Comic Book Creator #10 by TwoMorrows Publishing

A Tw o M o r r o w s P u b l i c a t i o n

No. 10, Fall 2015

$8.95

82658 97073

in the USA

Cover art by Neal Adams

T H E D E F I N I T I V E , O U T R A G E O U S S TO R Y O F T H E C O S M I C B R O A D WAY E P I C

Fa l l 2 0 1 5 • Vo i c e o f t h e C o m i c s M e d i u m • N u m b e r 1 0

About Our Cover

All characters TM & © Peter Bagge. Justice League Adventures TM & © DC Comics.

Art by Peter Bagge Color by Joanne Bagge

Comics Chatter Incoming: Missives touching upon the awesome work of the late Steve Gerber........... 4 The Good Stuff: George Khoury looks at some invincible, superior die-cast figures...... 8 Hembeck’s Dateline: Our Man Fred remembers when, in the comic strip pages, Mary Perkins shared her stage with super-hero Captain Virtue!............................... 9 Man of Miracles: Cory Sedlmeier discusses the revival and restoration of perhaps the greatest super-hero saga of them all, Miracleman.............................. 10 The Big Red Cheese in 75: As told to FCA’s P.C. Hamerlinck, Captain Marvel reflects on his three-quarter century as the World’s Mightiest Mortal.................... 15 Comics in the Library: Rich Arndt takes a look at the Mystery of Rick Geary!............ 17 WARP! SPECIAL section

Peter Bagge’s great apocalyptic cover is actually a parody of the Bruce Timm/Alex Ross collaboration cover of Justice League Adventures #1 [Jan. 2002]. Goes to show you how long Pete has been waiting for yours truly to finally — FINALLY — get ready this issue devoted to the great cartoonist, especially given P.B.’s piece is dated 2006! — Ye Ed. If you’re viewing a Digital Edition of this publication,

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The Night Broadway Got Warped!: More than four years before Star Wars, an innovative and daring theatrical troupe out of Chicago created a cosmic trilogy of the forces of good versus evil — all inspired by the Marvel Age of comics — that awed audiences in the Windy City… but could the show, now joined by the legendary Neal Adams, make it on the Great White Way?........ 18 THE MAIN EVENT Peter Bagge’s World and Welcome to It: CBC ’s comprehensive interview with one of the great American cartoonists, from surviving suburbia as a kid to his start in the “punk” comics scene, to Weirdo, Neat Stuff, Hate, and to modernday work as a graphic novelist — a remarkably candid and insightful talk............ 40 BACK MATTER Coming Attractions: The indelible mark of the amazing Gil Kane!................................ 78 A Picture Is Worth A Thousand Words: Ernie Colón shares his Dark Opal................ 79 Note: With regret, we were unable to include any number of items prepared for this issue due to the respective lengths of both of our two cover features, but CBC with strive to include those articles in future issues. Our appreciation to you patient readers and to all of the magazine’s understanding contributors. Right: Cover detail from the last issue of Peter Bagge’s Neat Stuff magazine, #15, April 1989. SPECIAL THANKS: Glenn Whitmore colored our awesome Warp cover. Art is by (of course) Neal Adams!

Comic Book Artist Vol. 1 & 2 are now available as digital downloads from twomorrows.com!

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Comic Book Creator is a proud joint production of Jon B. Cooke/TwoMorrows

Comic Book Creator ™ is published quarterly by TwoMorrows Publishing, 10407 Bedfordtown Dr., Raleigh, NC 27614 USA. Phone: (919) 449-0344. Jon B. Cooke, editor. John Morrow, publisher. Comic Book Creator editorial offices: P.O. Box 204, West Kingston, RI 02892 USA. E-mail: jonbcooke@aol.com. Send subscription funds to TwoMorrows, NOT to the editorial offices. Four-issue subscriptions: $40 US, $54 Canada, $60 elsewhere. All characters are © their respective copyright owners. All material © their creators unless otherwise noted. All editorial matter ©2015 Jon B. Cooke/TwoMorrows. Comic Book Creator is a TM of Jon B. Cooke/TwoMorrows. ISSN 2330-2437. Printed in China. FIRST PRINTING.

This issue is dedicated to the memories of ALAN KUPPERBERG and RICK OBADIAH ™

JON B. COOKE

Editor

John Morrow

Publisher & Consulting Editor

MICHAEL AUSHENKER

PETER BAGGE Front Cover Artist PETER & JOANNE BAGGE

NEAL ADAMS Reverse Cover Artist GLENN WHITMORE

Associate Editor

Front Cover Colorists

Reverse Cover Colorist

GEORGE KHOURY RICHARD J. ARNDT TOM ZIUKO

Contributing Editors

STEVEN THOMPSON

Transcriber

J.D. KING

CBC Cartoonist

TOM ZIUKO

CBC Colorist Supreme

RONN SUTTON

CBC Illustrator

CBC Proofreader

SETH KUSHNER CBC Photographer in Memoriam

Greg PRESTON

CBC Contributing Photographer

KENDALL WHITEHOUSE

CBC Convention Photographer

MICHAEL AUSHENKER FRED HEMBECK GEORGE KHOURY TOM ZIUKO

CBC Columnists

To contact CBC, please email jonbcooke@aol.com or snail-mail CBC, P.O. Box 204, West Kingston, RI 02892 2

