Anyone on the lookout for intellectually stimulating, æsthetically challenging work – regardless of the form it takes – should be sure to investigate the comics of Dash Shaw.  Shaw is a sophisticated visual thinker and natural experimenter unconstrained by generic conventions or audience expectations.  In Doctors, soap operatic melodrama mixes freely with science fiction concepts (Philip Jose Farmer / Philip K Dick) and both are together presented to the reader with a bold decisive formalism that simultaneously brings to mind painters such as Hans Hoffman and filmmakers like Jean Luc Godard.  The final product is in intriguing investigation on our evolving conception of where life begins and ends in our ever more media saturated world, as dreams, hallucinations, and manufactured artificial visions all vie for the attention of the neural pathways that connect our biological sensory apparatus to our conscious sense of self, in the process confusing our understanding of what is real.  This is an issue that philosophers have grappled with at least since Descartes, but it is only fairly recently, with the advent of the immersive artificial medias – beginning with film, and its subsequent progeny of television, video and now the ubiquitous interconnectivity of all electronic media – that what is experienced by our the senses is actually beginning to test the ability of our interpretive intellect to distinguish the real from the artificial to the extent that we are currently faced with the situation that we either have to redefine reality or reality will redefine us.  Will we be able to remain consciously distinct from the artificial realities that we are creating, or will we merge with them, our sense of selves no longer distinct from our creations.  Dash Shaw reveals that comics have the potential to effectively map our explorations of this new world.