By Peter Bagge
Publisher: Fantagraphics
ISBN: 978-1-60699-745-1
Peter Bagge’s been drawing Buddy Bradley since 1981 and, unlike some characters in the world of comics and cartoons, Buddy is aging at the same pace as his readership. Buddy’s now old enough to have a family of his own (although considering this is a collection of strips from the yearly Hate Annual they don’t alf hang around to name the baby) but true to form Buddy’s still living on the fringes of society and he and Lisa are as dysfunctional as they ever were; it’s just that now they’re dysfunctional parents too.
Because of the yearly nature of the strips there’s a tangible sense of time passing as each return to the Bradley household sees changes such as the titular purchasing of a dump, the adoption of a shaved head, eye-patch and sailing cap, and an ever-aging supporting cast.
One of the story threads involves Lisa taking her family to visit her parents, something she’s not done since she hitched up with Buddy back in Seattle in the 90s. She has her reasons for not returning sooner, which become clear across the pages, but it turns out to be a serendipitous visit as her parents are bordering on very fragile health indeed, from a father slipping into dementia and a mother who’s been hiding from her cancer. These are weighty topics, but rather than get bogged down in sentimentality Bagge allows his characters to deal with the situations presented to them in an honest and sometimes frank way. He’ll also bleed a little black humour from it, and no doubt from the consequences of those actions too.
The predicaments that Buddy and Lisa find themselves in are often the result of the deadbeats they’re either friends with or are related to, so we get to follow Buddy taking up a job as a UPS delivery driver, courtesy of a friend, only for him to discover that they regularly divvy up and keep many of the packages. Buddy’s own brother, once a terrible hyperactive child, is now a bigoted gun-worshipping adult, while Lisa’s cousin Leroy is hiding out in his aunt’s back garden because of certain misdemeanours, including some with a minor.
But perhaps the most awkward old friend is Stinky, long since deceased, and buried by Buddy and his friends out in the woods. Because of Buddy’s loud-mouth brother Buddy’s forced to dig up his old slacker pal and rebury him beneath the concrete of his own backyard, but even beneath all that earth and paving Stinky continues to cause Buddy problems.
Still the greatest of Bagge’s creations, Buddy continues to entertain, shock and hold a mirror up to the seedier side of the American dream, and long may that continue.
And if you liked that: Treat yourself to the earlier Buddy Bradley collections
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