Product Description

A major new graphic novel from a major new talent.
Bottomless Belly Button is a comedy-drama that follows the dysfunctional adventures of the Loony Family.

After 40-some years of marriage, Maggie and David Loony shock their children with their announcement of a planned divorce. But the reason for splitting isn't itself shocking: they’re "just not in love any more." The announcement sparks a week long Loony family reunion at Maggie and David's creepy (and possibly haunted) beach house.

The eldest child, Dennis, struggles with his parents' decision while facing difficulties of his own in his recent marriage. Believing that his parents are hiding the true reasons behind their estrangement, Dennis embarks on a quest to discover the truth and searches through clues, trap doors, and secret tunnels in attempt to find an answer. Claire, the middle child, is a single mother whose 16-year-old daughter, Jill, is apathetic to the divorce but confounded by Claire and troubled by her own "mannish" appearance. The youngest child, Peter, is a hack filmmaker suffering from paralyzing insecurities who establishes an unorthodox romance with a mysterious day care counselor at the beach.

In a six-day period rich with atmospheric sequences, these characters stumble blindly around one another, often ignoring their surroundings and consumed by their own daily conflicts. Visually, Shaw employs a leisurely storytelling pace that allows room for exploring the interconnecting relationships among the characters and plays to his strength as a cartoonist — small gestural details and nuanced expressions that bring the characters to vivid and intimate life.

If the controversial R.D. Laing wrote an episode of The Simpsons, it might read something like Bottomless Belly Button.
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Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #35346 in Books
• Published on: 2008-06-04
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 720 pages

From Publishers Weekly
Starred Review. Shaw's stunningly conceived and executed comic opus captures one moment of change in a family. Maggie and David Loony have called their three adult children to their childhood home to announce that, after 40 years of marriage, they're getting a divorce. Dennis, the eldest, desperately searches for an answer to why. He believes that if he just finds the right old letters, he'll understand what's happening to his parents, only to find that his answers say a lot more about his own marriage and infant son. Claire, the middle child, has been through her own divorce and is now struggling to raise a teen daughter by herself. The youngest, Peter, who has always felt like a changeling in his family and is drawn with a frog's head, is going through a delayed coming-of-age. Shaw's style deftly combines cartoon drawings with slavish attention to detail. The result feels reminiscent of a photo album, one person's quest to remember everything from the floor plans of the vacation home to the texture of the sand on the lake beach. Masterfully using the comics medium to juggle all the different characters, weaving their stories together seamlessly, Shaw allows the Loonys' emotions to play out naturally without forced resolutions, leaving a wistful hopefulness that feels just as conflicted and confusing as every family is. (June)
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From Booklist
*Starred Review* Shaw’s huge new work is, like The Mother’s Mouth (2006), about ordinary love. Its scope is, however, as much broader as its six-times-larger size suggests, while its technique is a lot simpler. It’s the story of what may be the last gathering of the Loony family at their oceanside home—last because, after 40 years, Mom and Dad are divorcing. Despite his wife Aki’s attempted calming, elder son Dennis is freaked and, when not out running or minding baby Alex, pokes into every nook and cranny to find incriminating evidence of either parent’s infidelity. Early wed, long-divorced daughter Claire and her daughter, 16-year-old Jill, are accepting and separately get away from the house for some unsatisfactory “social” life. The younger son, aspiring filmmaker Peter, hovers in the background and, mirabile dictu, meets a girl at the beach who actually likes him, as the single panel representing her perspective, in which Shaw draws Peter with a young man’s instead of a frog’s face, confirms. Employing the same cartoony-ness, bold line, and two-tone high contrast as in The Mother’s Mouth but dispensing with that book’s stylistic variety and fantasy effects, Shaw renders in comics situations and characters identical with those of mainstream realistic novels and movies and handles them with the sensitivity and humor of the best humanist novelists and filmmakers. --Ray Olson

Review
Reads almost like a John Updike novel... [Dash Shaw] really utilizes the medium to its fullest capacity. (Benn Ray on WYPR Baltimore public radio)

Shaw's online and bound comics inhabit surreal spaces both cerebral and emotional, leaping from zombie love stories to futuristic set pieces without resorting to predictability...It's probably safe to say he has arrived. (Wired)

[A]lmost nothing is casual in Bottomless Belly Button and almost nothing is superficial in its narrative structure, nor its authorial intentions...Shaw's work delves into the interior of the personal relationships of its protagonists, but also in the basic foundations of linear narrative... Shaw transcends the sphere of intellectual narrative to enter the much more epidermal level of physical sensations... Dash Shaw has composed a monumental work, sometimes puzzling, sometimes bordering on melodrama, but always strong and brave, a work full of qualities and findings that will, we believe, be a reference for future comics. His experimentation, his daring and his solutions can't help but remind us of an equally ambitious and dense work, Jimmy Corrigan... Do not miss this. (Little Nemo's Kat)

Customer Reviews

Graphic Life
Shaw's marvelous graphic novel extols the emotional distance between family members and the individuals from themselves. Members of the aptly- and humanity inclusively-named Looney family gather to receive word that their parents are divorcing after 40+ years of marriage. What unfolds is a tripartite discovery process of themselves, their relationships both inside and out of the family, and their place in life's plan. Had Shaw's novel been completely text, it's place in the literature section of the bookstore alongside John Banville, Lionel Shriver, and Jennifer McMahon would be assured. However, since it is a graphic novel and comprised of predominately illustrations over text, it's in no bookstore that I've been able to discover. However, Shaw's work is assuredly adult and literary and resonates with themes illustrative of the human condition. Pick it up.

Freaking Amazing
This is one of the best comic books I've ever read. I picked it up at my local comics shop and read about half of it just standing next to the shelves. Buy the time I bought it my arm had cramped up from holding it. (At 720 pages it is no lightweight.) It's engaging and interesting and a fantastic story.
The author does a wonderful job of mixing the written text with the visual panels and the flow of the book is excellent. There are even a few coded messages that, if you're into that sort of thing, are great fun to figure out.
The last few pages are some of the best I've ever seen in how they tell the story through the medium of comics. I don't want to give anything away but I think that it could never have worked as well in any other form. Buy this book even if you aren't a big comics geek.

family gone wild
once you get past the book weighing at least 5 pounds, shaw captures one family's week at a beach house where the parents announce their divorce after 40 yrs of marriage, and how the adult children respond and react. very cinematic. great graphics. funny, droll, moving. very strong.