically universal to the human condition. That said, a couple of the characters do manage to get past their uncertainties and seem surer of themselves, so maybe there's a more positive message that I'm missing. There's also a recurring motif of characters trying to make decisions, though that's actually less pivotal than is suggested by the blurb, and I struggled to see much resonance between the different choices being made – which include serious dilemmas like whether to end a relationship, cheat on a partner, or quit a job, as well as trivial choices like which ice cream to eat and what shirt to buy. Speaking of resonance between the stories, there are numerous overlaps, with characters from one story popping up in another, which I expected to be significant, but in the end this doesn't seem to amount to much, instead just being little Easter eggs to reward the reader for paying attention.

Regardless of how they hang together, the stories here are all interesting in their own right, and I got quite absorbed in them all, as is central to the overall story-within-a-story concept. That said, there's only one I thought was really great – one about a middle-aged art teacher with a shipwreck of a marriage. I'm not sure if that's because it's actually better than the others, or just because I prefer reading about jaded, self-centred middle-aged men to reading about younger characters who aren’t such bad people.

Compared to some of Shaw’s other work, the art here is quite spare. It ranges from purely functional to very pretty, but it's never really impressive, nor does it feel like it's trying to be. Likewise, the visual storytelling is unremarkable, rarely straying from a simple four-panel grid (which, by the way, makes the comic a much quicker read than its page count might suggest).

All in all, I’d say this is a really good comic, even if it’s not quite the masterpiece I’d been hoping for. Probably my third favourite of the Dash Shaw comics I've read, below “Doctors” and “BodyWorld”, but above “Bottomless Belly Button”.

[Dave Schaafsma · Rating 4 out of 5]

“Make it new,” Ezra Pound wrote, and Dash Shaw has always been answering that artist’s call, with alt-comix, art comics, experimental work; he’s part of a group pushing the boundaries of what comics can do. I see him as both having fun--being lighthearted--and also thinking deeply about ideas. Many of his works have been for me “failures” in some ways, but their ambitions are still a much better way than cosy predictability.

Blurry features ten characters, all facing decisions, connecting ot others facing decisions. “How did you make your choice?” Then each tells their stories, reflecting on times in their lives where they didn't know what to do. Choices, change, doubt, the fog of decision-making at crucial times. Sometimes the path forward is not crystal clear; it’s Blurry.

Blurry is Shaw’s most conventional work, a series of interlocking narratives, though the way the stories connect is a Slackers kinda approach, where we move from one situation where a someone is having a hard time deciding something--from what to wear at a brother’s wedding to whether one should get married, or divorced--or not, and then moving to someone else.

So Blurry has this comedic/romantic structure, where we see that all these people face similar turning points of their lives, and then we’re all in this same situation, and of course as with romance, a lot of the choices are relationship ones. And mundane, very often; it’s a kind of slice of life story where none of the characters are as important as the universal idea it explores. The wide angle is more important than the telephoto view. So it’s abstract, about an idea, but grounded in real lives, with characters that feel real and relatable, though there’s too many to get to know them deeply.

I like the art teacher as a character, not because we admire him--he's flawed, hating his job, ignoring his family, having an affair, yet teaching about the nature of art through his life modeling class--closely observing, rendering things as they are, as Shaw does.

[Nate · Rating 2 out of 5]

Clever conceit ruins it

The only thing you need to know about this book is this: Shaw begins with a couple of characters, and one of them, a man, meets someone else, a woman at a store, and -- and then we're into that woman's story and background and romantic life with a guy she flirts with, and -- and then we're into that guy's story and background and. . . . and again, and again.

It wouldn't be so bad if I actually cared about any of the characters, but I didn't. They're mostly self-concerned and, in that, boring. This feeling is compounded by my anxious waiting to return to the first couple or any prior person so that I could find out what happened to them.

By page 173, there was no indication, beyond a teaser panel or two, that we were going to get back to the other people. DNF.

And what's somewhat sadly amusing about this conceit is that one character teases his romantic-not-romantic lover's reading habit, that she reads one book for a bit, abandons it (for later), then picks up another, does the same, and so on, stating that she eventually does return to the first book but that it might take a year to do so. Which is exactly what Shaw is doing with us, with his migration from character to character.

But as I said, I lost interest. By 173 I had read about five characters' stories, with gestures to other characters, and I just Did Not Care. Everyone is "conflicted" and I guess such conflict is the engine that propels this drama. But there's no gas in this tank, to continue along with my metaphor. A kind of lame metaphor, I suppose, but one inspired by this book.

[David Karlsson · Rating 3 out of 5]

3,5

Som omslagsbilden antyder är det här en serieroman som fogar samman tio personers liv som en väv eller ett pussel.

Tematiskt handlar det om svårigheterna kring att göra val i livet, både stora och små. Boken börjar med att ett par beger sig till ett köpcenter där mannen har svårt att välja skjorta att ha på sin brors bröllop medan hans sambo har ännu svårare att välja vilken glass hon ska äta - hur ska man veta vilken som kommer att vara godast?

Från dessa till synes enkla val vecklar andra ut sig: en person vacklar kring giftermål eller inte, en annan kring vilken utbildning hos ska välja, en tredje om vilken riktning hennes författarkarriär ska ta och så vidare. En återkommande symbol i boken är att hamna i en dimma, ibland så tät att man inte kan se vägen framför sig, och försöka hitta ut ur den till någon slags klarhet.

Berättartekniskt är boken en lökkomposition med historier i historier - ibland i så många lager att det blir knivigt att hålla reda på var man är - som i slutändan knyts ihop. Det är väldigt skickligt genomfört, men kanske sker det på bekostnad av historierna som förvisso är välskrivna men inte riktigt lyckas bita sig fast och engagera fullt ut.

Kanske hade jag hoppats på lite mer, men det är ändå en väldigt bra och välgjord serieroman som helt klart är värd att läsa.

[drown_like_its_1999 · Rating 3 out of 5]

A Russian nesting doll of narratives that center around personal identity and how one's self perception shifts due to their environment and interactions with others. A man needs to get a shirt for his brothers wedding which causes him to meet an associate at a clothing store who mistakes him for someone related to an ex of hers who she left after meeting a figure model that worked for an art professor who was having an affair with another teacher who once had a memorable interaction with an author whose friend had a formative realization discussing work with a film executive... and these nested stories unwind as each character's learned experience informs the next person up and conclude in the inciting wedding where a large representation of the cast meet due to their indirect connections.

This slice of life had a compelling structure that skillfully interweaves the mundane, absurd, serendipitous, and insightful. That being said, I still found the work a bit overlong and thematically inconsequential (even if overarching theme isn't the point). The end result is something I'd highly recommend to those interested in a meandering slice of life ala *Sunday* by Schrauwen, with a focus on the peculiar thought patterns and idiosyncrasies that make people tick. It isn't quite as humorous as that title but makes up for it with it's novel storytelling mechanism and wider cast of characters. I did find the art less structurally interesting than Shaw's panelless work *Discipline* but Blurry had some creative and abstract compositions, albeit a bit more sparsely than I would like.