Peter Bagge
by Daniel Robert Epstein for SuicideGirls (http://suicidegirls.com/)

Peter Bagge is one of the original punk artists but you wouldn’t know that by looking at him because now he’s got a teenage kid, a house, a car and a wife. But he still keeps to his punk roots. In fact he has his first solo gallery show of original art at MF Gallery on the Lower East Side of Manhattan. Up in the gallery he’s got some classic covers, a great sequence where Buddy Bradley nails Lisa, some great new stuff from the Weekly World News and much more. It’s also the only place to get the brand spanking new Buddy Bradley doll!

Besides all that that he’s got a new series from Dark Horse called Apocalypse Nerd, a new trade paperback collecting some old Buddy adventures called Buddy does Seattle and a new Hate Annual should be hitting the stands soon.

Check out the official site for Peter Bagge

Daniel Robert Epstein: How did the showing at MF Gallery come about?

Peter Bagge: Last year I was at the Big Apple Con and Martina [Secondo] from the gallery came up to me and asked if I wanted to do a show. I think it was mostly because her husband Frank [Russo] grew up reading Hate comics. I was like “Yeah sure!” He’s involved with all these people who do these punk music magazines. It made me very nostalgic for the places I used to have art shows at 25 years ago. It made me feel like a kid again.

DRE: So you don’t do a lot of shows in New York?

PB: I don’t do a lot of shows at all, in fact this is my very first solo show. Occasionally I will be in a group show but I do that very reluctantly. It just sounded like a good excuse to come back to New York because there are always other things I can do here. I also have a bunch of stuff coming out right now. There is the Buddy Bradley doll which just came out and MF is the first place to have it. The first issue of Apocalypse Nerd and the Buddy does Seattle trade paperback just came out too. Also I’m starting to do comics for Mad magazine so I was just there.

DRE: That must be fun.

PB: Yeah it’s another nostalgic thing.

DRE: What other reason would there be to do Mad?

PB: It’s decent pay. They gave me the latest issue of Mad and it had my second piece in it. So far I’m just drawing and not writing.

DRE: Now Mad has you and Peter Kuper in it. It’s going to be the hippest magazine ever.

PB: I’m flicking through it and the best artwork is by people like Mort Drucker and Sergio Aragones. Those guys are so much better than me.

My mother and sister live in upstate New York so I’m going to go see them.

DRE: How did you pick the pieces that are in the show?

PB: They told me the dimensions of their space so I figured about 40 pieces would fill it up. They weren’t asking for anything specific so I just went plowing through everything. Covers and splash panels are always the first to sell. I didn’t think I would find anything interesting but I was surprised to find some of the stuff that’s in the show. It’s just piled in my house. I sell a good amount of originals but not nearly as fast as I make it.

DRE: Much of your artwork isn’t very big.

PB: Yeah 14 by 17 is the biggest. To get nicer detail it would make sense if I drew bigger like how Dan Clowes and Chris Ware go twice the size it’s printed at. When I do draw really big I lose sight of the big picture so when it gets shrunk down the composition isn’t very good. There is a certain coziness when I draw small.

DRE: The Buddy Bradley doll is really cool. Are they going to be mass produced or just a few hundred?

PB: They told me they got advance orders for 1000 from Diamond. I don’t know how many they made. It’s not a limited edition. I don’t like that idea which may not be good for business. They were hoping for more than 1000 orders so maybe we should have said it was a limited edition.

DRE: I was surprised there had been no Buddy Bradley doll before.

PB: Me too [laughs]. I never pushed for anyone to do it. It was Presspop’s idea.

DRE: But you have merchandise like t-shirts and mugs.

PB: Yeah, once this guy came up with a really cool Buddy resin statue. I thought it looked great but it never happened. Another guy designed a Buddy and a Stinky doll in bronze. A lot of artists push for stuff like that, maybe even sculpt the thing themselves while I’m just waiting around for someone to do it.

