What Is Dash Shaws Vision for Ghost Rider? Plus: An Exclusive Preview of Bottomless Bell

Photo: Olaf Blecker

In this week’s New York, we profile Dash Shaw, the 25-year-old writer and artist whose 720-page graphic novel, Bottomless Belly Button, is collecting stellar reviews around the comics world. In the piece, Shaw tells us that if Marvel Comics called him and asked him to draw Ghost Rider, “I would be like, ‘Hell, yeah.’” But what’s Shaw’s vision for the skull-headed superhero best known from a crummy Nicolas Cage movie?

“I think Ghost Rider should really be drawn as if the target audience is people in motorcycle gangs,” Shaw told us. “Totally badass tattoo imagery. Because right now, it just feels like he’s a superhero who rides a motorcycle. So I really see that as having a crazy oddball aesthetic, culled from tattoo art.” Shaw’s already drawn a Marvel hero, though — his whimsical and sad version of Dr. Strange, for an upcoming Marvel indie creators’ anthology, was loved by some and hated by others when Shaw posted an excerpt on his blog this winter.

Vulture is proud to present an exclusive twenty-page excerpt from Bottomless Belly Button, introducing the three siblings at the heart of the story: Dennis, Claire (and her daughter), and frog-faced Peter (and his new girlfriend). See the excerpt after the jump.

Bottomless Belly Button, by Dash Shaw

Comic-Book Hero [NYM]

What Is Dash Shaw’s Vision for ‘Ghost Rider’? Plus: An Exclusive Preview of ‘Bottomless Belly Button’

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