Косплееры

Cosplayers #1-2+

by Dash Shaw

"Косплееры" - это ода самому живописному ритуалу фэндома, который в том или ином виде представлен на каждой конвенции фанатов комиксов и аниме. Косплей сочетает в себе присущую этим жанрам театральность и красоту сделанных своими руками вещей - даже несмотря на то, что временами фантазия и реальность переплетаются в сознании их творцов самым причудливым образом. На этом ярком, самобытном фоне автор "Косплееров" разворачивает перед нами историю двух талантливых молодых женщин, одинаково сильно влюбленных в косплей и кино.

Genres: Comics, Graphic Novels, Fiction, Graphic Novels Comics, Humor, Comic Book, Adult

136 pages, Hardcover

First published August 3, 2016

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

[Dave Schaafsma · Rating 4 out of 5]

Easily the most conventional and accessible Shaw work I have read. About two cosplaying girls, released serially, 7 interlocking stories about the girls, cosplay, comics, fantasy, manga (Tezuka, Myazaki), making films, using other people. Feels like in large part an homage to Daniel Clowes and Ghost World. Some of the drawing here is like Clowes for sure, and there's the two-girls-growing-up comparison, they're in both stories trying to find themselves, coming of age, trying on different clothes, different identities. Sweet. Shaw says it is about the time in the nineties when he went to lots of comics conventions and is a kind of tribute to all his friends who went there, I assume cosplaying there. And I assume Shaw was reading Clowes a lot, then, so this is almost like a memoir of Shaw's nineties.

I have really struggled to understand Shaw's work. He has been working on a new vocabulary for comics and I just haven't understood it. Some of his work I have liked, but even then I couldn't say I understood it. I hated New School two years ago, in 2014, and I think I just didn't get it, but will re-read it. I think Chris Ware said somewhere that Dash Shaw is the future of comics, so I am going to try harder, damn it! But this one might be a good way in to his work. Cosplayers is a more conventional narrative.

[Rod Brown · Rating 2 out of 5]

I'm not sure I understood the point of this. Is it to make cosplayers more sympathetic and understandable? Is it making fun of them? Or it just cashing in on people who are titillated by the concept of cosplay? It fails at all three of those and offers only bland stories with bland art about bland characters.

[fer · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5 ⭐️

Gostei bastante de algumas paginas que a arte pegava um quadro unico na pagina inteira. A historia achei ok, nada demais.

[Dov Zeller · Rating 4 out of 5]

I didn't expect to like this one but I was pleasantly surprised. The characters in here are complex and their dynamics and interests push against conventional narrative in ways I really appreciate. Here's a very long sentence about the book from the fantagraphics site: "Artfully celebrating both the culture’s obvious theatricality and uniquely D.I.Y. beauty, as well as its often awkward conflation of fantasy and reality, Cosplayers explores these delicate psychological balancing acts via a series of seven interconnected short stories surrounding two talented young women who combine their love of cosplaying with their love of social media and film in order to deepen their relationship with the popular culture they celebrate."

And here's an article that has some interesting things to say about the book and Shaw and his style and insider status (i.e. not writing about cos-play with any fetishizing or exploity attitude) and also the cool book-trailer is accessible here: https://www.pastemagazine.com/article....

[Riegs · Rating 1 out of 5]

Is this Ghost World 2017? As a geeky female, I feel insulted. The book is described as "affectionate", but really, the two main female characters come off as creepy, deluded stalkers. They dress up and film themselves tormenting unsuspecting people, and put them for their YouTube videos without consent. As nerds, we're supposed to celebrate that? How is this book affectionate or kind towards female friendships, or women participating in geek culture? This book reinforces gross stereotypes about fandom being niche, pathetic, and isolating, and that young women who participate in fandom are weird outcasts lacking boundaries. No thanks.

[Sesana · Rating 2 out of 5]

This just didn't connect with me. The stories are unremarkable, and the characters were neither likable enough nor interesting enough to make me want to see more of them. Very obviously inspired by Ghost World, so I suppose if you're looking for more of the same, but geekier, here it is.

[Stewart Tame · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was fun, if rather on the slight side. Annie enjoys dressing up in costumes. Verti enjoys taking photos and videos of her doing so. They start improvising short films and posting them online, and go to a few anime conventions. It's a fun celebration of the fan lifestyle. Shaw writes with a light touch, never over-explaining or wallowing in the minutiae of his subject matter. I really like the collage work on some of the covers. There's no real ongoing story, just the two girls having adventures. It's cute and fun and doesn't overstay its welcome.

