Dash Shaw

PARTICIPATING ARTISTS IN C'EST BON ANTHOLOGY vol. 2 Nathan Fox (cover) Danijel Zezelj Jessica Khane Pedro Nora Vincent Stall Kim W Andersson Henrik Rehr Dash Shaw Knut Larsson Marko Turunen Paul Gravett (text) Jimmy Jönsson Aleksandar Opacic Jyrki Heikkinen

By the author of Discipline, one of the New York Times Best Comics of 2021, a warm and quietly inventive new graphic novel about a group of characters whose lives interconnect in subtle, often unseen ways--and the seemingly mundane choices that bring them together or draw them apart. A man can't decide between two dress shirts for a wedding. A woman questions the style of her new glasses. A teacher considers quitting teaching. A figure-drawing model considers quitting modeling. A man drives into a fog bank and is unsure how to get home. From Dash Shaw, cartoonist of one of the New York Times Best Comics of 2021, comes a new graphic novel, Blurry. In Blurry, Shaw renders doubts around everyday decisions as startling cliffhangers, presenting us with the kinds of choices that can make a life expand or contract in equal measure. Drawn in clear lines and washes, Shaw captures the humor and anxiety of life in a one-of-a-kind structure that bends back to a thrilling, lyrical finish. Blurry is more evidence that Shaw is one of our greatest contemporary cartoonists.

A teenage Quaker joins the Union Army and experiences firsthand the brutality of the Civil War in this singular graphic novel by a beloved comics artist and animator. During the Civil War, many Quakers were caught between their fervent support of abolition, a desire to preserve the Union, and their long-standing commitment to pacifism. When Charles Cox, a young Indiana Quaker, slips out early one morning to enlist in the Union Army, he scandalizes his family and his community. Leaving behind the strict ways of Quaker life, Cox is soon confronted with the savagery of battle, the cruelty of the enemy (as well as his fellow soldiers), and the overwhelming strangeness of the world beyond his home. He clings to his faith and family through letters with his sister, Fanny, who faces her own trials at home: betrayal, death, and a church that seems ready to fracture under the stress of the war. Discipline is told largely through the letters exchanged between the Cox siblings--incorporating material from actual Quaker and soldier journals of the era--and drawn in a style that combines modern graphic storytelling with the Civil War-era battlefield illustration of the likes of Thomas Nast and Winslow Homer. The result is a powerful consideration of faith, justice, and violence, and an American comics masterpiece.