Welcome to the Deep Dive, your shortcut to, well,
getting under the skin of the figures and ideas
shaping our culture. Even the ones, maybe especially
the ones, who are quietly reshaping things from
the underground up. And today we're tackling
a big one. An American cartoonist you might recognize
the name of, but whose career arc, it's something
else entirely. We're talking about Peter Bagg.
That's bag pronounced like the word bag B -A.
Good to get that right up front because understanding
this guy, this underground legend, it starts
there. Yeah. Peter Badge, born 1957. He's really
famous for this totally unique visual style he
has. It's like a mix of really dark black humor
with these incredibly exaggerated, almost frantic
cartoons. Hyperkinetic, I think, is the word
often used. Exactly. It looks like pure anxiety.
slashed onto the page so what we really want
to dig into today is you know how did he make
this huge shift How did the guy who basically
defined the whole grunge era slacker thing, you
know, the reduced expectations of middle class
American youth. Right. And stuff like need stuff
and especially hate. That was his big one. Exactly.
Hate. How did that guy pivot? How did he become
this leading voice in really meticulous fact
based comics? Stuff like journalism, biographies,
history. It's honestly one of the most fascinating
turns in like modern comics history. Yeah. His
early stuff, the fiction. It got him so much
attention, so much cultural weight. Remember
those two Harvey Awards back in 91? Yeah, Best
Cartoonist and Best New Series for Hate. That
was a big deal. Huge. But now, fast forward to
the 21st century, the same hand that drew Buddy
Bradley freaking out. It's drawing detailed science
histories for Discover Magazine. And doing political
commentary for reason, writing these big graphic
novel biographies, it's gone from being this
voice of a generation to almost like a historical
documentarian. It's quite the journey. Okay,
so let's unpack that. Let's go back. Trace the
roots of that style, that kinetic energy. He
was born December 11, 1957, Peekskill, New York,
grew up in the NYC suburbs. And you really have
to start there with the childhood environment
to get where that nervous energy comes from.
Right. What do we know about that? Well, from
his own words, it sounds complicated, maybe a
bit chaotic. His dad was military. Yeah. And
he described his Catholic household having lots
of drunken fights about money. Wow. Okay. Yeah.
And he said that whole situation basically made
them the weirdo outcast kids of the neighborhood.
That feeling, you know, being the outsider, maybe
a bit alienated. That seems crucial. It feels
like the engine behind so many of his characters,
especially Buddy Bradley. Absolutely. That sort
of inherent alienation, always feeling like you're
outside the norm. It drives the psychology. And
even the little personal details are fascinating,
aren't they? Like his confirmation name. Oh,
yeah. Peter Christian Paul Bagg. And the Paul
part, it's an homage to Paul McCartney. No way.
Seriously. Yeah. So right there, you've got this
mix, right? Deep personal fandom, suburban religious
background, and this undercurrent of needing
something else. An escape, maybe. That search
for escape, for definition. It naturally pulls
him towards the city. New York City, mid -1970s.
That's where the action was. He dipped his toe
into formal education, right? School of Visual
Arts. Briefly. Three semesters in 77. But he
figured out pretty quick that wasn't his path.
Dropped out. And went straight into. Straight
into the thick of it. Yeah. Working on Punk Magazine.
Yeah. Plunging right into that raw sort of anti
-establishment scene. And that really sets the
tone, doesn't it? Working for Punk. It leads
him right into the comics underground. early
80s, he's doing what a lot of aspiring artists
did back then. Yeah, contributing wherever he
could, underground newspapers, famously, even
pornography magazines. It was a kind of necessary
apprenticeship, right? Right. Gritty, but common
for the time. But this is where the key connection
happens, the one that really changes things for
him. Right. He teams up with some old punk magazine
folks, John Holmstrom included. They put out
this short -lived comics tabloid. Comical Funnies,
1980, 81. A real DIY effort. Totally. And here's
the kicker. Bag just sends copies to Arkrum.
The Arkrum, the godfather of underground comics.
The man himself just sends them copies. That
takes guts. It really does. And guess what? It
worked. Crum liked it. Liked Bag's stuff enough
to start publishing his strips in Weirdo. Weirdo
magazine. That was huge. A massive platform in
that world. Oh, absolutely. And Bag became a
real fixture there. Did a lot of strips, often
illustrating stories by Dave Carino. But the
real symbolic moment, that came in 84. What happened
then? Crum was ready to step back from editing
Weirdo. And he handed the reins to Peter Bag.
Wow. That's not just a job offer. That's like
a... coronation it really was a passing of the
torch you know from that first generation of
underground legends to the next wave the alternative
scene bag edited it for three really important
years stepped away then came back for one guest
issue in 89 so Editing Weirdo cemented his place
as a voice, but his style, the way his drawings
looked, that's what made him totally original.