[Matti Karjalainen · Rating 3 out of 5]

Dash Shaw'n "Cosplayers" (Fantagraphics, 2016) on lyhyistä episodeista koostuva sarjakuva kahdesta nuoresta naisesta, jotka harrastavat cosplayta, kuvaavat omia supersankarielokuvia YouTubeen ladattaviksi ja vierailevat erilaisissa nörttitapahtumissa kohdaten muun muassa ekstenrisen sarjakuvakauppiaan ja elämässään epäonnistuneen Osamu Tezuka -asiantuntijan. Nämä herkulliset sivuhahmot ovatkin sarjakuvan parasta antia.

"Cosplayers" oli ihan mukava, mutta ei nyt erityisen mieleenpainuva albumi, joka varmaan kolahtaa sitä lujempaa, mitä enemmän lukija on sisällä fandomissa. Shaw pyytää lopussa anteeksi Daniel Clowesilta, ja kieltämättä sarjakuva tuo (muutenkin kuin piirrosjälkensä puolesta) melko vahvasti mieleen Ghost Worldin, ollen kuitenkin astetta sitä kevyempi ja humoristisempi.

[alicat · Rating 1 out of 5]

I hated this. The two lead females were terrible people. They creepily filmed people without permission. They filmed a fake date with an innocent guy where the girl was hiding a knife behind her back inside his home. Wtf. They started a real fight with people at a bar just for the sake of their stupid YouTube channel. They're mean to an old classmate, calling her a bitch and using footage of her without consent. They again go on a fake date with another guy.

Then, they go to a con. There's this Tezuka-expert guy who is just a weird, sad, lonely man. I didn't really get the point of him besides perpetuating a negative nerd stereotype. He pees in a bush because he's too socially awkward to use the restroom with other people using it. He eats from a garbage bin because I don't know, he's broke? But then why is he at a con? And he sleeps outside because he thought he was entitled to a free room since he did one panel. Sorry, that's not how cons work.

Okay, then there's the part that made me the angriest. The two girls compete in the costume contest. They call a girl in a Cammy from Street Fighter costume a stripper, a bitch, and a skank simply because she's cosplaying a character that's more revealing. Can you not????! Cammy ends up winning the costume contest, and our main characters say she only won because the judges wanted to sleep with her. Maybe don't talk so rudely about someone you don't know who also happens to just be a nerd dressing in costume for fun. Also, I hate it when people feel entitled to win in costume contests. Girl, sit down in your Mononoke cosplay. You don't know what Cammy put into her costume. She could have hand stitched that thing, dyed her fabrics, styled her own wig, made her shoes, and more. Just because a costume is skimpy, doesn't mean it's not complicated or worthy of praise. Ugh, that made me so mad.

The next section was about the two girl getting hired to make a Hulu series after some guy saw their Youtube videos (incredibly unbelievable). The most infuriating part in this section was when they sat down with a potential actress for the project. The lady is friendly and compliments the girls and their work. Afterwards, the red haired girl says "I can't tell if she was trying to have sex with us. Was she a lesbian?" RAGE. No. Just because someone is friendly to you and the same sex doesn't mean they're a lesbian and want to have sex with you. Also, way to push the false narrative that gay people are interested in everyone of the same sex. It's called being nice. You clearly don't know because you're a terrible, mean person.

Other complaints:
- Cosplaying a postal service worker isn't a thing. In fact it's illegal.
- Leggings are pants if someone wants them to be. Stop trying to police how women can dress.
- Those were the emptiest cosplayer con hotel rooms I have ever seen. There should have been wigs, costumes, mountain dew bottles, etc everywhere. Lazy drawing.
- One of the girls called people who travel all over to conventions psychos. What???
- Comment about the friendly new people they met at the con: "I don't want to deal with those dorks." Rude.
- Red haired girl wanted to steal comics, but then just broke a display case.
- I hated the art and coloring.

The only thing about this I enjoyed was the illustrations of different cosplayers spread throughout the book. I have ten plus years of cosplay and con experience. This was a bad representation of the scene in just about every way. Did not enjoy. Would not recommend.

End rant.

[Raina · Rating 4 out of 5]

Episodic story about two cosplayers who start making movies without the consent of some of their stars. Also some portraits of cosplayers. Although the plot largely occurs at cons and the main characters are cosplayers, it's a teeny bit less cosplay-centric than I would have expected. At least from a mainstream writer.
Originally published as pamphlets.

Honestly, it's one of the most accessible works I've read by Shaw.
Full-color illustrations, and a relatively mainstream plotline. ;)

[Drew Canole · Rating 3 out of 5]

Pretty fun and interesting look at cosplay and creating Youtube videos. It's one of Dash Shaw's tammer books but still has a lot of interesting comic concepts like blending in text messaging and having art collages.

I really enjoyed the Tezuka con story where a Tezuka expert having a midlife crises gives a presentation then later has a breakdown. The presenter claiming his favourite work by Tezuka is Phoenix is actually what inspired me to read that series last year!

