Peter Bagge: Conversations

By Kent Worcester

For fans of Peter Bagge (b. 1957) and his bracing satirical writing and drawing, this collection offers a perfect means to track how he describes his career choices, work habits, preoccupations, and comedic sensibility since the 1980s. Featuring a new interview and much previously unavailable material, this book delivers insightful, occasionally gossipy, sometimes funny, and often tart conversations. His career has intersected with the modern history of comics, from underground comix and indie comics to comics journalism and graphic nonfiction.

Bagge's detailed, garrulous, and often grotesquely funny (and discomfiting) work harks back to the underground generation, recalling Robert Crumb and Gilbert Shelton, while also pointing forward to the emergence of alternative comics as a distinct genre. His signature series, the rawly humorous Hate (1990-1998) and his editorship (1983-1986) of the often outrageous Weirdo magazine, founded by Crumb, established Bagge as a leading voice in alternative comics, and his rude, wildly expressive cartooning makes him a counterpoint to the still introspection of recent literary graphic novels.

In his career over three decades, Bagge has left his mark on various formats and genres, as a prolific cartoonist, an accomplished musician, and a sometime essayist, editor, and animator. While his creative output encompasses autobiographical comics, graphic nonfiction, magazine illustrations, gag cartoons, minicomics, political commentary, superhero parodies, comic strips, animated videos, and one-page humor pieces, Bagge stands out for creating continuity-based graphic stories that revolve around sharply defined, over-the-top fictional characters. Libertarians know him for his comics journalism, as his graphic biography of Margaret Sanger in 2013 reaches new audiences. While some have lazily branded Bagge as a grunge-era visual satirist, his creative restlessness and expanding body of work make it difficult to confine him within any single genre, cultural niche, or historical moment.

• Language: English
• Publisher: University Press of Mississippi
• Release date: Mar 6, 2015
• ISBN: 9781626745209

Book preview

Sufferin’ Bastard (Brother, Could You Spare a Little Respect for Peter Bagge?)

MIKE MCGONIGAL / 1988

From Chemical Imbalance #8. Reprinted by permission.

The people populating Pete Bagge’s world are assholes, rejects, wimps, and losers who try to fool themselves into believing they’re happy living out their blatantly clichéd existences, but they can’t even seem to do that right. They might be a teenager who takes ’ludes and barfs on his shirt at a Twisted Maiden concert, an eight-year-old boy setting fire to his toy soldiers, an aging ex-1960s pop star trying to make a comeback as a born-again Christian, a middle-aged small-town, big-mouth talk-show host with an ego bigger than Leslie West’s butt, or a young suburban couple for whom a trip to the mall triggers the deepest sense of melancholia imaginable. In short, they are the people of this world. Anyone can tell you that Everything is fucked, maaan, but Bagge is part of the almost nonexistent tradition (Matt Groening, Lenny Bruce, Robert Crumb, Woody Allen, I guess) of folks who can make you laugh at the world at the same time. He draws okay too.

Spring 1988. Pete Bagge is kind of short and his hair is parted to the side in a very unhip manner. He is sitting in my room in a leisure suit Herb Tarlek [the salesman from WKRP in Cincinnati] wouldn’t wear, criticizing my tie-dye t-shirt and professing to like the McGuire Sisters and Perry Como more than Bruce Springsteen. (More about that later.) Not exactly the picture of a counterculture anything, least of all a hero . . .

In the past year or so, almost every major magazine or newspaper has run a feature on the new comic books that adults can enjoy, too. And while there has definitely been a growth in the U.S. of the idea that comics can sometimes be art or literature, or at least a step above trash, Bagge’s work has always been conspicuously missing from such surveys. This could be because Neat Stuff never pretends to be anything more than a mere comic book, but is probably because said authors never dared venture beyond Neat Stuff’s wacky color images.

Bagge is now living in the northwest, an area that, inexplicably, has produced a lot of great comic artists, a significant number of whom (Lynda Barry, Michael Dougan, Groening) tend to write humorously about everyday experiences. I don’t know why. Must be something in the pine trees.

