Brian Chippendale can often be misleading, both as a visual artist and a noise rock musician (of the projects Lightning Bolt and Black Pus, among others). Sure, his work is messy and challenging, but it's easy to forget the fact that he's making accessible, often hilarious work: Lightning Bolt are just writing blown out pop songs half the time, while Chippendale's visual art is packed with pop culture references and undeniably funny stories.
If anything, Chippendale's only gotten funnier as the years have gone on — his latest collection is called Puke Force, after all. The book delivers on its promising title, too, offering a variety of artfully rendered potty humour (in its opening scene, a man who never wears pants watches porn and leaves a sticky surprise on his roommate's laptop).
Naked man lives with some surreal creatures (including one character that's basically just an M&M) and drops one-liners like "This is not the pirate utopia I was promised." While things are certainly out-there, the book is rooted in reality — the internet, for example, is respectfully recreated with the utmost realism (and Chippendale's own underrated tweets are hand-written in a wonderful spread). Similarly, the spectre of terrorism is equally real; for five pages, we revisit the scenes leading up to a cafe bombing as different patrons share their last fleeting moments together.
For all of its dick jokes and world-wide-web speak, the book's still got plenty of messy, brain-busting drawings and a genre-pushing style (the comics, as always, are to be read in an S-shape). Puke Force furthers Chippendale's life-long mission to make art that's at once accessible and experimental, and he's succeeded yet again.
(Drawn & Quarterly)If anything, Chippendale's only gotten funnier as the years have gone on — his latest collection is called Puke Force, after all. The book delivers on its promising title, too, offering a variety of artfully rendered potty humour (in its opening scene, a man who never wears pants watches porn and leaves a sticky surprise on his roommate's laptop).
Naked man lives with some surreal creatures (including one character that's basically just an M&M) and drops one-liners like "This is not the pirate utopia I was promised." While things are certainly out-there, the book is rooted in reality — the internet, for example, is respectfully recreated with the utmost realism (and Chippendale's own underrated tweets are hand-written in a wonderful spread). Similarly, the spectre of terrorism is equally real; for five pages, we revisit the scenes leading up to a cafe bombing as different patrons share their last fleeting moments together.
For all of its dick jokes and world-wide-web speak, the book's still got plenty of messy, brain-busting drawings and a genre-pushing style (the comics, as always, are to be read in an S-shape). Puke Force furthers Chippendale's life-long mission to make art that's at once accessible and experimental, and he's succeeded yet again.