[Villain E · Rating 4 out of 5]

A cute little book.  A little over a hundred pages.  Two young women who make no-budget movies with cell phone cameras and post them to youtube, encounter random, over-the-top nerds. 

I agree with other reviewers that this reads more like a Daniel Clowes book than Dash Shaw's previous books, in that it's more character reaction rather than character driven.  But the vignette format keeps it from getting tedious.  I would have liked if it had gone somewhere, though.

[Margaret Robbins · Rating 4 out of 5]

I enjoyed reading this book and thought it was a lot of fun. I'm noticing that it's getting mixed reviews. I think people who are into fandom/nerd culture, like me, are more likely to relate to the stories. Also, it is a certain brand of humor: wry, witty, a little snarky and sarcastic at times, so it worked for me. It is a pretty accurate snapshot of CONs, cosplay events, comic shops, and who tends to frequent them. I needed a good laugh during this political season, and this book accomplished that goal for me. I recommend it. Dash Shaw and I are roughly the same age, so I'm impressed at how much he's done in his writing and creative career. It motivates me!

[Mitchell Friedman · Rating 2 out of 5]

I read stuff from lists and reviews and recommendations. Often I don't remember why I'm reading something until I go to review it and look at the book again. This one was one of those where I was thinking, we the heck did I read this? And I'm thinking it had to be a Steve review - and it was so good for me for figuring it out. Now I've just got to understand, what was he thinking?

It's not that this was awful. Umm wait, it was awful. Or pointless, umm again. The main character was mean spirited and her friend almost escapes her thrall but not really.

I mean it was readable and quick and the art wasn't awful, but I'm looking for a bit more than that.

[Bill · Rating 3 out of 5]

Interesting exploration of modern day fandom, YouTube youth culture, and geeky hobbies. The stories are a bit disconnected and end abruptly -- I feel like we're only getting brief glimpses into the lives of some of the main characters and the people they encounter, and I wanted to learn more about them. Some of the storylines are unusually bleak for a volume that's supposed to be focusing on a creative hobby and its scene -- the focus on a side character, an anime "expert" who is fighting both poverty and issues of self-worth, during a convention story arc, was especially jarring.

[Derek Royal · Rating 4 out of 5]

I love what Shaw is doing with his Cosplayer stories, treating his subjects with respect and curiosity and not holding them up for ridicule. This "Prefect Collection," as it is called, brings together the earlier stories from the two comic books released in 2014, as well as the stories included in the FCBD Hip Hop Family Tree Three-in-One comic. And never before released stories, as well.

[Maggie Gordon · Rating 2 out of 5]

Ehhh... A couple of disaffected youth have a lot of ennui and they cosplay. The art is loose and not particularly emotive. Definitely a meh for me. I wasn't too into the indie comics of the 1990s, and this harkens back to that era in terms of tone.

[Kelly Dashiell · Rating 4 out of 5]

Every personality in here I have personally met in real life. A+

[Carolyn · Rating 3 out of 5]

Apparently I read this ages ago because it has a cool title, forgot I read it... and picked it up again, because it has a cool title.

I suppose the joy of having a bad memory is getting to experience the same things for the first time multiple times over?

Anyways. Plot is kind of meandering and seems to go nowhere (like the typical life of a millennial, if I'm being cynical). It's snapshots in the lives of two geekgirls wandering through the convention/al backdrop of our lives and hobbies. And I vaguely recollect enjoying the book for the novelty of the characters and setting around the time it first came out, it's almost too familiar now for me to marvel at. And that's a good thing, because it's the byproduct of having actually walked in a world I once only knew second-hand.

It's also pretty wholesome and diverse. There's a mention of how one of the best things about cosplay are the deviations from the characters we see on screen, how many different bodies can fit the characters of Rogue or Khal Drogo or Green Lantern. And there is some wonderful humour in this book...

[On inspecting their hotel room]
Verta: If you drink this bottled water, they charge you six bucks! It's like they put a complimentary bear trap in your bedroom!

So, not my fave. But fun.

[Seizure Romero · Rating 1 out of 5]

I did not enjoy this. Pretty much every character is some kind of assmunch, with the possible exception of A.J., who states, "I'm at peace with myself" because he's at the con to be a nerd and do nerdy con things. It reads as if the whole point is to perpetuate shitty nerd stereotypes while pretending to be sympathetic.

I don't care enough about it to elaborate. Others have already stated some of the things I didn't like (see links below).

If you identified with this, I'm sorry.

https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...

https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...

https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...

[D.T. · Rating 2 out of 5]

Quirky. Some fun moments but the main characters are a little mean-spirited and manipulative. I like the episodic stories and some parts feel like they're going to touch on something deeper, fanboys projecting personalities/creating romance where there is none onto cosplayers, feeling aimless, being a black(?/ Verti appears to be black, but idk) person/minority in the cosplay/anime community, and the seedy side of the film industry (I really thought it was going to go there with the Hulu project. Maybe I'm glad it didn't. At first, just the way the producer guy came about was a little creepy...)

