By Peter Bagge
Publisher: Fantagraphics
ISBN: 9798875000485
W-a-y back in the 90s, which, of course, was only yesterday, one of the biggest selling alternative comics was Pete Bagge’s Hate!
It followed complete slacker Buddy Bradley’s teenaged years, first at home and then following him to Seattle. Making the wrong decisions and getting caught up with the wrong people, while negotiating music, comics and sex, were all part the comic’s appeal.
In the subsequent years, Bagge has returned to Buddy several times, and, by his own admission, with diminishing results. Adult Buddy just wasn’t as interesting as young Buddy. He’d already made his mistakes and his slacker outlook made him hesitant to get involved with more. What’s more, the comics were glossier – in colour, even – and didn’t have that underground, furtive feeling any longer.
So, for Hate Revisted! he came up with a clever solution. We’d still be following the contemporary Buddy and his family but, interspersed amongst the pages, we’d have flashbacks to fill out untold parts of his past, and these bits would be in glorious cross-hatched, black and white.
Brilliantly, it works. The appeal of the original comics is captured, the folly of youth revisited, and you’re reminded just why this was such a big deal in the first place. I’d completely forgotten what had happened to Stinky, so getting to revisit that from a different perspective was a lot of fun. And I think you could tell that Bagge was enjoying himself too. The jumping back and forth in time also helps to navigate characters and understand situations, so, if you wanted to, you could dip your toe into Buddy’s world here first, should all this be new to you.
If you liked that: Collections of the original Hate! comics are available from Fantagraphics.
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