Peter Bagge!
A comiXologist Recommends (a book that changed his life)
Buddy Does Seattle, Buddy Does Jersey, Buddy Buys a Dump by Peter Bagge, @fantagraphics
I was pretty much a standard issue crappy teenager. Moody, petulant, a real pain in the ass to just about anyone who knew me, friend or foe. Most of the time, I was my own worst enemy, but I had a preternatural capacity for alienating the people around me. It wasn’t that I had bad intentions, I just didn’t get the way the world went, and felt happiest and safest thumbing through stacks of old records in a thrift store.
Around the age of 15 or so, I started reading Peter Bagge’s Hate, which was then being published a few times a year by @fantagraphics. Along with Dan Clowes’ Eightball, it was one of the few comics I kept up with during my late teens and early 20′s, after sort of tapering off of superhero comics a year or two before (around the time Ann Nocenti and John Romita Jr. left Daredevil, though I stuck it out with JM DeMatteis/Keith Giffen Justice League for a while, and Peter Milligan’s Shade the Changing Man). Eightball was great- moving, funny, literary yet stylish. Hate was something else entirely. Hate was real. Buddy Bradley, the book’s protagonist, was a guy I could relate to. With my shaggy hair, plaid thrift store shirts, black Levis and omnipresent cigarette, I even kind of looked like him. He was one of the first figures in art or media that I identified with fully, good and bad, since while Buddy was cool, living on his own in Seattle, drinking beer, dating girls and collecting records, he was also about as petulant and temperamental as I was, and had the same penchant for pissing off strangers, friends and loved ones.
Hate ran for 21 years (for me, ages 13 to 34), and in it, Bagge did kind of an amazing thing- he let his characters grow with the series. The artist has said Buddy and Lisa and the rest of the crew’s arcs mirror, in many ways his own, and in many ways they mirrored mine as well. Buddy became an upstanding member of society, or at least alright guy, a lot more comfortable with himself and generally more good-natured and easier to get a long with. I, too (despite what some of my co-workers might tell you), went on a similar journey. Not even a journey, really, just getting older and growing up, learning not to make some mistakes twice, or making the same mistakes over and over again until they’re too painful to continue. Change comes naturally and through work. There’s no set path.
Just as Buddy mirrored my adolescent years (though he always did much better with women that I could manage, though neither of us nor the women we pursued were any less dysfunctional), his growth mirrored my own. Hate became totemic, and much of the pleasure in reading it was the chance to check in with Buddy ever few months (then later once a year), to see how far we’d both come. And looking back on the most recent issues, reprinted in Buddy Buys A Dump, it’s a long way that we’ve come, in different directions, but we’ve both found our niches professionally, our friends who have stuck around over the years, and a greater general sense of peace from within, tempered with more than a hint of curmudgeonliness. It’s not such a bad life, no matter how much either of us likes to complain…
Anyway, all of this is to say you must read the first two Hate collections, Buddy Does Seattle, Buddy Does Jersey and Buddy Buys a Dump, which are out now from @fantagraphics. If your youth was anything like mine, you’ll find at least something to relate to in these books. If it was nothing like mine, you’ll get an insider’s view to a world of sullen, shaggy haired misfits. And if you just care about comics, it’s a hell of a story, full of wild scenes, a few cringe inducing moments and a lot of good laughs. It’s sort of like Seinfeld where the characters have less money, better hair and record collections and deep, crushing existential dread. In other words, it’s perfect.
Harris Smith is a production coordinator and comiXology’s main Tumblr guy.
Very early original strip by Peter Bagge that appeared in High Times magazine, circa 1981.
A comiXologist Recommends (a book that changed his life)
Buddy Does Seattle, Buddy Does Jersey, Buddy Buys a Dump by Peter Bagge, @fantagraphics
I was pretty much a standard issue crappy teenager. Moody, petulant, a real pain in the ass to just about anyone who knew me, friend or foe. Most of the time, I was my own worst enemy, but I had a preternatural capacity for alienating the people around me. It wasn’t that I had bad intentions, I just didn’t get the way the world went, and felt happiest and safest thumbing through stacks of old records in a thrift store.