The genius work of the gifted cartoonist and expert storyteller of Stinky and of Buddy Bradley’s father depicted This past June, in an episode of Gavin by Peter in the pages of Hate! literally made McInnes’ podcast Free Speech, the host me jump out of my chair. You think it’s all shared with listeners his “touched by ball-bustin’, wacky fun ’n’ games and then God” list of the “Best Cartoonists in the Peter slaps the reader upside the head. World.” In the company of guest Gabe Nothing less than brilliant sez I… Fowler, proprietor of Brooklyn’s Desert Island shop, Gavin (amid rants about the Here’s hoping readers will maintain “abomination” of super-hero comics), an interest in these alternative and revealed that Peter Bagge was his underground comix creator forays. I’ve number one choice, beating out even R. had a passionate and abiding interest Crumb. “Because,” he explains, “storyin all things comic book, and CBC telling is a huge aspect [in determining is looking forward to, as the spirit the best].” Taking issue with his guest’s moves, covering many of those comment that Bagge’s art was “servicenon-mainstream creators who able,” the host exclaimed, “Have you helped build this art form. After ever seen legs more rubbery than Peter our Gil Kane tribute coming next Bagge’s?” Gavin also enthused, “He’s issue, we’re proud to coverwhat got me into comics!” feature the superb comix pioneer The podcaster then hit the nail on Howard Cruse. And be sure to the head, saying, “Don’t you just get this make suggestions and share feeling when there’s a new Peter Bagge comments with us! [comic] that you haven’t seen? It’s like, Well, we might as well face ‘I don’t even want to read this ’coz I the music and share that Ye don’t want it to end.’” Gabe nodded and Ed’s excursion in producing a replied, “Yeah, that’s a good feeling.” magazine about the contemI could not have said it better. I recall porary comics field — ACE, All precisely where I was when I finally Comics Evaluated — suffered purchased that first issue of Neat Stuff. from low order numbers that I can’t say it was then-Newbury Comics proved unsustainable, so we clerk Tom Devlin who recommended I shut the magazine down after buy it… Devlin would go on to alt comPeter Bagge by Ronn Sutton three issues. Brief though it ics fame and glory with his Highwater Books and current role as Drawn & Quarterly’s creative was, the experience was fantastic while it lasted, and I’m damned proud of the work we did, especially the director… but that Neat Stuff #1 had been beckoning material by ACE’s outstanding staff of contributors. me for a few months in that Cambridge, Mass. estabBeing monthly, we prepared material in advance, so lishment housed in “The Garage.” we’ll be folding the leftover ACE material into CBC over Plunking down my two bucks and reading it on the the next few issues (some of it astounding, including way back home via the Red Line… well, it was not unJay Lynch’s illustrated history of his fellow Wacky Pack like the time, when 12 or so, I thumbed through a used Ballantine paperback edition of The Brothers MAD, and Men), so look for it! I am extremely grateful for the support, generosity, and camaraderie of ACE publisher upon encountering “Black and Blue Hawks,” my brain exploded and I was instantly a Kurtzman fan for life. On Robert Yeremian, and here’s to our next project together, Rob! Thank you, my friend. that subway ride, Bagge did the same damage to my poor cranium, with his frantic cartooning and, most of Well, I’m scribing these words just before leaving all, a sublime, natural ability to tell a story expertly. I’ve for this year’s Comic-Con International: San Diego, been a booster of Bagge ever since. where CBC is nominated for an Eisner award as “Best Hey, don’t get me wrong: I love Peter’s artistry, his Comics-Related Periodical.” Hopefully there we’ll find original style of cartooning… but, oh, that heavenly a publisher for the long-awaited Weirdo magazine retwriting. Very, very few comic book writers have elicited rospective (where will appear Peter Bagge’s memories a visceral reaction from me. The ability to surprise in as editor) and get some other projects going. A man’s this field is quite rare indeed, but the respective deaths gotta pay the mortgage, don’tcha know!

cbc contributors Neal Adams Joanne Bagge Peter Bagge Paul Baresh Nick Caputo Fantagraphics Jerry Fortier

Reuben Fortier Rick Geary Cookie Gluck Carolyn Purdy-Gordon David G. Gordon Stuart Gordon

Bruce Guthrie Lenny Kleinfeld P.C. Hamerlinck George Khoury Dean Haspiel Mark Lewis John Heard The Mad Peck Heritage Auctions Russ Maheras Neil Peter Jampolis Newbury Comics Miana Jun Cecil O’Neal

—Y e Crusading Editor jonbcooke@aol.com John Ostrander Greg Preston Eric Reynolds Arlen Schumer Cory Sedlmeier Ronn Sutton Keith Szarabjka

The Time Capsule Christine Torreele Kendall Whitehouse Glenn Whitmore Rob Yeremian Tom Ziuko

#10 • Fall 2015 • COMIC BOOK CREATOR

ROB SMENTEK

It’s all in the Bagge

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Edited by JON B. COOKE, COMIC BOOK CREATOR is the new voice of the comics medium, devoted to the work and careers of the men and women who draw, write, edit, and publish comics—focusing always on the artists and not the artifacts, the creators and not the characters. It’s the follow-up to Jon’s multi-Eisner Award winning COMIC BOOK ARTIST magazine.

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Former COMIC BOOK ARTIST editor JON B. COOKE returns to TwoMorrows with his new magazine! #1 features: An investigation of the treatment JACK KIRBY endured throughout his career, ALEX ROSS and KURT BUSIEK interviews, FRANK ROBBINS spotlight, remembering LES DANIELS, WILL EISNER’s Valentines to his beloved, a talk between NEAL ADAMS and DENNIS O’NEIL, new ALEX ROSS cover, and more!

JOE KUBERT double-size Summer Special tribute issue! Comprehensive examinations of each facet of Joe’s career, from Golden Age artist and 3-D comics pioneer, to top Tarzan artist, editor, and founder of the Kubert School. Kubert interviews, rare art and artifacts, testimonials, remembrances, portraits, anecdotes, pin-ups and miniinterviews by faculty, students, fans, friends and family! Edited by JON B. COOKE.

NEAL ADAMS vigorously responds to critics of his BATMAN: ODYSSEY mini-series in an in-depth interview, with plenty of amazing artwork! Plus: SEAN HOWE on his hit book MARVEL COMICS: THE UNTOLD STORY; MARK WAID interview, part one; Harbinger writer JOSHUA DYSART; Part Two of our LES DANIELS remembrance; classic cover painter EARL NOREM interviewed, a new ADAMS cover, and more!