Ever since Robert Crumb became the biggest-ever underground cartoonist, every putz and their dog have been dubbed the new Crumb, and Bagge’s no exception. The only thing is . . . well, if you’re gonna say anybody’s the new Crumb, you might as well hang it on him. Actually, Crumb called him the new Crumb. When he wasn’t going off on sex fantasies, Crumb usually dealt with clichés as well as late-sixties character Whiteman. The exploration of American archetypes and stereotypes is 98 percent of Neat Stuff, so you wouldn’t be wrong to say he takes this approach much further.

Peter Bagge is one of the least full-of-himself people I have ever met. It is the spring of 1988 once more, and Mr. Bagge and his wife Joanne (who’s as sweet-ful as he is not-pretentious) are sitting on my then-roommate John’s bed, beneath a cave-load of painstakingly hand-wrought Marvel Universe heroes. Despite the immense weight of the irony of the situation, I am able to ask a couple of really stupid questions about comic books and stuff.

Mike McGonigal: That piece got rejected from Weirdo (points to Alex Ross’s Lost Luther in the last issue of Chemical Imbalance). And I think it’s better than anything that’s been in Weirdo since, uh, Pete Bagge.

Peter Bagge: Well, I don’t know exactly what Aline [Crumb] is looking for, but regardless what the artwork looks like, she cares about the story and that’s it. Even if it’s the best artwork anybody’s ever seen, if the writing doesn’t move her, she won’t use it. And of course a lot of people I’ve suggested to submit stuff . . . haven’t gotten anywhere with her.

Gilbert Hernandez told me a funny story. A friend of his is a cameraman in Hollywood, and like ten years ago, when Star Wars was just coming out, this guy was a friend of Carrie Fisher’s. He went to a party and she was there, everybody’s just sitting around drinking, and he goes, "I just saw that movie Star Wars and it was really great. I hope it does well. And she goes, Yeah, I hope it makes a lot of money. I sure had to give a lot of blowjobs to get that part!" So I could never look at Star Wars the same after that! And both her parents are stars, so even if both your parents are big stars, you will have to give blowjobs, apparently. I guess the benefit is that your parents tell you who to give blowjobs to. Don’t waste your time blowin’ these guys calling you up, go to this guy; tell ’im Ma sent ya.

MM: Who do you like better, the McGuire sisters or Bruce Springsteen?

PB: Did you know I was a McGuire Sisters fan?

MM: I’m not going to reveal my sources.

PB: Have you been talking to J.D. [King] recently?

MM: No!

PB: Ok. Yeah, I’ve been listening to the old fogey station a lot recently. I’m really into that stuff. Perry Como.

MM: Why?

PB: I just like it. It’s easier to draw to. For a while, like two months, the cartoonist J. R. Williams was living with us, and he’d always be listening to the college station, and one song out of ten I’d really like, but the others were so irritating, you know? I work at home and it’s hard to work and listen to stuff that’s screaming for your attention. So when I wanted to listen to music I started listening to the old fogey’s station, where they were playing Frank Sinatra. Good Music is what they always call it. Welcome to the Good Music. And so every time I hear a song I really like, I’ll tape it, and I would never know who it was. I was shocked to find out that the people I was always taping were the McGuire Sisters and Perry Como! I found out that I really like Perry Como! So I’m a big Perry fan. I like Sinatra’s records that he made in the fifties, when he was with Capitol.

MM: Did you go see him on the Big Tour?

PB: No, I don’t want to hear him croak away. I’m not into him being an icon or any of that. Joanne really wanted to go.

Joanne Bagge: I wanted to see Sammy.

PB: It’s strange that I don’t keep up with rock music because I’m used to being written up in a magazine like yours. Because there’s always the comics and then there’s the stuff about the rock bands, the underground stuff. And I always feel bad that I’ve never heard these guys, I have no idea what they sound like, and I guess we have the same fans, you know? And last night I was at Kaz’s radio station on his show and he’s playing all this crazy underground stuff. Here he has me on as a guest, and I haven’t heard of a single person he’s playing. I like some of it, but . . .

