A Hateful Chat with Peter Bagge
by Harris Smith

Chronicling the misadventures of disaffected malcontent Buddy Bradley, Peter Bagge’s Hate remains one of the definitive indie comics of the 1990s.  A spin-off of Bagge’s early work in Comical Funnies and Neat Stuff, Hate ran from 1990 to 2008, following shaggy-haired, foul-tempered and frequently-drunk Buddy through late adolescence in suburban New Jersey to 20-somethinghood in grunge-era Seattle and back to New Jersey for a slightly more responsible, although still unconventional, version of adulthood and family life.  Along the way, Bagge used Buddy and his surroundings to comment on, and often poke fun at, pop and counterculture trends of the time.

 In addition to Hate, Peter Bagge has the distinction of creating work for both Mad and Cracked, as well as comics for fantagraphics, DC, Marvel, Dark Horse, IDW and Drawn & Quarterly.  His recent creator-owned work includes Apocalypse Nerd, Other Lives, Reset, Everyone is Stupid Except for Me and Woman Rebel: The Margaret Sanger Story.

[Get Peter Bagge’s Hate #1 FREE for a limited time!] 

ComiXology: As a kid, what was your first comic book?

Peter Bagge: My VERY first one? I don’t remember! I recall becoming “aware” of all kinds of comic books – Superheroes, Harvey, Archie, etc. – from around the same time. I also most likely read a lot of them – in barbershops and such – before ever actually possessing one.

CX: At what point did you know you wanted to go into cartooning? How did you get your start?

PB: The notion always appealed to me, but I didn’t start in earnest until I was a 20-year-old art student. Discovering underground comics – especially Crumb’s – was the biggest catalyst for me.

CX: What cartoonists have inspired and influenced your work?

PB: Crumb (see above), also Charles M. Schulz, and most of the MAD artists.

CX: What made you decide to spin off the Bradleys from Neat Stuff, and what made you decide to focus Hate specifically on Buddy? What was the inspiration for that character? Were there a lot of elements of yourself in Buddy?

PB: Yes to the last question.  I related to him the most – thus I had more story ideas for him than any of my other characters.  It seemed only natural to have him “take over.”

CX: In addition to Buddy, Hate had a very rich and varied supporting cast. What were your inspirations for the other characters in Buddy’s world?

PB: They’re ALL based on people I know in real life, to various degrees.

CX: Hate was very much a comic of its time. Could you talk about the cultural atmosphere you were drawing upon while making the series in the 1990s?

PB: For me it was actually a nostalgic endeavor, in that it was simply an updated version of my own past.  I was writing about what happened to me in the 1970s and ‘80s, so it’s kind of ironic that it became such a defining “'90s” comic!

CX: Unlike more mainstream comic book characters, where changes over time are largely superficial, but the basic character is expected to stay largely the same, Buddy went through a lot of really serious changes over the course of Hate, moving from Jersey to Seattle and back to Jersey, going through a variety of careers and relationships, eventually getting married and settling down. More than that, though, as his character changes, we really see him grow and mature over the years. What was the inspiration for the changes in Buddy’s life? Did they correspond with what was going on in your life at the time you were making the comics?

PB: Buddy always has been a roughly 10 years younger version of myself.  I think of what I was going through 10 years ago and more or less start from there.  Though the differences between us are obvious – I never owned a 2nd hand shop or scrap metal junkyard, for one thing.  And he never was a cartoonist!

CX: What made you decide to end Hate? For a while we were getting Annuals, but those seem to have ended as well. Will there ever be more Buddy Bradley stories?

PB: There’s a new Buddy story in the soon-to-be-released BUDDY BUYS A DUMP collection.  After that, who knows.  Buddy had to take a back seat after a while to my many other (and more lucrative) projects.

CX: Hate Annual #8 is one of the funniest comics ever written. Where did the idea for that one come from?

PB: Thanks!  Well, I had reached an age where I knew more people in “behind the scenes” positions in the music biz, rather than just musicians themselves.  And I found their stories and their own shenanigans quite amusing.  I had to use those stories for something!

CX: How would you say your more recent work, like Apocalypse Nerd and Other Lives, differs from your earlier work?

PB: They’re actual NOVELS, for one thing.  Thinking in such a long form format makes them quite different animals from the get-go.  And all of my work is more subdued and, well, mature than my earlier work was.  An inevitable transition, I’m sure.

CX: You’ve done work for a lot of publishers over the years. What kinds of experiences have you had working for Mad, Cracked, DC and Marvel? How does this differ from publishing with Fantagraphics?

PB: Almost all the work I did for the folks you listed were was and is work-for-hire. That alone makes it drastically different from the work I do for Fantagraphics or Dark Horse or D&Q.  Everything is more cut and dried: they’re more specific as to what they want from me, and the checks tend to be bigger and arrive sooner.  I’ve had some inexplicable dealings with both Marvel and DC, but I think I’m fortunate that I never pinned any great hopes on working for them.  It never was a dream of mine, in other words.  Thus I never felt particularly devastated when titles of mine got canceled or held up by them.

CX: What’s next for Peter Bagge?

PB: Another bio comic for D&Q – this time about Zora Neale Hurston.

_{Harris Smith is a Brooklyn-based comics and media professional.  In addition to his role as a Senior Production Coordinator at comiXology, he edits several comics anthologies under the banner of Negative Pleasure Publications. He’s also the host of the weekly radio show Neagtive Pleasure.}