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RUSS HEATH career-spanning interview, essay on Heath’s work by S.C. RINGGENBERG (and Heath art gallery), MORT TODD on working with STEVE DITKO, a profile of alt cartoonist DAN GOLDMAN, part two of our MARK WAID interview, DENYS COWAN on his DJANGO series, VIC BLOOM and THE SECRET ORIGIN OF ARCHIE ANDREWS, HEMBECK, new KEVIN NOWLAN cover!

DENIS KITCHEN close-up—from cartoonist, publisher, author, and art agent, to his friendships with HARVEY KURTZMAN, R. CRUMB, WILL EISNER, and many others! Plus we examine the supreme artistry of JOHN ROMITA, JR., BILL EVERETT’s final splash, the nefarious backroom dealings of STOLEN COMIC BOOK ART, and ascend THE GODS OF MT. OLYMPUS (a ‘70s gem by ACHZIGER, STATON and WORKMAN)!

SWAMPMEN: MUCK-MONSTERS OF THE COMICS dredges up Swamp Thing, ManThing, Heap, and other creepy man-critters of the 1970s bayou! Features interviews with WRIGHTSON, MOORE, PLOOG, WEIN, BRUNNER, GERBER, BISSETTE, VEITCH, CONWAY, MAYERIK, ORLANDO, PASKO, MOONEY, TOTLEBEN, YEATES, BERGER, SANTOS, USLAN, KALUTA, THOMAS, and others. FRANK CHO cover!

BERNIE WRIGHTSON interview on Swamp Thing, Warren Publishing, The Studio, Frankenstein, Stephen King, and designs for movies like Heavy Metal and Ghostbusters, and a gallery of Wrightson artwork! Plus 20th anniversary of Bart Simpson’s Treehouse of Horror with BILL MORRISON; an interview with Wolff and Byrd, Counselors of the Macabre’s BATTON LASH, and more!

The creators of Madman and Flaming Carrot—MIKE ALLRED & BOB BURDEN— share a cover and provide comprehensive interviews and art galore, plus BILL SCHELLY is interviewed about his new HARVEY KURTZMAN biography; we present the conclusion of our BATTON LASH interview; STAN LEE on his final European comic convention tour; fanfavorite HEMBECK, and more!

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The Broadway sci-fi epic WARP examined! Interviews with art director NEAL ADAMS, director STUART (Reanimator) GORDON, playwright LENNY KLEINFELD, stage manager DAVID GORDON, and a look at Warp’s 1980s FIRST COMICS series! Plus: an interview with PETER (Hate!) BAGGE, our RICH BUCKLER interview Part One, GIANT WHAM-O COMICS, and the conclusion of our STAN GOLDBERG interview!

Retrospective on GIL KANE, co-creator of the modern Green Lantern and Atom, and early progenitor of the graphic novel. Kane cover newly-inked by KLAUS JANSON, plus remembrances from friends, fans, and collaborators, and a Kane art gallery. Also, our RICH BUCKLER interview conclusion, a look at the “greatest zine in the history of mankind,” MINESHAFT, and Part One of our ARNOLD DRAKE interview!

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marvelman

The Return of Miracleman

Cory Sedlmeier, Marvel’s restoration virtuoso, on the revial of the classic series Interview conducted by Jon B. Cooke CBC Editor [For many of us old-time comics fans, the domain of the devil got downright frigid on Jan. 15, 2014, when the first issue of a reprinting of the legendary Miracleman series, that ground-breaking saga as originally written by Alan Moore and Neil Gaiman, made it to the racks. We all knew that the property was fraught with contention, and litigation, and that one giant mess engulfed the tales — arguably composing the finest super-hero saga ever written — and many were resigned that the epic would never again see print. But the House of Ideas pulled off the impossible and the stories are again seeing the light of day (albeit without Moore’s name attached, by his request, as the credits feature only the credit, “The Original Writer”). Cory Sedlmeier is overseeing the re-presentation of the series, which will soon return from hiatus with the Neil Gaiman-scribed story arcs. (Full disclosure: Cory has been my editor for a handful of introductions I’ve written for the Marvel Masterworks series.) Transcribing by Steven Thompson. — Y.E.]

#10 • Fall 2015 • COMIC BOOK CREATOR

Miracleman TM & © Marvel Characters, Inc. Cpry Sed;meier photo by and © Bruce Guthrie.

Comic Book Creator: Can you give us a little background, Cory, and what people might recognize as you having worked on? Cory Sedlmeier: The main thing that I do now is edit the Marvel Masterworks. I came to Marvel 14 years ago, as a college intern, and they tossed me into the collections department. I wanted to learn as much as I could and threw myself headlong into whatever they’d let me do. At the end of the internship, Axel offered me a job, but by intent or just unwittingly, I’d specialized in being a little crazy about making the classic collections the best they could possibly be. The collection guys I interned for grabbed me and I ended up helping them before moving on to editorial proper. I worked on… just about everything everywhere there was a fire to put out… Epic, X-Men, you name it. Working with Garth Ennis on Punisher MAX and helping launch Astonishing X-Men were great experiences. Of the series I edited on staff, Fantastic Four/ Iron Man: Big in Japan, by Zeb Wells and Seth Fisher, is the most important to me. Haunt of Horror, the series of Edgar Allan Poe adaptations by Richard Corben, is up there, too. Now, I get to do what I do freelance. CBC: And you’re currently working on the Miracleman restoration. Cory: For me, Miracleman goes as far back as when I was an intern. I remember being in the office way back in 2001 and Joe

