Episode 602 – Dash Shaw

Virtual Memories Show

Virtual Memories Show 602:
Dash Shaw

“Someone told me that reading this book after COVID felt like being a crowd of people again, and that felt great.”

Cartoonist and animator Dash Shaw returns to the show to celebrate his phenomenal new graphic novel, BLURRY (New York Review Comics). We talk about the decompressed mode he brought to this book, the turning points we encounter in the most mundane situations, his focus on the microscopic moments of doubt we have between two very similar things, and how he settled on the idea of structuring the book around nested stories (& figured out to thread them together by the end). We get into the 2×2 panel regularity of every page of Blurry and how that allowed him to build the book, how the experience of making a Clue miniseries changed his comics-making process, and how Blurry felt like he’d been playing a video game for a long time and then discovered a bonus level. We also discuss his film-making process and how that contrasts with the isolation of making comics, the ways his work tends toward collage, why naturalistic dialogue is another form of stylization, what it was like to grow up in a comics-friendly house, and a lot more. Give it a listen! And go read BLURRY!

“Making films, you can go back and forth about whether you should use take 3 or take 4 of a scene, and I’ll bolt up awake at night 4 years later thinking, ‘Why did I choose take 3 instead of take 4?’

“I like it when there’s something about the differences of things being as heightened as their similarities.”

“A lot of cartoonists had an older sibling to bring them into comics, but I had a dad.”

Enjoy the conversation! Then check out the archives for more great episodes!

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About our Guest

Dash Shaw is the author of several graphic novels, including Bottomless Belly Button and Discipline, published by New York Review Comics in 2021 and named one of the best graphic novels of that year by The New York Times. He has written and directed two animated feature films, the most recent of which, Cryptozoo, won the Sundance Film Festival’s NEXT Innovator Prize and was nominated for the John Cassavetes Award at the Independent Spirit Awards. He lives in Richmond, VA.

Follow Dash on Instagram. And go listen to our 2021 conversation!

Credits: This episode’s music is Fella by Hal Mayforth, used with permission from the artist. The conversation was recorded at an undisclosed location on a pair of Blue enCORE 200 microphones feeding into a Zoom PodTrak P4 digital recorder & interface. I recorded the intro and outro on a Heil PR-40 Dynamic Studio Recording Microphone feeding into a Zoom PodTrak P4. All processing and editing done in Adobe Audition CC. Photos of Dash by me. My friend shot us at a funny angle so it looks like I’m a bunch shorter than Dash. It’s on my instagram.