DRE: Where can people buy the Buddy Bradley doll?

PB: Diamond has an exclusive on it for a year so you will have to get it at a retail store.

DRE: What’s it like being home?

PB: I met up with some friends then I went to cartoonist’s party last night. It was the perfect place to browbeat people into coming to the opening night of the gallery. Adrian Tomine was there.

DRE: When we spoke last year you said the next Hate Annual was going to wrap some stuff up.

PB: Yeah kind of. I’m going to take a pause on Hate for a while. This one was just murder getting out because I’ve got so much other stuff going on. I was thinking that Hate Annual won’t be so annual for a while. They finally announced what the kid’s name and what his sex was assuming anyone cares. To me that was a big announcement. It’s also a new chapter in their lives. I wanted to take a break so when I pick it up again the kid will be older and talking. It might be a good five years before I do another one.

DRE: That is very upsetting to me.

PB: I think I might be talking to the only person who gives a shit. Hate Annual doesn’t sell nearly as well as the old Hates. I can’t pay the bills doing it. I wonder if people even like the format of Hate Annual with all that other crap in there.

DRE: When you do the trade everyone will love it.

No George and Valerie story?

PB: Everyone would hate them.

DRE: [sarcasm] Because you’ve never done stories about couples everyone hates.

In the Hate Annual Buddy shaves his head and looks like Popeye. Did you ever shave your head?

PB: No but every time I drive by a house that looks like a sea shanty I want to buy it. [Fantagraphics Books Promotions and Marketing Director] Eric Reynolds and I both live in a neighborhood called Ballard that was a working class neighborhood but now it’s getting really gentrified. There is this one house in particular that is in this big lot under a bridge surrounded by all these big stores like Office Depot. This house won’t be there long because the lot is filled with all this concrete rubble but the house itself is cute and someone must live there because there is this nice little garden. Whenever I drive by there with my wife I always say I want to live there.

Also I liked the mystery of what their kid’s sex was like Sweetpea from Popeye. I loved the idea of it just being a baby. Then I was writing the script of Buddy buying a dump. My wife said I couldn’t do that because they have a kid and that’s like child abuse. I told her that when I was a kid I wanted Fred Sanford’s house because it’s a legitimate business. She said “But you’re a boy” so the kid is a boy who will need tetanus shots.

DRE: So according to Fantagraphics you are now a Manga artist. They shrunk the Buddy books for the Buddy does Seattle trade paperback.

PB: [laughs] That’s right. We’re all under this insane delusion that if we make the books Manga size teenage girls will buy it.

DRE: Anything new in the Buddy does Seattle trade paperback?

PB: There is an introduction from Everett True who coined the term grunge. Originally Krist Novoselic agreed to do an introduction but then he wouldn’t write it. When I saw him I would ask him about it. He said he likes the comics but he didn’t know what to say.

DRE: Well his book is really thin.

PB: He was going to run for lieutenant governor of Washington and I think he would have been great. He has some great ideas. But I do stuff for Reason magazine’s website and they wanted me to blog but the only thing I wrote was that he wanted to run for lieutenant governor. One person responded with “Leave it to a bass player to run for lieutenant governor.”

DRE: What else do you do for Reason magazine?

PB: I do a cartoon in each issue. The magazine sells 60,000 copies and it’s all political and social commentary.

DRE: Are you collecting that stuff soon?

PB: When there is enough stuff. Right now I only have about 50 pages worth of stuff.

DRE: Last time we spoke you said Studs Kirby might become a TV show.

PB: It’s going super slow. That’s really the efforts of a friend of mine named Ben Schwartz. He’s always wanted to turn Studs into a show. We have people who are interested but we don’t have any kind of financial commitment but it’s just taking forever.

DRE: Your work is pretty popular and in some circles it’s really popular. If there was a huge fan of your stuff at Film Roman would a pilot of Studs get made?