came in and said, “We’re going for Miracleman.” Well, it took quite a while to get everything ironed out because it’s the longest and craziest history of any character — by a pretty long stretch, going as far back as the ’40s, if you want to draw a really long line. It took some time to get everything untangled, but once the green light was finally lit, I jumped in with both feet. We started work in late October of 2013. It’s amazing that much time has passed, but I’ve been busy, busy, busy, trying to gather all the materials and original artwork that we can… From there it’s been all about working with the artists, Garry Leach, Alan Davis, Rick Veitch, and John Totleben, and now Mark Buckingham, to bring the series back to print in a way that best represents their creative vision. Because, particularly for guys like Garry, Alan, and Rick, they didn’t have a lot of involvement or input as to how their work looked beyond the ink they put on the page. Chuck Austen’s first story, for instance. That was a nighttime scene, but they originally colored it as daytime! In particular, Garry told me stories about how the early Eclipse stuff, when his stories were first printed in color, that they were colored by underpaid fabric designers from Spain. They had no idea how to color a comic! Garry described it as if an insane person dumped an Easter Egg kit all over the pages. When we got to Alan Davis’ run, I spoke with him about how he wanted to approach bringing his work back to print. I asked what he thought of the original series’ coloring, and he said, “I’ve actually never seen my Miracleman work in color — ever.” I sent him PDFs of the original stuff and his response was that he didn’t have any nostalgia for it because, of course, he’d never seen it before and he didn’t like what he saw in the versions from the ’80s. I wanted to keep the look of the series consistent with the time that it was conceived. The colorist that I thought could best do that was Steve Oliff, who, I didn’t know this at first, worked at Eclipse and developed a lot of the coloring techniques that were used on Miracleman in the ’80s and ’90s. They just weren’t used as well as he used them! At least, not until Sam Parsons, who Steve trained back then, took over. Steve was a real pioneer of a technique called grayline coloring. They would take the artwork and reduce it onto a Photostat in either blue or gray. The line art was on a separate acetate overlay. With this method the colorist could do painted coloring that the printer reproduced from directly. It allowed for much

Miracleman TM & © Marvel Characters, Inc. Warrior TM & © the respective copyright holder.

more nuanced painted coloring instead of the traditional, flat 64-color comic book coloring. Steve actually re-used those grayline techniques on the new editions of Miracleman, just like 30 years ago, doing the work by hand with markers and watercolors, then scanning it in and bringing it in Photoshop for the final print art. We send files to the printer digitally now, but the techniques and methods that he used were all strictly of the period. With the new coloring, this isn’t something where we’re trying to update! We’re not trying to do Turner Classic Movies colorizing Citizen Kane or something like that. It’s about doing Miracleman, for the first time ever, with the artists’ full involvement and input, realizing their original vision. Everything’s been discussed with the creators and they’ve had full approval. We also worked from the original scripts and took direction from there as well. The other challenge is restoring the line art. Over half of the first three graphic novels are shot directly off the originals, in particular the Totleben run. I think I got close to finding 60% of John’s originals. His pages, scanned directly from the original artwork… are just absolutely stunning. Mark kept virtually all of his originals, which is a massive boon. For the rest, I’ve been digging up every source possible, which has been very successful. People knew this series’ importance. They held onto stuff. You know, Garry just has an amazing memory for this stuff. He has it all right in the back of his head and he saved pretty extensive files and materials from the series. So he could send me scripts, notes, sketches, and designs — all kinds of development stuff — that we incorporated into the comic reprints and the collections. It’s enabled us to really bring things together in a definitive format. It’s great that with today’s technology, we can retain so much more detail than was possible in the ’80s and ’90s. The Letratone, Mark’s photo-collages, everything’s crisper and clearer. It’s what these guys actually laid down on the boards. Mark’s art from “Notes from the Underground”? So much was lost in the original printing! Being able to re-present Miracleman with this level of fidelity and quality is a pleasure. These guys did some of the greatest work of their careers and it deserves to be shown in the best conceivable way that it could ever be done. And that’s what we’ve tried to do. CBC: What is your assessment of Miracleman? Cory: Miracleman is one of those series that just blew my mind, like so many other people. When it originally came out, in 1982, if you look at what else was around at that point in time, if you look at the comics field surrounding it, it is so far ahead of everything else. Me, I didn’t come to the series until later on, but when I did, the scope of what was being done and the way that it approached the concept and the metaphor of super-heroes and blended it with Nietzsche’s philosophy, trying to draw a conclusion as to what might happen if these kind of super-powered creatures existed… How that would affect them as humans… The way that Johnny Bates is corrupted… How power affects your sense of self and morality and the way that you relate other beings around you… It Comic Book Creator • Fall 2015 • #10

just showed a level of potential I don’t think had been seen before and since. Miracleman, for very good reasons, was very influential and you can see strong reflections of it in other work. Because it’s been out of print for so long, a lot of the ideas from it have been liberally borrowed, but what’s crazy is that there’s a generation that has never actually read the real thing. CBC: Right. And you’ve finished of the “Original Writer’s” run, right? It’s been on hiatus? Cory: Yes. We took a little time off because we needed schedules to line-up for [writer] Neil Gaiman and [artist] Mark Buckingham. Bucky was finishing his amazing, massive run on Fables including the 150th, final graphic novel-size issue. So we waited until the timing is right to begin their run. To get the best work from two of the best creators that have ever worked in the medium, you wait. What they have in store, we want that to be as satisfying and perfect as possible.

Above: This godlike Miracleman variant cover by Gary Leach is from #16 [May ’15]. Inset left: Warrior #2 cover. Below: A nod to that out-ofprint, great book on the history of the character, Kimota! The MIracleman Companion, with Mark Buckingham cover art, a pastiche of Whiz Comics #2.

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world. He’ll never give up, and I’ll keep on putting him away. It’s what we do. The Doc’s daughter (no, not the one that’s a pain in the neck for Mary) … well, we’ve always had this mutual respect for one another. It’s complicated, with her father being who he is and all. I guess I’m still a little bashful around the ladies, although I was once temporarily blinded by the hypnotic spell of the seductive Deliah, mistress of mental suggestion. Like all respectable heroes, I’ve done my fair share of time travel, especially to distant planets and to the far future — once actually to save the human race from imminent extinction. I visited 3000 A.D., a time of peace and contentment, but only on the surface, of course … and I met the Captain Marvel of 2943, who turned out to be a big coward! No one is more brave and pure of heart than Billy. That’s why the wizard chose him, y’know. He sure got himself into some pickles, though … getting bound and gagged all the time … but only called on me when he really needed a big brother to step in. I remember when Billy ate some bad lobster and a fierce battle of good versus evil took place in his mind … or the time he dreamt had that our entire universe is the result of a dream by a napping giant from another dimension. Once when Billy came down with a bad cold and lost his voice, he couldn’t summon me, so he ended up using his own ingenuity to foil a gang of terrorists. In a odd twist one time, Zeus had sent down defective lightning bolts that made me powerless but gave Billy amazing abilities. He had fun with that, like any kid would! Another time, due to a stiff shoulder, Zeus hurled down the lightning only to hit another boy and, for the first time, Billy and I existed side by side! Yes, Billy and I have been through a lot together. We’ve been going for just a little over a decade now. To be honest, I really don’t remember much beyond that. You see, I’ve been trapped in this sphere of Suspendium somewhere in the universe for Lord knows how long. It’s frustrating … I have so much more work to do … so much more to experience and discover … to bring some light again into the darkness. I think this is one time where I could sure use a hand. I wonder if anyone anywhere can hear my thoughts? Can you?

