Doctors by Dash Shaw Review

A small group of rogue doctors have invented a machine that brings the newly deceased back to the world of the living. Except sometimes the dead don’t wanna come back… and what the docs are doing isn’t technically legal or at all moral anyway…!

I kinda liked Dash Shaw’s Doctors but it definitely had its flaws. The explanation for why the machine exists - Charon, like the ferryman from Greek mythology who took souls of the newly deceased across the river Styx - is pretty feeble: to bring the rich back to put their affairs in order before they die again. What - that’s it? So it’s a temporary resurrection? What if they didn’t want to be brought back? Is that the only reason to bring someone back?

Later on there’s a patient who asks to be brought back when he dies of his illness. Ok, but then won’t he just die again anyway - the machine doesn’t cure illnesses like cancer does it? Also, are they actually dead and if so is Shaw saying an afterlife exists? What kind of religion’s afterlife - or is it different for everyone? Or are they alive in a coma and just stuck in their own brain? If you can reach them in the afterlife through The Charon, can’t you just ask them what they want to do with their earthly assets without having to bring them back, interrupting their idyllic afterlife and making them miserable, questioning reality?

Still, I liked the opening act where the character of Miss Bell isn’t sure what’s real and what isn’t - it’s very Twilight Zone-ish, and it’s a shame it didn’t last longer. I like the whole question of what reality is and whether it matters if something’s objectively or subjectively “real” depending on our experience of it. As Sheryl Crow sang, if it makes you happy, it can’t be that bad (unless, y’know, it’s obviously bad like hurting other people).

I wasn’t that taken with our main character’s story with her daddy issues but it wasn’t terrible either. The idea to print the book on different coloured pages presented an interesting visual though some of the darker colours made it harder to read the black inked panels.

There’s the embryo of a potentially great Philip K. Dick-esque comic here but I don’t think Shaw fully realised it in the space he had. Doctors is still kinda interesting regardless of its shortcomings and I’d say it’s worth a look for fans of thoughtful sci-fi.