Puke Force

In an urban setting that brings to mind Adventure Time filtered through the fevered imaginings of a desperate meth-addict in the midst of a four-day Everclear bender, pantsless quasiprotagonist Aw Dude and his roommate, Babbit, wander from one strange encounter to another. It’s a squalid world populated with masturbators, shape-shifters, uncaring politicos, the sinister proliferation of social media, and all manner of characters and sights that could have come from the mind of a 21st-century Hieronymus Bosch. Among the numerous overlapping threads, a restaurant bombing and its effects loom large, while an insidious Internet breaks free from its electronic realm and enslaves the general public. With a self-described “serpentine” panel progression, the story makes the reader work to keep up with it, which only adds to the narrative’s disorienting quality. Chippendale (Ninja), who doubles as the drummer for the noise band Lightning Bolt, emerged from the Fort Thunder scene of the 1990s, and his Gary Panter–infused squiggles offer social commentary with veiled, twisted surrealism. (Oct.)