Brian Chippendale: If 'n Oof

Brian Chippendale, drummer for the acclaimed and outrageously loud noise-rock duo Lightning Bolt and collaborator on Bjork's 2007 album, Volta, is an increasingly in-demand graphic novelist, one of those artists who draw because they're compelled to. This newest volume is a departure from his last work, Maggots, and from his first book, Ninja, which elicited the following assessment of the artist's style by Salon.com's Douglas Wolk: Chippendale's howling hyperspeed attack on every page with his pen is the kind of manifestation of pure style that has more to do with the contemporary visual art scene than with traditional comics and their ideals of clarity and representation. If and Oof are a Laurel and Hardy-esque duo who suffer a series of misadventures amidst Chippendale's frenetic landscapes on their simple quest to just survive, eat, pay rent and avoid confrontation. Comedy and horror ensue in this fast-paced trip through Chippendale's unconscious. The artist's most accessible work to date, If 'n Oof is replete with the frenzied line work and concise, witty dialogue for which he has become known. This first release of all new material since 2005 is a must for Lightning Bolt fans and graphic-novel aficionados, and proves more than approachable to those new to Chippendale's oeuvre.

"Creatures with flower faces, leering robot monsters, and a charming mouse-eared hero are all drawn in a splotchy, scribbly style that gives truth to a line that occurs early in this strange, rambling yet engrossing book: 'Operation Dreamworld must be realized.' Chippendale, also known for his participation in the noise band Lightning Bolt, has a singular imagination and uses well-defined and -paced single-panel pages that lead us forward. Unexpected settings fill the page with lines--a bathroom with many obsessively drawn tiles, a flying space-city, a black-on-black dreamscape--before emptying out into white. Then a character leads readers, page by page, through empty space to a door leading back into the hectic frenzy of lines. Wonderfully peculiar characters speak in a variety of voices; robotlike instructions are interrupted by colloquial musings ('I mean, everyone here has been super nice, the pool is great, the garden rules, but...'). All are delightfully strange and once you enter, you don't want to leave this odd and imaginative world with its pleasantly bumbling heroes, If and Oof, constantly waking from one dream only to find themselves in another. (Nov.)" Publishers Weekly (Copyright PWyxz LLC)