JB: He’s so out of it, Baggy.

MM: Surely you must admit that Maus is much better than the Neat Stuff collection. I mean all you’re doing is just vomit jokes, right?

PB: That’s right. I like Maus. Spiegelman’s a real admirable guy, the fact that he’s so dedicated to what he does, and he’s so hardworking and all, and I like Raw for that reason. Everything he’s done has been always real impressive, but I’ve never gotten into it the way you can get into Crumb or Bob Armstrong. Their comics are much more natural, they’re very human and personable. With the stuff Spiegelman did with Arcade, you can tell he spent a month on every page, but I can’t say I really liked it. I felt the same way about Watchmen. I liked it mainly because I was so impressed with it. You can tell that they put so much work into it, both the writer and the artist; there’s so much detail.

MM: So does Charles Burns, but you can read Burns a million times! But isn’t Art Spiegelman an asshole?

PB: Well, I haven’t hung out with him in several years. But I can’t put him down because he was always real helpful to young cartoonists, even though he was never really crazy about my stuff; the direction I was going was not the direction he wanted to see young cartoonists take. It wasn’t in the Raw mold. I never tried to be Raw and I don’t think he ever had any intention of having me there. Still, it seemed that he was manipulating some of the people who were working closely with him. He’s very paternal. I was just observing from a distance.

And I’m being perfectly honest—I’m not treading lightly because you’re tape recording me here. I think that Maus deserves all the attention it gets. Here he is on TV and stuff like that. I mean, I wish I was on The Today Show to push my book, but I still think it’s the best thing he ever did, and he deserves all the attention he’s been getting lately.

I don’t know that Frank Miller does, and it annoys me that whenever there’s an article on new comics, that they talk about Spiegelman and Harvey Pekar, which is fine, and then they lump in these Marvel/DC guys, and to me it’s a totally different thing, you know? And they’re adult—it’s the same thing, except that where all the mainstream comics used to be rated G now they’re rated R. Now they show the blood and they have lots of girls in frilly underwear and stuff like that. I guess that’s what constitutes being adult. But it’s still the same stupid bullshit. Moore and Miller are talented guys, but they’re hacks.

MM: How come you’ve always got a brown car?

PB: You’ve been talking to J.D.! Well, I buy a car just so long as it gets me where I want to go and it’s the right price. It just always turns out to be brown. When you’re poor, you can’t afford to pick out a car just because it looks good unless you’re ready to break down a lot.

JB: And they’re not always the same shade of brown.

PB: That’s right, different shades of brown. Shitstorm brown is the one we have now.

JB: What else did John tell you to ask?

MM: What do you mean? He didn’t tell me anything! I don’t know him! Have you ever been on a talk show? Made the rounds with Phil or Oprah or Mort?

PB: Well, not a real show. The most legitimate thing is that just last week I was on NBC’s Seattle station, which is this all-talk radio show. They just shuttled me in and I was on for like twenty minutes.

MM: Did they have callers?

PB: Yeah, a lot of people were calling up, but she only took one phone call because there wasn’t time. It was a bigger, general audience, so her biggest hurdle was to simply explain what I do, period, to people who have no idea what alternative comics are. It’s real tricky. Just recently Spiegelman and Burns were on, not The Today Show, but one of the competing shows. And Kathleen Sullivan was interviewing them, and she was playing the dummy’s advocate. Asking questions like, But these are comics! What do you mean ‘serious comics’? Isn’t that a contradiction in terms? The same thoughts that the person sitting there watching would think. And Spiegelman really had his answers down. I was thinking, God, I wish I could answer questions the way he does. He’s very concise and intelligent and totally gets his point across without getting pissed-off, or saying, Ah, you’re all just a bunch of dummies out there! What do you know? So I guess he’s had a lot of practice. He really had his spiel down. Which I don’t; I was babbling. I don’t know if I explained what I do clearly enough. It’s pretty much impossible, unless people can see the