comics in the library

Geary and the Art of Murder The cartoonist’s chilling and yet accessible Victorian true-crime graphic “novels”

by RicHard J. Arndt CBC Contributing Editor After Bone and Tintin, the most checked-out graphic novels on my library’s shelves are split between Rick Geary’s two factual murder series — A Treasury of Victorian Murder and A Treasury of XXth Century Murder, and various mythology books. This time we’re dealing with Geary’s two linked series, a collection of books I personally find enormously entertaining and informative, and am very pleased to see that students do, as well. Geary’s been around as a cartoonist for quite a while, debuting in the late 1970s with decidedly quirky work in a variety of publications, most notably in National Lampoon and Heavy Metal. Many of those tales were reprinted in his Housebound with Rick Geary collection. Geary’s tales are slice-of-life segments that were often eyed from weird angles, both in the cartoonist’s distinctive art approach — a sort of highly detailed locale rendering combined with a bizarre mix of big-foot cartooning, sampling the flavorings of Robert Crumb, Howard H. Knerr, and Gary Gianni — and his odd camera arrangements in panels, with the reader’s viewpoints coming from very low on the ground and looking up at things, such as the soles of shoes or looking straight down at characters from high overhead. By the mid-’80s, Geary’s efforts were appearing in both alternate/underground titles like Bop and more mainstream alternate titles from Pacific, Eclipse, Fantagraphics, and Dark Horse. Among those ’80s tales were the occasional crime story, most notably the true crime tale of “The Abominable Mrs. Pearcy,” which appeared in Prime Cuts. This story formed the basis for Geary’s first Victorian true crime murder book, called A Treasury of Victorian Murder [1987], from NBM. That initial book consisted an overview of the turn-of-the-last-century and characters, a reprint of the Mrs. Pearcy tale, and two more short if pithy examinations of additional Victorian crimes. Evidently the book sold decently enough since Geary and NBM began a series of such books in 1995, beginning with the most famous Victorian murderer of all — Jack the Ripper. Over the next 12 years, a total of ten true crime volumes appeared, including The Borden Tragedy, The Fatal Bullet: The Assassination of President James A. Garfield, and The Saga of the Bloody Benders. In 2008, Geary had apparently reached his limit with the Victorian era and began a 20th Century series that has reached (thus far) six volumes, including The Lindbergh Child and The Terrible Axe-Man of New Orleans. Geary’s somewhat dry art style works wonderfully well with a police procedural tale. His deceptively simple and oddly warm art allows the reader to lean in and peek at horrible happenings while simultaneously maintaining an emotional distance. Geary never uses toning or shading with his art so the styling manages the hat trick of vivid black and white clarity without undue foreshadowing influencing your take on the developments. His research is top notch — an example of which is his describing and drawing Lincoln as being too tall for the boarding house bed he was rushed to after his shooting, and being laid diagonally on the bed so that he could fit. Although no research appendixes appear, I’ve yet to find an inaccuracy when checking Geary’s facts against traditional true crime volumes. The Borden Tragedy even includes contempoComic Book Creator • Fall 2015 • #10

rary press clippings and Lizzie Borden’s indictment order in the back of the book. Children, particularly of middle-school age, have a vivid interest in the morbid, as do many adults — witness the popularity of such true crime TV shows as Forensic Files and its many imitators. When I was a child, there were no books on true crime murders for children. I satisfied that urge by going to the adult section of the library. This prompted a huge discussion between my parents when my mother discovered I was reading a book on the Boston Strangler, complete with crime pictures. My mother maintained that I was too young, not ready for that kind of gruesome knowledge, and that the book would make me a pervert (literally, I was eavesdropping nearby) while my dad, a man I never saw read more than the local newspaper, Grit, Outdoor Life, Western paperbacks, and the occasional Conan the Barbarian comic I left lying around, said what I thought at the time and still believe to this day to be the wisest thing I’ve ever heard anyone anywhere say. He said “Look, if the kid reads a book from start to finish, all the way through, then he’s ready for the book, no matter what you or I or anybody else thinks.” My careers as a librarian, writer, and father are all based on those words. Children will read what they will, no matter what anybody thinks, and a parent or librarian’s job is to guide them, not to stand in the way. Every subject on God’s green earth, no matter how morbid or sordid, has a decent, clear, understandable book written about it somewhere. Leave it out in the open and, if they’re interested, they’ll pick it up. If they don’t, no worries, children also won’t touch anything they’re not interested in. Forbidden fruit just increases kids’ interest. I, and many of my students, like Geary’s murder books. They’re smart, pull no punches, but don’t dwell unnecessarily on the bloodier details. They provide an enormous wealth of detail without force-feeding the reader. Geary’s latest is a fictional effort — Louise Brooks, Detective — a murder mystery solved by the real-life but fallen out of flavor actress from the legendary silent film Pandora’s Box. A great story done in much the style of the murder books. It’s also a fabulous read. It will be added to my library’s graphic novel section as well. Great book!

This page: Rick Geary has nicely carved out his own niche in the field of graphic novels by focusing on real-life mysteries, usually set in the distant past. The cartoonist, a perennial attendee at Comic-Con International: San Diego, kindly helped out this issue by digging through his files for his self-caricature seen above. Thanks very muchly, R.G.!

