Maggots

by Brian Chippendale

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.

Genres: Comics, Graphic Novels, Art, Comics Manga

352 pages, Paperback

First published November 1, 2007

Reviews

[Nate D · Rating 4 out of 5]

The striking cumulative effect of endless small boxes of utterly mundane action -- sitting, looking, eating, sleeping, sleeping with, walking, running, walking, walking -- against an insensible black void, gradually giving way to a kind of identification, investment, and sense of verisimilitude. Which only makes those moments that suddenly break into action or total surreality feel much more significant when they come. An obliterated and off-handed epic.

[Dave Schaafsma · Rating 4 out of 5]

Chippendale first did Ninja and followed it up with this. If N' Oof come after. This was done in 1996 as part of work Chippendale was doing for the art and music collective he co-founded, For Thunder in Providence, RI. This work is 350 pages long, in small book fashion (4 x6 ?), all done on a Japanese catalogue he had to ink over and then scratch off (it looks to me like. . . ). It's the story of a little guy character, maybe in a world of maggots, who is also like a twenty something guy who goes through his life eating drinking, having sex, etc, but the narrative is disjointed; it's a series of disconnected narratives, really, or the point might be that it is essentially non-narrative, slackerish, sideways, for this guy.

So Chippendale is a drummer. My first image of rock drummer is the Sesame Street character Animal, who is just crazy manic. Well, I am told Chippendale as a drummer is like Animal in some respects. I dunno, haven't heard his music yet, but will check out. I can say the art is manic. My first impression is that is alternative or underground comix, and I'm not wrong there, in a sense, but this is primarily artwork that seems to have been done very very fast, propulsively, out of a kind of chaos. Not easy to read. If he scratches off to be able to write dialogue, you can't read the dialogue very easily because of the Japanese characters. Some pages have more than 40 little panels with this little guy making very little expression and not changing all that much. A kind of stasis. Conceptually interesting as art work, maybe, but not that engaging (to me) initially at all. And yet, when I slow down a bit and reread it, the nature of the maggot's life begins to emerge. Still, I can't imagine many people except conceptual art freaks that would go out of their way to spend very much time with this. But just what I've written this far, it's maybe repulsive or boring or interesting to you, or maybe all of that, I'd guess. I guess that's kinda the way I felt about it. It's about an idea of representation of a life. Alienating, obfuscating, lost. A kind of life, in a sort of void. Increasingly, as a form of representation, I come to appreciate what it is doing even if I don't love it as I would many more comprehensible stories. The notion of comprehensibility--and the question of how much/little narrative can sometimes do to help us understand certain kind of lives or life experiences--itself seems to be the point here.

[Kim · Rating 5 out of 5]

I wrote a review of this under-appreciated work at my blog. http://goodcomicsbykim.tumblr.com/pos...

[Jake Kasten · Rating 3 out of 5]

It hurts me to give this a three star review because I love Brian Chippendale so much, but this one did not do it for me. The art is still mesmerizing, any page could be blown up and framed. Unfortunately part of the dizzying glory of the art is what made this book almost impossible to read/follow. There’s a somewhat consistent order to reading it, which should be familiar if you’ve read Ninja or Chippendale’s other comics, but it sometimes doesn’t follow those rules. It can be hard to differentiate characters, their actions, and sometimes the text itself is almost indecipherable.

I love looking at it though. Its such a wildly impressive piece of visual art that the storytelling elements are able to be somewhat backseated, but not enough to fully overcome the narrative issues.

[Matt · Rating 4 out of 5]

Surreal. Confusing. Sexy?
A crew of critters that travel through space via trap doors, eat peanut butter, fornicate, and battle an oppressive land lord. I think. The story is very confusing, and doesn't follow the usual left to right top to bottom format. It's a very challenging read. However there are very few books like it. I enjoyed it my first time through and I'm sure there will be new things I notice by reading it again. It reminded me of Henry Darger's work (look into it). In fact on of his drawings are on the back inside cover of the book.

[Sara · Rating 2 out of 5]

Weird and hard to read. I guess that's kinda awesome in a way? I spent most of my time trying to figure out the panel order, then just when I thought I had it down he'd change it. Or at least I'd think he would. Something would happen to seem like it changed. It's mostly about a little guy who goes around pulling out eyeballs (including his own) and fucking things. Things like this I think you just either like or don't like on a gut-level and there's really no use arguing about it. This has inspired me to create a goodreads bookshelf called "not for me but i'm glad this exists."

[Richard B]

?

[Mon · Rating 3 out of 5]

Finished it an hour ago, still not convinced that there's a plot. A lot of penises and intense OCD rendering, cute.

[Terence · Rating 4 out of 5]

Nice little cute book of intensity we expect from Herr Chippendale

[Keith · Rating 5 out of 5]

this meant so much to me when i first read it.

[Richard Van Camp · Rating 5 out of 5]

Hypnotic and dangerous, this book is GOLD!!