Around the age of 15 or so, I started reading Peter Bagge’s Hate, which was then being published a few times a year by @fantagraphics. Along with Dan Clowes’ Eightball, it was one of the few comics I kept up with during my late teens and early 20′s, after sort of tapering off of superhero comics a year or two before (around the time Ann Nocenti and John Romita Jr. left Daredevil, though I stuck it out with JM DeMatteis/Keith Giffen Justice League for a while, and Peter Milligan’s Shade the Changing Man). Eightball was great- moving, funny, literary yet stylish. Hate was something else entirely. Hate was real. Buddy Bradley, the book’s protagonist, was a guy I could relate to. With my shaggy hair, plaid thrift store shirts, black Levis and omnipresent cigarette, I even kind of looked like him. He was one of the first figures in art or media that I identified with fully, good and bad, since while Buddy was cool, living on his own in Seattle, drinking beer, dating girls and collecting records, he was also about as petulant and temperamental as I was, and had the same penchant for pissing off strangers, friends and loved ones.
Hate ran for 21 years (for me, ages 13 to 34), and in it, Bagge did kind of an amazing thing- he let his characters grow with the series. The artist has said Buddy and Lisa and the rest of the crew’s arcs mirror, in many ways his own, and in many ways they mirrored mine as well. Buddy became an upstanding member of society, or at least alright guy, a lot more comfortable with himself and generally more good-natured and easier to get a long with. I, too (despite what some of my co-workers might tell you), went on a similar journey. Not even a journey, really, just getting older and growing up, learning not to make some mistakes twice, or making the same mistakes over and over again until they’re too painful to continue. Change comes naturally and through work. There’s no set path.
Just as Buddy mirrored my adolescent years (though he always did much better with women that I could manage, though neither of us nor the women we pursued were any less dysfunctional), his growth mirrored my own. Hate became totemic, and much of the pleasure in reading it was the chance to check in with Buddy ever few months (then later once a year), to see how far we’d both come. And looking back on the most recent issues, reprinted in Buddy Buys A Dump, it’s a long way that we’ve come, in different directions, but we’ve both found our niches professionally, our friends who have stuck around over the years, and a greater general sense of peace from within, tempered with more than a hint of curmudgeonliness. It’s not such a bad life, no matter how much either of us likes to complain…
Anyway, all of this is to say you must read the first two Hate collections, Buddy Does Seattle, Buddy Does Jersey and Buddy Buys a Dump, which are out now from @fantagraphics. If your youth was anything like mine, you’ll find at least something to relate to in these books. If it was nothing like mine, you’ll get an insider’s view to a world of sullen, shaggy haired misfits. And if you just care about comics, it’s a hell of a story, full of wild scenes, a few cringe inducing moments and a lot of good laughs. It’s sort of like Seinfeld where the characters have less money, better hair and record collections and deep, crushing existential dread. In other words, it’s perfect.
Harris Smith is a production coordinator and comiXology’s main Tumblr guy.
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.
Fantagraphics Books Digitally Debuts Peter Bagge’s Hate & Dame Darcy’s Meat Cake On ComiXology Today
Two classic series now available digitally for the first time ever on comiXology
First issue of Hate and Meat Cake FREE for limited time!
April 9th, 2014 – Seattle, WA / New York, NY – Fantagraphics Books, publishers of the world’s greatest cartoonists, and comiXology, the revolutionary cloud-based digital comics platform, today digitally debuted two fan-favorite comic series: Peter Bagge’s Hate and Dame Darcy’s Meat Cake. The first 10 issues of Peter Bagge’s Hate and the first 7 issues of Dame Darcy’s Meat Cake are available now across comiXology’s entire platform including iPad, iPhone, Android, Kindle Fire, Windows 8 and the Web at www.comixology.com.
To celebrate these great additions to the comiXology platform both Hate #1 and Meat Cake #1 are available completely free for a limited time only!
Peter Bagge never fails to entertain. So is it any wonder his new anthology is up for an Outstanding Anthology or Collection award at the Ignatz this year?