Next: Graphic novels and Mythology!

Neal Adams, Stuart (Re-Animator) Gordon, and others share about WARP!, the ’70s Marvel-inspired theatrical cosmic epic about a bank teller who becomes God!

there came Warp! But the trilogy’s first episode, entitled Warp One: My Battlefield, My Body, wasn’t committed to celluloid; rather it was a production staged on Broadway, opening on Valentine’s Day in 1973, performed live before the Klieg lights in front of enthusiastic Manhattan theatergoers. Conceived as homage to Marvel’s Doctor Strange and Mighty Thor, the ambitious science fiction epic featured an able young cast and crew, some of whom would go onto Hollywood distinction, and featured the art direction of the most highly-acclaimed comic book artist of that era. And although it would receive standing ovations and eventually an award for the innovative costuming, Warp closed after a mere seven previews and eight performances, doomed by caustic and dismissive reviews and maybe a too-quick rollout on the Great White Way. Whence Came Warp: The Warp trilogy was the brainchild of future feature film director Stuart Gordon (later renowned for cult favorite horror flick Re-Animator) and novelist/playwright Lenny Kleinfeld (writing as Bury St. Edmund). The production, which first had a successful yearand-a-day run in Chicago, was initially staged to critical notice by the Windy City’s renowned Organic Theater, a company founded by Gordon and his wife, actress Carolyn Purdy-Gordon. The Organic would later be noted for premiering famed playwright David Mamet’s breakout drama, Sexual Perversity in Chicago, and be at the epicenter of a thriving theater scene in the ’80s. The origins of Warp are to be found, as easily suspected, in an appreciation of both comics and theater. “I read comics as a kid,” Kleinfeld said. “I read everything as a kid. I was an only child. The first writing I can remember doing (in second or third grade, maybe) was when I discovered you could erase the dialogue balloons in comics and write your own. So I did an unau#10 • Fall 2015 • COMIC BOOK CREATOR

From the ’70s it came. The first episode of a trilogy depicting the cataclysmic, otherworldly struggle between cosmic warriors, some allied with the power of darkness and others with the force of good. Fantastic characters, a few unaware of their own true nature, yet destined to save the universe through newfound abilities. Shockingly, some would be revealed to be siblings to one another, as desperate battle is waged against an evil overlord, all played out before an astounded and delighted audience… one rumored to include an incipient young filmmaker by the name of George Lucas. And lo, so it was, more than four years before the release of Star Wars,

thorized rewrite of an Uncle Scrooge comic book.” The budding scribe would return to the form, though he explains, “I stopped reading comics sometime around junior high (my father threw out my collection and warned me not to buy any more), and didn’t resume reading them until the end of my senior year of college, in 1969. I believe those guys [Steve Ditko and Jack Kirby] had been at work for a while by then. I had no idea who they were. A friend said that Marvel Comics went well with pot and acid. He was right.” Stuart’s upbringing was a bit restrictive. “My parents didn’t want me to read super-hero comics,” he said, “so I was reading things like Scrooge McDuck and stuff like that. But when I got older, when I got into high school, I got into Marvel Comics. I became a big fan of Doctor Strange, The Mighty Thor, and Conan the Barbarian.” Stuart’s younger brother, David George, who would be a technical director in early Organic productions, recalled the early years with his sibling. “We were very close. When I was 11 and Stuart was 14, our father died. He had a heart attack and that broke up the nuclear family, as it were. So I often joke that my mother raised two ‘only children,’ in that we both had our own passions and our own interests, and we were always encouraged to pursue them.” While David is a self-described “nature nut,” Stuart revealed an interest in the performing arts at a very young age. “I wished I had saved this,” the younger brother remembered, “but after our mother passed away, I had found, rubber-banded together, all of my brother’s report cards. On his kindergarten or first grade one, it had some mention of he was great at directing play on the playground. This guy was born to be a director. ‘Plays well with others’? No, he was directing the play!” The World’s A Stage: A passion for theater came to each his own way. “I’ve always loved theater,” Brooklyn-native Kleinfeld shared. “When I was in high school, there was great stuff being done in New York — a new Albee play every year; Pinter was on a roll, too… I saw the Royal Shakespeare (or was it the National’s?) production of Marat/Sade, which blew me away… And in my high school English classes, I was the only kid in the room who got Shakespeare, loved Shakespeare, was immediately intoxicated by the language.” Chicago-born Gordon said, “I was in some high school plays and some friends and I started a comedy group called ‘The Human Race,’ which we patterned after [the Chicago improvisational comedy group] Second City.” When asked if he performed, he said, “I did when I was a teenager, and I did some acting in college, but I discovered pretty quickly that I was a pretty bad actor. So I started directing.” The name of his first troupe was Screw Theater. Cecil O’Neal, an Army veteran who started at the same university as a Comic Book Creator • Fall 2015 • #10

political science major, described the ideological leanings of the Midwest institution. “At that time, UW was ranked only behind Berkeley in terms of academic standings of public universities,” said O’Neal. “It attracted a lot of students from the East Coast, from all over the country, a lot of international students. So there was certainly a very well-educated, slightly radicalized East Coast student who had a large profile at Wisconsin at the time.” Provocateurs: Of impact was The Game Show, a parody of TV contest programs created by Gordon, one with a razor-sharp satirical edge. O’Neal said, “The Game Show was really out there. An audience would come in. We locked the doors of the theater. It was based on the idea of a television game show except audience members who participated in the game were abused, physically attacked, restrained… and, of course, they were all actors, plants in the audience. The whole premise of it was, ‘Would an audience rise up and object to what was going on and shut it down?’ In ways, it was a social experiment.” In an interview with the Wisconsin Union website, Gordon described the theatergoers reaction. “Real audience members eventually rose up and charged the performers onstage, demanding the show be stopped…We were surprised by the reaction to The Game Show. We thought the audience would 19

Back in the mid-’80s,

I discovered Peter Bagge’s work at Newbury Comics in Cambridge, Massachusetts. The first issue of Neat Stuff had been beckoning to be purchased for more than a few visits, with the cover’s cartoon mesmerist beseeching me with his hypnotic gaze. But I held out, instead buying an Arthur Adams annual featuring Marvel properties I didn’t give a hoot about or the latest Reid Fleming, World’s Toughest Milkman, starring a character who actually was interesting. But, after a summer’s resistance, I caved. Bagge had me... for life. Initially I wavered because of the seemingly crude art, but Peter’s writing pulled it all together for me to recognize that, whether depicting Buddy Bradley or Margaret Sanger, his is a truly remarkable and original body of work, some of the best comics ever. I’ve also been impressed with Peter’s moxie to keep an eye on the ball.

