Cosplayers (Hardcover)

By Dash Shaw. Published by Fantagraphics. 

Hardcover, 116 pages, Colour, 2016.

This graphic novel takes a humanistic look at cosplayers, the Storm Troopers and Sailor Moons that have become the symbol of comic cons in America.
This graphic novel is an ode to the defining element of fandom. It celebrates both the culture’s theatricality and D.I.Y. beauty—as well as its often-awkward conflation of fantasy with reality—in seven interconnected short stories about two young women. Cosplayers is an affectionate, funny book about how fandom can be much more inclusive and humanistic than the stories and characters it's built upon.

"Shaw has achieved a new level of literary depth in these smaller, more focused stories, and has created striking images through the use of digital patterns and washes of color. Cosplayers reminds you how good a comic can be, telling human, emotionally resonant stories through powerful pictures." — Cleaver Magazine

"Cosplayers will strike a chord with anyone who turns to reading as an escape, be they lit-nerd, comic geek, messageboard troll, or a little mixture of all of the above." — HTML Giant

"Cosplayers reads like an account of what it's like when a person's soul is addicted to fantasy, leaving folks with masks some will desperately want to be their real faces." — io9

"Dash Shaw is an utterly brilliant young cartoonist who has, in a few short years, advanced from the academic experiments of his earlier work... into a formalist genius whose skills encompass both a natural gift for color and a feel for subtle, indirect characterization." — Bill Howard - Only the Cinema

"Kaleidoscopic... Shaw has a deft touch... Like the very best illustrated fiction, Shaw's work moves between pathos and humor, between the fantastic and the familiar." — The Christian Science Monitor