Let's talk about that elastic, kinetic art style.
Yeah, you see a bag panel, you know it's bag.
The characters, they look like they're about
to just fly apart, all limbs and bulging eyes.
So where does that come from? It's so distinctive.
Okay, this is the surprising part. He traces
it back directly to his childhood obsession with
1940s Warner Brothers cartoons. Looney Tunes.
Seriously. Specifically, the ones directed by
Bob Clampett. That's the DNA. That's the source
code for all that manic energy on the page. That
feels counterintuitive. His characters feel so
modern, so cynical, like pure 90s angst. But
the technique comes from classic, almost joyful
animation. That's the genius of it, isn't it?
He took that clamping energy, the stretching,
the squash and stretch, the sheer speed, and
tried to capture it. In a static drawing. Exactly,
on a comic book page. He said his goal was to
get that sense of movement and exaggeration into
a format where things don't actually move. So
the characters look like they're vibrating, like
their bodies can't contain their own anxiety.
Precisely. That frantic, almost painful elasticity.
Yeah. It became the perfect visual language for
the kind of characters he was drawing. People
full of tension, dealing with, like we said,
those reduced expectations. It wasn't just funny
drawing. It was drawing internal chaos. A visual
metaphor for the times. Okay, so he's got the
style, he's got the underground cred, then comes
the long -term home for that vision, Fantagraphics.
Right. He starts his long association with Fantagraphics
in 1985, and that's where his first solo series
launches. Neat stuff. Neat stuff. 1985 to 89,
this was like the laboratory, right, where he
developed his whole universe. Absolutely. All
the key players start showing up here. You've
got Girly Girl Jr., Studs Kirby. The Bradleys.
That wonderfully dysfunctional family. Them too.
And crucially, the guy who would come to define
Begg's work for the next decade, Buddy Bradley.
For anyone wanting to track those origins, the
neat stuff material got collected later, right?
The Bradleys, Des Kirby Jr., and other losers.
Yeah, those collections pulled the key storylines
together. But the real earthquake was the sequel
series, the one everyone knows, Hate. Hate. Launched
in 1990, ran till 98. This was the 90s alternative
comic, wasn't it? Pretty much. It just hit the
nail on the head. It captured the whole zeitgeist
perfectly. Whether Buddy was stuck back in Jersey
or, you know, famously moved out to Seattle.
Right in the heart of Grunge Central. He was
the absolute icon of that post -Reagan disappointment.
Terrible jobs, awful apartments, messy relationships.
Just this overwhelming feeling that life wasn't
adding up. That theme you mentioned, the reduced
expectations of middle class American youth,
hate just drilled down on it with this incredibly
sharp black humor. And it got noticed. Big time.
We already mentioned the Harvey Awards in 91.
Best new series for hate. Best cartoonist for
bag himself. And it wasn't just a flash in the
pan. That quality, that relevance, it lasted
the whole decade. The source material points
out hate was getting hearty nominations almost
every single year. From 1990 right through to
1999. That's incredible consistency. It shows
it wasn't just trendy. It was consistently seen
as top tier work by his peers. And Buddy Bradley
himself became this international figure in a
way. He won the UK Comic Art Award for Best Character
in 91. People connected with him everywhere.
Even after the main series ended in 98. Buddy
lived on, right? Yeah, Bag kept checking in on
him with the hate annuals. Those came out between
2000 and 2010. Fans loved him. And for anyone
wanting the definitive experience now. There's
the complete hate came out in 2020. Right. Collected
everything. All 40 original issues plus the annuals.
A massive undertaking. And that collection itself
won an Eisner Award in 2021. Best archival collection,
which is kind of perfect, isn't it? The ultimate
slacker comic gets the ultimate historical preservation
award. It really does validate it as this key
cultural document. But here's the thing. Just
as Buddy's story was kind of winding down in
those annuals, Bag was already deep into that
major pivot we talked about, the shift towards
fact -based work. Yeah, this is where his career
path gets really fascinating because it wasn't
like flipping a switch from fiction to nonfiction.
There was this intense period of experimentation
first. Right. He really dives into comics journalism.
Started around 98. Maybe a piece for Details
magazine. But it really ramps up between 2000
and 2002. And he was rating while drawing about
everything. He was incredibly prolific and showing
right away that his style could work for reporting.
He covered a ton of stuff, mostly for that early,
really influential website, Suck .com. What kind
of topics? Oh, all sorts. Politics, the weirdness
of bar culture. He went to the Miss America pageant,
looked at Christian Rock, the Oscars, applying
that bag lens to real world stuff. So using that
same frantic, exaggerated style, but now to observe
reality instead of Buddy's internal state, it
gave this unique, cynical take on modern life.