I first met the cartoonist on his 1993 Hateball tour with Daniel Clowes. It was in a dingy second-floor record shop near Brown University. I came with pal Les Daniels and, with few others paying attention to the visiting creators, I had my Neat Stuffs and Eightballs signed and prattled on to the pair, mostly about my love for the Bagge oeuvre. Clowes listened patiently but I recall Bagge cutting me off and (not unkindly) prodding me with, “Are you gonna buy something, or what?” It had been, after all, not a great day of sales for the two. The impact on me was lasting. Bagge means business. The majority of the following interview was conducted over marathon phone sessions a number of years ago and once over lunch during MOCCA, enlightening conversations I enjoyed enormously. This transcript came close to being the centerpiece of the seventh issue of Comic Book Artist, Vol. 2 — Peter had provided the cover in 2006 — but that “final” edition wasn’t meant to be. I’m grateful to the artist for his patience, understanding, and help. It’s taken quite a spell.

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The cartoonist and I last met at this year’s Comic-Con International: San Diego, where he indulged my wonky concept for a photoshoot. He was also having a surprisingly profitable show despite being tucked in a corner of Artists Alley. When I sat with the guy, a steady stream of aficionados were picking up commissions or buying stuff, amid amiable chit-chat. I was delighted to purchase a piece myself. It was gratifying to witness. One of the greatest comic book creators of his generation was, be it sales or adulation, effortlessly doing well. Peter Christian Bagge was having a very good day.

A career-spanning conversation with the brilliant cartoonist behind Hate and a whole lotta Neat Stuff… Comic Book Creator: How do you pronounce your last name, Peter? Peter Bagge: “Bag,” as in “paper bag.” People usually pronounce the “e” at the end, like “baggie.” It’s Swedish in origin. CBC: Does the name mean anything? Peter: I asked lots of people if the name had a meaning and nobody was sure, except that they said that it’s very similar to the word for a ram, or male sheep. I’ve also read that it’s an Old English name for a bag maker! CBC: You said your father had an English background? Peter: My great-grandfather emigrated from Manchester, England. He was extremely ambitious and eventually started an architectural firm, even though he had no formal training. His firm, Neville & Bagge, was more like a land speculation and development business than anything else. Anyhow, he became a millionaire from this racket and employed all four of his sons, including my grandfather, until the Depression hit and the firm was wiped out. CBC: What was your mother’s background? Peter: Well, on my mom’s mother’s side, they go way, way back. She even joined the Daughters of the American Revolution at one point, but quit almost immediately because they were such stuckup bigots. But my mother’s father was an immigrant from Denmark, and worked as a chauffeur for the Rockefellers. CBC: That is impressive. Did they tip well? Peter: He seemed well taken care of. My mother met the Old Man — John D. Rockefeller, the first — lots of times when she was a little girl. If my grandfather was driving him around and he spied a bunch of kids playing, including my mom and her brothers, he would have my grandfather stop, get out and open the door to the backseat. He’d then make the kids hop into the limo with him one at a time, and he would hand each one a shiny new dime (which, in the ’30s, wasn’t chump change.) It was apparently terrifying for the kids, because Rockefeller looked just like Mr. Burns from The Simpsons. He was real thin and covered in liver spots, and he was probably in his 90s by then. My mother says it was a horrifying experience, sitting in the back of a dark limo all alone with the Crypt Keeper, but it was worth the dime. Apparently some PR firm advised him to do this so he wouldn’t come off as so miserly. CBC: Was your mother’s family solid middle class? Peter: More like comfortable working class. My grandfather had a lot of sh*t jobs before he landed that one, so he was extremely appreciative towards the Rockefellers.

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CBC: What did your father do? Peter: He was an officer in the Air National Guard and hated every minute of it. Unfortunately, my father was never really clear about what he wanted to do with his life, which is one of the many reasons why he always seemed very bitter and frustrated. He had been drafted into World War II, but didn’t see any action, so when the Korean War was kicking up, he was eligible for the draft yet again. And here he was married and wanted to start a family, and had an okay job as an office clerk on Wall Street, so the idea of getting hauled off to Korea terrified him. One of my uncles was in the Air National Guard Reserves, and he suggested my dad join the Guard for as long as the war lasts, to keep out of the draft. So my father joined the Air National Guard as a form of legal draft-dodging. Once the war was over, he looked into what else he could do, but nothing else paid quite as well, or the benefits weren’t quite as good. And the Air National Guard was based in Westchester County — my parents were both from there — which meant not having to go into the city. So he stuck it out for a while as an enlisted man, working part-time at a record store and going to officer’s school at night, so that by the time he retired he worked his way up to a colonel. He was just a paper-pusher, to be honest. An office manager in a fancy uniform. CBC: Had he had a college education? Peter: When he was in high school, my father had a very good short-term memory, so he always got straight A’s. He had this inflated opinion of himself as a genius just because he aced everything. He never had to study or work very hard to get an A; it just came really easy to him. But once in college he struggled just to get a C. He suddenly wasn’t a genius anymore, so he dropped out. His ego was wounded. CBC: You said he was bitter? Peter: Yeah. He could be a very difficult person to deal with. Very moody and short-tempered. CBC: Did your father drink? Peter: Oh, yeah. Both my parents did. My dad was an angry drunk, too. My mom is a real sweetheart, but she was… [pauses] CBC: An enabler? Peter: Yeah, I guess. Everybody that met my ma just loves her to death. She could be the sweetest, kindest person in the world, but she’s a real space case. My parents were very much like [TV sitcom All in the Family characters] Archie and Edith Bunker. My ma was a real “Edith,” always wanting everyone to make nice. She hated conflict, which my father was

