Peter Bagge is one of the original punk artists but you wouldnt know that by looking at him because now hes 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 hes got some classic covers, a great sequence where Buddy Bradley nails Lisa, some great new stuff from the Weekly World News and much more. Its also the only place to get the brand spanking new Buddy Bradley doll!
Besides all that that hes 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! Hes 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 dont do a lot of shows in New York?
PB: I dont 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 Im starting to do comics for Mad magazine so I was just there.
DRE: That must be fun.
PB: Yeah its another nostalgic thing.
DRE: What other reason would there be to do Mad?
PB: Its decent pay. They gave me the latest issue of Mad and it had my second piece in it. So far Im just drawing and not writing.
DRE: Now Mad has you and Peter Kuper in it. Its going to be the hippest magazine ever.
PB: Im 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 Im 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 werent asking for anything specific so I just went plowing through everything. Covers and splash panels are always the first to sell. I didnt think I would find anything interesting but I was surprised to find some of the stuff thats in the show. Its 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 isnt 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 its printed at. When I do draw really big I lose sight of the big picture so when it gets shrunk down the composition isnt 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 dont know how many they made. Its not a limited edition. I dont 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 Presspops 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 Im 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: Whats it like being home?
PB: I met up with some friends then I went to cartoonists 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. Im going to take a pause on Hate for a while. This one was just murder getting out because Ive got so much other stuff going on. I was thinking that Hate Annual wont be so annual for a while. They finally announced what the kids name and what his sex was assuming anyone cares. To me that was a big announcement. Its 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 doesnt sell nearly as well as the old Hates. I cant 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 youve 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 its 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 wont 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 kids 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 couldnt do that because they have a kid and thats like child abuse. I told her that when I was a kid I wanted Fred Sanfords house because its a legitimate business. She said But youre 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] Thats right. Were 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 wouldnt write it. When I saw him I would ask him about it. He said he likes the comics but he didnt 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 magazines 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 its 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: Its going super slow. Thats really the efforts of a friend of mine named Ben Schwartz. Hes always wanted to turn Studs into a show. We have people who are interested but we dont have any kind of financial commitment but its just taking forever.
DRE: Your work is pretty popular and in some circles its really popular. If there was a huge fan of your stuff at Film Roman would a pilot of Studs get made?
PB: I dont know. Im 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 MTVs 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 Im 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 its nothing personal and my friend said it was personal because he hates my stuff. I dont 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: Its called the Know It Alls. Its 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 wasnt 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 Its looking grim. Then the next time I talked to him he said Its looking good. I thought I might talk to him because Im in New York but I guess its looking grim because he wont 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 its 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 youre 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 its my hometown and I dont travel very often so its hard to not use it in stories. When I came up with Apocalypse Nerd I could have picked another town but thats 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. Thats why we dont start a war with them.
DRE: Its going to be quarterly for six issues.
PB: Yeah but Ive already blown the deadline.
DRE: Was it easier to go to Dark Horse with Apocalypse Nerd because its kind of a tangential genre book?
PB: When Hate was selling great I made money but the annuals dont 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 dont want to know. With Yeah! I kept asking how it sold so now I dont 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 didnt ask for renewing the option for another five years. They told me they intend to do something with it but they wont.
DRE: Did you piss someone off over there?
PB: No, well not that I know of.
The one thing thats completely taken over my life is this half page strip for the Weekly World News about Bat Boy. Thats in the new Hate Annual.
DRE: What do you know about SuicideGirls?
PB: I know its 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 Ive 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
Besides all that that hes 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! Hes 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 dont do a lot of shows in New York?
PB: I dont 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 Im starting to do comics for Mad magazine so I was just there.
DRE: That must be fun.
PB: Yeah its another nostalgic thing.
DRE: What other reason would there be to do Mad?
PB: Its decent pay. They gave me the latest issue of Mad and it had my second piece in it. So far Im just drawing and not writing.
DRE: Now Mad has you and Peter Kuper in it. Its going to be the hippest magazine ever.
PB: Im 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 Im 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 werent asking for anything specific so I just went plowing through everything. Covers and splash panels are always the first to sell. I didnt think I would find anything interesting but I was surprised to find some of the stuff thats in the show. Its 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 isnt 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 its printed at. When I do draw really big I lose sight of the big picture so when it gets shrunk down the composition isnt 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 dont know how many they made. Its not a limited edition. I dont 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 Presspops 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 Im 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: Whats it like being home?
PB: I met up with some friends then I went to cartoonists 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. Im going to take a pause on Hate for a while. This one was just murder getting out because Ive got so much other stuff going on. I was thinking that Hate Annual wont be so annual for a while. They finally announced what the kids name and what his sex was assuming anyone cares. To me that was a big announcement. Its 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 doesnt sell nearly as well as the old Hates. I cant 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 youve 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 its 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 wont 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 kids 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 couldnt do that because they have a kid and thats like child abuse. I told her that when I was a kid I wanted Fred Sanfords house because its a legitimate business. She said But youre 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] Thats right. Were 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 wouldnt write it. When I saw him I would ask him about it. He said he likes the comics but he didnt 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 magazines 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 its 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: Its going super slow. Thats really the efforts of a friend of mine named Ben Schwartz. Hes always wanted to turn Studs into a show. We have people who are interested but we dont have any kind of financial commitment but its just taking forever.
DRE: Your work is pretty popular and in some circles its really popular. If there was a huge fan of your stuff at Film Roman would a pilot of Studs get made?
PB: I dont know. Im 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 MTVs 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 Im 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 its nothing personal and my friend said it was personal because he hates my stuff. I dont 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: Its called the Know It Alls. Its 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 wasnt 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 Its looking grim. Then the next time I talked to him he said Its looking good. I thought I might talk to him because Im in New York but I guess its looking grim because he wont 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 its 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 youre 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 its my hometown and I dont travel very often so its hard to not use it in stories. When I came up with Apocalypse Nerd I could have picked another town but thats 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. Thats why we dont start a war with them.
DRE: Its going to be quarterly for six issues.
PB: Yeah but Ive already blown the deadline.
DRE: Was it easier to go to Dark Horse with Apocalypse Nerd because its kind of a tangential genre book?
PB: When Hate was selling great I made money but the annuals dont 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 dont want to know. With Yeah! I kept asking how it sold so now I dont 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 didnt ask for renewing the option for another five years. They told me they intend to do something with it but they wont.
DRE: Did you piss someone off over there?
PB: No, well not that I know of.
The one thing thats completely taken over my life is this half page strip for the Weekly World News about Bat Boy. Thats in the new Hate Annual.
DRE: What do you know about SuicideGirls?
PB: I know its 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 Ive 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
VIEW 11 of 11 COMMENTS
Ilsa said:
Ohhh interesting... I love Peter Bagge!
sweet me too! i saw some originals awhile back
it was really good stuff