[Annie · Rating 4 out of 5]

this was great — sweet, funny love letter to fandom and teenhood and a little bit to Richmond, with a very Dash Shaw surreal edge

[Cassie · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was barely about cosplay. It was more about people being shitty, and conspiracy theorists? I don't recommend. Very choppy and not cohesive as a collection.

[Matt Graupman · Rating 5 out of 5]

Dash Shaw is virtually impossible to pigeonhole. Just when you think you've got him figured out, he flips everything around and you're back to Square One with him. I first noticed him (like a lot of readers) after "Bottomless Belly Button," a tender and melancholy comic about a family coming apart. Then, he started making truly weird books like "New School," always experimenting with form and style. Recently, I watched an animated movie he directed called "My Entire High School Sinking Into The Sea" which is literally about a school dropping off a cliff into the water below. Now, he's come out with "Cosplayers" and it's almost shocking in its normalcy.

For those who don't know, a cosplayer is someone who dresses up like a sci-fi, superhero, video game, etc. character. The idea is obviously ripe for humor and Shaw's book is very funny, though he doesn't seem to be mean-spirited towards that whole scene. In the interlocking vignettes, Shaw is almost Clowes-ian in his exploration of being awkward and feeling like an outsider; perhaps intentionally, his drawings in "Cosplayers" also seems to mimic that Clowes/Ware/Tomine style (Shaw's work is usually much looser and bolder). It's really a very straightforward comic, something that I wouldn't have thought I'd ever say about a Dash Shaw book.

I guess when you've made your name by creating some truly "out there" comics, the only way left to shock readers is by doing something normal. Not surprisingly (okay, maybe a little surprisingly), Dash Shaw does "normal" really well. I wonder where his muse will lead him next.

[Ian Hrabe · Rating 3 out of 5]

The problem with having your magnum opus also be your debut is that everything else you create is gonna be measured up against it (and ultimately, feel a little more underwhelming than it would in a vacuum). Maybe I just loved Bottomless Belly Button too much. Cosplayers is a definite improvement over Shaw's last offering--Doctors, which was thematically potent but felt half-there as a book--and while it feels a little too much like an homage to Daniel Clowes, it's still fun and poignant. It's still not quite there, but I'm going to keep coming back to this well as long as Dash Shaw keeps making comics.

[Summer DBM · Rating 4 out of 5]

I adore media about convention life made by people who clearly know their stuff. The main characters are a modern-day Becky and Enid from "Ghost World" and I love it.

PS, if you enjoy this, check out 2Kawaii4Comfort on YouTube. It's good.

[Maureen · Rating 4 out of 5]

One of the most earnest and funniest comics I've read this year.

[Laura · Rating 1 out of 5]

I’m...really not sure what I just read. There didn’t seem to be a strong story thread and, since I’m not wild about looking at the pictures, it didn’t do a whole lot for me.

[Marsha · Rating 3 out of 5]

This graphic novel takes us behind the scenes of people who adore dressing up as their favorite characters from television, movies and books. This is not the first time I’ve seen such a novel but this one takes us very far down the rabbit hole, indeed.

People wax philosophic about their love of comics. Their affection can seem bizarre, even to those who share their mania. Indulgence in fandom leads to strange dreams, the destruction of romantic couplings and mood swings that make people seem almost bipolar.

There is little of childlike joy within these pages. All the cosplayers are adults and the seriousness they bring to their crafts can border on the obsessive. Attempts to make money from video feeds or to hookup with so-called romantic partners are doomed to failure or result in odd, disjointed coupling.

This definitely shows the grittier side of fan obsession. For those who wonder about the seamy underbelly of their favorite comic book convention, this book dares to lift the curtain.

[Guilherme Smee · Rating 4 out of 5]

Cosplayers: Fantasiando a Vida começa e termina esquisito. Com uma HQ sobre um colégio sobrenatural que não tem nada a ver coma história principal. Também é cheio de "pin-ups" e colagens de cosplayers que parecem encher linguiça da edição. Mas a história em quadrinhos em si é bem legal. Lembra bastante Ghost World, com duas protagonistas que acham que todo mundo é um saco mas não percebem que as sacais são elas. Além disso, elas são cosplayers e produzem filmes de pessoas reagindo a situações inusitadas delas vestindo suas roupas de cosplay. Esse é um quadrinho bem diferente do primeiro de Dash Shaw, Umbigo Sem Fundo, mais parece uma obra de Charles Burns, ou Adrian Tomine, outros queridinhos do circuito independente dos Estados Unidos. Comprei esse quadrinho numa promoção porque achei o valor caro pelo número de páginas que oferece, comparado com outras publicações do mesmo tipo e formato. Mas foi uma boa leitura.