MAGGOTS
Brian Chippendale
(PictureBox)
Paperback
344 pages, two-color
4” x 6”
$21.95

“Fort Thunder co-founder Brian Chippendale’s follow up to his acclaimed NINJA is an immersive, frenetic reading experience. Drawn in 1996 and ‘97 over the pages of a Japanese book catalog, this 344-page graphic novel is now reproduced in a facsimile edition. Chippendale’s dense linework nearly vibrates off the page. The story concerns a group of characters living in a place called Fort Thunder, wandering around and discovering little holes in their universe. They 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 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.”