PB: I don’t know. I’m sure it would help if a big shot liked my work. There is this guy named Brian Graden and he produced South Park. So when Hate was in development at MTV in 1997 everything was going great then he became president of MTV and he killed it. I was new to television so I was pissed but everyone said that it happens all the time. Then I successfully pitched and got a deal with MTV’s LA division to do a Yeah! cartoon show. That was going well then MTV decided to move Brian Graden out to be in charge of LA. His first order of business was to kill Yeah! Then I’m developing something for VH1 with a friend about two years ago then Viacom puts Brian Graden in charge of VH1 and he kills it. I suppose it’s nothing personal and my friend said it was personal because he hates my stuff. I don’t know if there is any top honcho who likes my stuff but I can definitely tell you about one who hates my work [laughs].

DRE: What was the idea for VH1?

PB: It’s called the Know It Alls. It’s about two middle aged guys who are pathetic except that they know everything about useless pop culture stuff. They are very arrogant about it too. It was going to be short little vignettes to wrap around videos. It wasn’t a great idea so the world was spared another shitty show.

DRE: Last time you said your editor at Marvel said The Incorrigible Hulk might come out.

PB: This has been going on for over a year. I talked to Axel Alonso one time and he said “It’s looking grim.” Then the next time I talked to him he said “It’s looking good.” I thought I might talk to him because I’m in New York but I guess it’s looking grim because he won’t even write me back.

DRE: When I got Apocalypse Nerd I had no idea what it was about. But it starts with two guys driving to Seattle and I thought “Uh oh it’s just like Hate.” But then of course Seattle gets nuked and they have to survive in the wilderness.

PB: I pitched two books to Dark Horse one was Apocalypse Nerd and the other one was about the Founding Fathers. It was their idea to combine them into two stories in one book.

DRE: So in this you’re blowing up Seattle then in an article in the Hate Annual you talk about the gentrification of Seattle. Are you getting tired of living there?

PB: Well it’s my hometown and I don’t travel very often so it’s hard to not use it in stories. When I came up with Apocalypse Nerd I could have picked another town but that’s where I live. What inspired it was that in the run up to the Iraq War I was listening to the radio and someone from North Korea said that they had the capability to nuke Seattle. That’s why we don’t start a war with them.

DRE: It’s going to be quarterly for six issues.

PB: Yeah but I’ve already blown the deadline.

DRE: Was it easier to go to Dark Horse with Apocalypse Nerd because it’s kind of a tangential genre book?

PB: When Hate was selling great I made money but the annuals don’t do as well. I took a gamble, met with Dark Horse and I said that no matter how bad it sells would they give me a flat fee per issue and they said sure.

DRE: How did the first issue do?

PB: I don’t want to know. With Yeah! I kept asking how it sold so now I don’t want to know.

DRE: Will DC Comics ever collect Yeah!?

PB: The option was up to where I could get the print rights back so I wrote them a formal letter because Fantagraphics said they would gladly reprint it. But DC responded with a check I didn’t ask for renewing the option for another five years. They told me they intend to do something with it but they won’t.

DRE: Did you piss someone off over there?

PB: No, well not that I know of.

The one thing that’s completely taken over my life is this half page strip for the Weekly World News about Bat Boy. That’s in the new Hate Annual.

DRE: What do you know about SuicideGirls?

PB: I know it’s got naked girls with tattoos. Porn on our terms!

DRE: Have you ever seen your drawings tattooed on people?

PB: Yeah they were asking me at the gallery if I’ve ever seen the guy whose entire arm has the band members from the cover of Hate number eight. Sometimes people ask me if I think they should get a tattoo of my characters and I always say no. I think tattoos are hideous and the biggest mistake. They are fine on a salty old sailor but on a young girl they are insane. It looks like van art.

by Daniel Robert Epstein

SG Username: AndersWolleck

web address: http://suicidegirls.com/interviews/Peter+Bagge/