And he wasn't just on Suck .com. He was doing
short pieces from AD Magazine, too. And he had
a regular strip in the Weekly World News. The
Weekly World News. Seriously. Batboy. Adventures
of Batboy. He did like a hundred of them. They
collected it all in 2011. His range, even doing
tabloid parody. Okay, so during this phase, experimenting
with journalism parody, he also brushed up against
the mainstream superhero world. Yeah, a couple
of notable projects. He did his take on Spider
-Man for Marvel back in 2002. And wasn't there
a Hulk story? One that got kind of lost? Ah,
yes. The incorrigible Hulk. Great story behind
that. Bag finished the whole thing, totally infused
with his style. But then, management changed
at Marvel. Oh, no. Yeah, the project got shelved.
Just sat there unreleased for years. Classic
corporate chaos. Messing with creator vision.
Did it ever see the light of day? Thankfully,
yes. It finally got serialized in 2009 in a miniseries
called Strange Tales Under the Marvel Knights
Imprint. So you can actually see Bags Hulk now.
It's wild. Good to know it wasn't lost forever.
He worked with DC too, right? He did. wrote a
series called, yeah, from 1999 to 2000, All Ages
book about an all -girl rock band drawn by the
amazing Gilbert Hernandez. Oh, wow. That's a
team up. Right. Yeah. And then in 2003, he did
Sweatshop for DC. And this one was interesting
technically because unlike Hate, where he did
almost everything, Sweatshop used an art team.
Guys like Jim Blanchard, Bill Ray. Oh, so exploring
collaboration, too. Sweatshop was about the comics
industry itself, wasn't it? Ran for six issues.
Yeah, but I'm at a commentary there. So you see
him just testing all these boundaries. Mainstream,
all ages, art teams, journalism, satire. But
look closely at his fiction from around the mid
-2000s. You start to see the pull towards history,
towards research, becoming really strong. How
so? Take Apocalypse Nerd. Ran from 2005 to 2007,
the main story. Classic bag. Two average guys
trying to survive after a nuclear attack hits
the Pacific Northwest. Cynical, funny, bleak.
That sounds about right. But here's the key detail.
The backup stories in Apocalypse Nerd. The sources
confirm they were historically researched anecdotal
tales of America's founding fathers. Ah, there
it is. The research bug biting right there in
the back pages of his fiction. Exactly. He feels
like a dry run for the biographies to come. Then
he followed that with Other Lives in 2010, which
was super ahead of its time, looking at how people's
real lives and online lives clash. Very relevant
now. And Reset in 2012, about a washed up actor
reliving his life virtually. So still exploring
modern anxieties. Right. But that definitive
shift, it really locks in with his science history
work. Right, for Discover Magazine, starting
in 2009. Yeah, and this wasn't just a one -off.
It became a regular gig, a continuing series
of comics about the history of science. Applying
that unmistakable bag style, the energy, the
exaggeration, not to Buddy Bradley, but to key
scientists and moments in scientific discovery.
So he's proving the comics medium can handle
this, right? It's not just for subjective angst.
It can be for rigorous, factual storytelling,
too. Absolutely. He's using caricature and dynamic
layouts to make potentially dry historical facts
engaging memorable. Which leads us squarely into
the next major phase, the biography triptych.
This feels like a really significant turn focusing
on these major historical women. It really is.
A huge shift away from the male -centric world
of hate. towards these deep complex historically
grounded profiles of important and often controversial
female figures the first one was woman rebel
the margaret sanger story 2013. Correct. About
the birth control advocate. And Sanger is not
a simple figure. Her story is full of social
upheaval, legal fights, ethical complexities.
Bagg had to bring his style to bear on really
serious, nuanced history. And it worked, critically
speaking. It definitely did. Woman Rebel got
an Eisner nomination in 2014 for best reality
-based work. It was huge validation. It showed
he'd successfully made the transition and was
being recognized for it. Then came Zora Neale
Hurston. Fire. The Zora Neale Hurston Story,
2017. Profiling the incredible writer, anthropologist,
icon of the Harlem Renaissance. Again, navigating
really complex cultural history, literary impact,
biographical detail. The research had to be spot
on. And the third in the series. Credo. The Rose
Wilder Lane Story from 2019. Lane, the author,
political thinker, daughter of Laura Ingalls
Wilder. and a really key figure in the development
of American libertarian thought. OK, so these
aren't just simple biographies. They're tackling
figures with really significant, sometimes contentious
legacies. Exactly. And he brings that same meticulous
research approach he honed on the science trips
to these lives. It shows this commitment to presenting
the facts, even about controversial people, which...
naturally connects to his own political identity.
