Rick Ray's Reviews > Blurry

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.