Ninja is the first book by Fort Thunder co-founder and Lighting Bolt drummer Brian Chippendale. It is both an epic 80-page graphic novel and a document of his vibrant drawings, collages and posters. The graphic novel, a work 5 years in the making, takes readers through a fantastic landscape delineated in Chippendale’s dense pen and ink linework and starring a Ninja hunted by the forces of evil. It functions as both a great fantasy story and a social allegory about an artist’s struggle with money, gentrification, and city politics. Nearly every massive comics page is drawn in a different elaborate style, somewhere between Henry Darger, Gary Panter and an illuminated manuscript. Inbetween each chapter of the story is a related section of fine art: from bright, exuberant paintings to visionary drawings to the posters for which Chippendale is internationally recognized. Half art book, half graphic novel, Ninja is a unique adventure in art and comics.