Brian Chippendale: Maggots

In this follow-up to his acclaimed graphic novel, Ninja--which was reviewed in such diverse sources as The New York Times, Art Review and The Comics Journal--the co-founder of the legendary Providence underground art and music space, Fort Thunder, gives us an immersive, frenetic reading experience. Originally drawn in 1996 over the pages of a Japanese book catalogue, Brian Chippendale's monumental 350-page graphic novel, Maggots, is reproduced here in a facsimile edition, with every nick and tear in tact. The line work--incredibly dense because Chippendale needed to cover up the Japanese catalogue--nearly vibrates off every page. As for the story, it concerns a group of characters who live in a place called Fort Thunder and wander around discovering little holes in their universe, battle a capitalist landlord, eat peanut butter sandwiches and embark on adventures somewhere between dirt punk and epic, cosmic science fiction.
Chippendale's drawings are much like his famed drumming for the noise rock band Lightning Bolt: propulsive, soulful and chaotic. But, like his best songs, Maggots opens up into beautiful visual passages, vistas of temples and flowers--all drawn in scorching black marks that tell a story in their own abstractions. This book has several built-in cult followings.

Where Maggots first seems to be the most avant-garde flipbook ever, readers' enthusiasm may turn to dismay when they see the instructions printed on the inside jacket flap. Readers are, in fact, supposed to read the book, made up of tightly gridded, postage-stamp-sized panels of improvisatory black pen work sketched over the pages of a Japanese book catalogue. As if this were not challenging enough, you are to read the panel rows in a zigzag pattern, left to right and then right to left, down the first page and up the second except when its [sic] tricky like page 4 gets weird, as the author kindly notes. Suddenly what was a dynamic, unconventionally animated book of strange characters in hallucinatory landscapes becomes a slow, patience-testing novel of the same ilk. Shunning the contrivances of a clear plot, character development, theme or setting, the pages buzz only with the nervous scratching of an overly busy pen, through which brief moments of clear activity—typically a sex act—arrive amid long stretches of action too tiny and messy to comprehend. Chippendale belongs to Thunder Bolt, a leading noise rock band, a music that seeks art and beauty through chaos and energy. Fans of same may find something to enjoy here. (Nov.)
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