It’s downright weird, especially reading this comic book series twenty years later. No matter what Bagge does, there’s usually a letter or two of this kind. The letters columns throughout the series sometimes seems like an endless litany of people accusing Bagge of selling out.

I really enjoy Bagge’s hatching in this period.

It seemed to fit in with the whole Seattle grunge/slacker thing absolutely perfectly. If I remember correctly, it certainly felt (at the time) like Hate was a big thing. He’s quick to point out in an editorial that he’s not a sell-out… but that Hate is selling. Whether these conversations happened or not, it certainly shows that Bagge was thinking about what other people would be thinking about this change in direction. He depicts himself trying to get some advice from his publishers, and Gary Groth says basically “we certainly don’t know”, while Kim Thompson suggests that Bagge concentrate on Buddy Bradley. While re-reading Neat Stuff earlier this year, it was rather obvious that Bagge had gotten tired of most of the regular characters in Neat Stuff, except for the characters in his Bradleys stories, so it’s no surprise that he decided to concentrate on Buddy Bradley (and his cohort).īut the first issue has one of the rare non-Bradley stories in the Hate run (well, the first 25 issues of it after that it changes a bit), and its about why Bagge decided to go in this direction. While Neat Stuff was a classic one person anthology, with lots of short stories and random neat stuff thrown into the mix, Hate is basically one long continuous tale about Buddy Bradley. A smash success.) It’s also the last of the, er, “institutional indie” comics that Fantagraphics published in the 80s/90s in this blog series, after Love and Rockets, Eightball and Naughty Bits, so I wondered whether I should save it for the end of this blog series… Hate is Peter Bagge’s smash success series after winding up Neat Stuff. Hate #1-30, Hate Jamboree, Hate Annual #1-10 by Peter Bagge.

HATE #1 by Peter Bagge