Right. We should touch on that. Bagg's been openly
libertarian for a long time, and it often surfaces
in his work, usually through that cynical observational
humor. Yeah, especially since 2003, when he started
contributing to Reason magazine, the libertarian
publication. He does prose pieces and comics
commentary for them. So looking at his politics,
the sources paint a picture of someone pretty,
independent minded. Very. And we should just
report this impartially because it does shed
light on his perspective. You can see why he
captured that alienated 90s vibe and maybe why
he's drawn to complex figures. For instance,
he strongly opposed the Iraq War, very critical
of George W. Bush. But his voting record isn't
straight ticket libertarian, is it? Not at all.
It's fascinatingly pragmatic or maybe contrarian.
In 2000, yes, he voted for the libertarian candidate,
Harry Brown. OK. But then in 2004. He voted for
Democrat John Kerry. His stated reason, simply,
I wanted to fire Bush. So strategic voting over
ideological purity there. It was like it. In
2008 was similar. He talked about voting for
Bob Barr, the libertarian, as a protest. Unless
the polls were close in his state, then maybe
Obama to stop McCain, who he saw as incompetent.
So what does he end up doing? He confirmed later
in reason that he did vote for Barr. And he added,
kind of defiantly, I stand by that vote more
now than I did then. Interesting. It definitely
suggests someone who values independent thought
and distrusts established power more than sticking
to one party line. Exactly. And that critical,
skeptical viewpoint is what fuels his comics
journalism and, you know, arguably informs how
he approaches these complex historical biographies.
A lot of that political work, especially the
reason strips, got collected, didn't it? Yep.
In a 2009 book called Everybody is Stupid Except
for Me. and other astute observations. The title
says it all, really. It perfectly captures that
specific brand of bag cynicism, whether he's
aiming it at Buddy Bradley's world or Washington,
D .C. And we should quickly mention his wife,
Joanne, is a key part of the process, right?
Especially later on. Absolutely. She does a lot
of the coloring work on his publications, including
the biographies. It's very much a collaborative
effort behind the scenes. Okay, so let's pull
back and look at the overall recognition. This
career. It's not just about hate. It's about
sustained impact across different genres for
decades. The longevity is really impressive.
We mentioned the early RVs in 91. But those nine
subsequent years of hate nominations, that shows
real staying power. And the Eisner Awards track
his whole journey. Nominations for writing and
drawing hate in the 90s. Then the nomination
for Woman Rebel as reality -based work in 2014.
And finally, the win for the Complete Hate Archive
in 2021. His career arc is literally mapped out
in those awards. Plus international recognition,
like that UK Comic Art Award back in 1990. and
the Inkpot Award in 2010 from Comic -Con, which
is basically a lifetime achievement award for
comics and related fields. And it goes beyond
just comics awards, too. He's gotten major institutional
recognition. Yeah, like being named a Rockefeller
Fellow for Literature and receiving a United
States Artist's Award in 2014. That's serious
validation, placing comics firmly in the realm
of legitimate literature and art. His influence
also spilled over into other media, even if briefly.
animation right he did those animated commercials
for round table pizza his style just lends itself
to movement and wasn't there an early internet
cartoon yeah back in 2001 working with comedian
dana gould it was a macromedia flash cartoon
called marie wilson rock and roll dad for icebox
.com wow early web animation so he was experimenting
there too just like with journalism he seems
to always be exploring the edges and don't forget
music oh yeah he was in bands play drums in a
seattle power pop band the action suits and guitar
and another one can you imagine that kinetic
energy it wasn't just in the drawings it makes
sense a restless creative energy and finally
people are starting to study him seriously academically
definitely Tomorrow's Publishing did a whole
book on him in their Comics Introspective series
back in 2007. And the University Press of Mississippi
published Peter Badge. Conversations in 2015
collecting 30 years of interviews. His legacy
is being documented. So wrapping this all up,
the core story here is that transition, isn't
it? From nailing that counterculture frustration
in fiction. To meticulously documenting history
and biography. All while keeping that same signature
over the top, kinetic style. He basically proved
comics could do both. raw satire, and rigorous
fact. So the takeaway for you, the listener,
Bagg's career is exhibit A for the flexibility
of the comics medium. It can handle deeply personal
anarchic humor and serious historical research,
complex political ideas, all within one artist's
very recognizable voice. You don't have to change
your style to change your subject matter. Which
leaves us with a final thought for you to chew
on. Remember, way back at the beginning, we talked
about his goal. capturing that wild, bob -clamping
cartoon energy in a static drawing. Yeah, that
elasticity. Right. So when he takes that same
commitment to maximalist energy, that elasticity,
and applies it to serious fact -based biographies.
Think about Margaret Sanger, Zora Neale Hurston,
these complex, controversial women. Does that
visual elasticity maybe translate into a kind
of elasticity of perspective, too? A willingness,
maybe even a necessity, to embrace ambiguity
in different viewpoints when looking at history?
Does the style influence the substance, even
in nonfiction? A great question to ponder. Thanks
for diving deep with us today.