There was one (hugely important to the story!) reference to Die Hard so explicit I laughed out loud, and hard–not least because it was an enormously emotionally effective reference to boot! Working in this format provides Chippendale with mainstream visual and rhythmic touchstones previously unavailable to him, and it pays off.Ĭhippendale appears to sense this, and returns the format’s favor by providing his most straightforward story yet.

There’s no tricky snake-style panel layout to follow: Every page is a splash page! The consequent ability of Chippendale to pretty much know for certain how the reader’s experience will be paced–there’s only so much time it’ll take you to take in each standalone image and either look at the next one or turn the page–enables him to perfectly mimic the beats of an action comedy: an out-of-nowhere save by an offscreen ally “I’m gettin’ too old for this shit”-style takes when something particularly outlandish presents itself big spectacular drawn-out leaps through high-rise windows to safety. If ‘n Oof has been billed as the most accessible of the three, and for good reason. They’re experiential, is what I’m saying–as much about the act of reading as about what is read. From Ninja‘s giant-sized hardcover presentation, bright, buoyant black and white art, and slip-sliding layout to Maggots‘ furtive samizdat scrawled-on-a-used-book origin, dense dark panels, and hiccuppy panel flow and now to If ‘n Oof‘s doorstop thickness, manga-digest trim size, buddy-action-comedy tone, and one-panel-per-page design, they’re all uniformly and unmistakably Chippendale in story, art, and tone, but vastly different in terms of the sensory effect reading them has.

Hey, have you played the new Brian Chippendale game yet? I’m only exaggerating slightly when I say that reading each successive Chippendale/PictureBox graphic novel is like getting a new installment in your favorite video game series, one that shakes up the gameplay but still feels like an immersion in the original spirit you loved.

If 'n Oof by Brian Chippendale