always providing in spades. But she was also quite helpless and dependent on others. She awas utterly dependent on my dad, and later on the various men she dated until they died off, one by one. She never mourned any of them once they passed away, either — including my father! She’d just move on to the next one, and eventually became utterly dependent on my younger sister. CBC: Did they stay married? Peter: Yes, they stayed together, but it got really grim. They both got really depressed, with endless money problems. It seemed like they were sh*t-magnets, but it was because they always let things happen to them. Rather than foreseeing problems down the road and acting accordingly, they would do nothing to avoid trouble. They just let life happen to them, something I swore I would never do when I grew up. It was the same with having five kids. They didn’t want five kids, but they didn’t do what it takes to avoid it, either. CBC: Were they Catholic? Peter: Obviously! But that’s another strange thing — and it also goes to show how passive my parents were — is that my mother grew up Protestant, though she was not very religious. She couldn’t even recall what denomination she was as a kid, it meant so little to her. She just remembers vaguely enjoying Sunday school and stuff like that. Meanwhile, my father’s father was a lapsed Episcopalian, but his mother was half-Irish and very Catholic. She pushed to have all us grandkids raised Catholic and, since nobody was pushing back, we were raised Catholic. CBC: Did you go to confession? Peter: Yeah, we did all that twisted, meaningless nonsense. By the time I was 13, I told my parents, “I don’t believe a word of this.

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Above: A 1987 snapshot of the Bagge men, taken in Peter and Joanne’s backyard in Seattle. Left to right, Mr. Bagge, Peter, Peter’s younger brother Tony and older brother Doug, the latter who would contribute to the short-lived Comical Funnies at the behest of Peter. Below: The battling Bradleys, Peter Bagge’s outrageously dysfunctional middle-class cartoon family creation, first appeared in Comical Funnies, the New York City tabloid that lasted for three issues between 1980–81. Edited by Punk magazine legend John Holmstrom and Peter Bagge, both late of the School of Visual Arts, along with Bruce Carlton and J.D. King, Comical Funnies would also feature other early Bagge creations Studs Kirby and Junior. The Bagge art here was used as the wraparound cover for The Bradleys, collecting the Neat Stuff strips [1989]. All courtesy of Peter Bagge.

I can’t stand it anymore.” I couldn’t stand breaking up my Sundays and missing [New York children’s TV game show] Wonderama just to go and listen to all that convoluted, hateful bullsh*t. It wasn’t like I wanted to learn about or experience other faiths, either. I was and remain a hopeless agnostic. I don’t have a spiritual bone in my body. CBC: It retrospect, did it seem like an alcoholic household? Peter: Oh, yes, it definitely was. My parents always drank somewhat, but by the time we were all in high school, their inability or willingness to cope kept diminishing, and they turned more to drinking. Booze and TV, that was their life. Neither ever helped us with school or homework – my ma just watched the soaps all day and my dad watched the Mets at night. They had five kids in seven years, so we all moved out of the house, in pretty short order, which made life a lot easier for my parents. My father was also able to retire fairly early. They moved to Florida, bought a condo on the water, and by then they seemed okay. The pressure was off. Still, y’know, I wouldn’t say they were happy; it still took very little to get my dad all pissed off. My father once got so mad watching the news and hearing [U.S. Senator] Ted Kennedy talk about something or other (my dad was a Republican) that he wrote Kennedy a letter. He typed it up and showed it to me. I said, “Dad! You can’t send this!” It was practically a death threat! “When those crazies shot your brothers, they shot the wrong one!” CBC: Where do you stand in the lineup of the Bagge kids? Peter: I’m the second. Well, I’m the oldest now, since my older brother passed away, so now there’s me, two sisters, and the youngest is my other brother. My two sisters and I were like Irish triplets, all born a year apart of one another. My little brother is five years younger than me. CBC: Were there any creative streaks in either your siblings or your parents? Peter: Yes, my older brother Doug was very creative and spontaneous, a real natural cartoonist. Without even trying that hard or honing his craft, he was just one of those people who had a gift. He sorta reminded me of someone like [The Simpsons’ creator] Matt Groening, how he’d just sit down and do a drawing and everybody’d be immediately charmed and amused by it. My brother and I would make our own funny pages, fake Sunday supplements. Doug would draw a comic and then I would draw one. We’d even make our own newspaper. It was called The Daily Snortster. My brother invented this whole little country called Philberville. It was like this island off of New Jersey coast

or something, and the newspaper would be all about what was going on in his mythical sh*thole. Doug would write about presidential elections with his own made up parties and candidates. One party was called the Political Party, whose slogan was: “Politically Speaking, the Political Party Speaks Your Language!” That still cracks me up to this day! CBC: These Sunday funnies were all hand-printed? Peter: Yes, everything was handdrawn, and there’d only be one copy of it. We didn’t print it out. The newspaper would be four pages of news, sports, and ads, and then there’d be eight pages of comics — which, to us, was what all newspapers should be like! Drawing comics almost came too easy for him, because he never developed a work ethic toward his comics. He didn’t pencil it; he would just sit down with a marker and make it up as he drew. It would just flow. He didn’t have to think it out, and it always would be hilarious. I drew comics largely just to keep up with him and be like him. CBC: So your brother was a natural cartoonist? Peter: Yeah, he was a real natural. I had to work twice as hard to be half as good. I tried to do it just like he did: take a pen and draw without any planning, but it never worked. So, after a while, I started secretly roughing it out first the way almost all professional cartoonists do, though I didn’t know that at the time. To me it felt like “cheating”! CBC: What was the content of your cartoons? Peter: It was the same as my brother’s, all gags. Absurdist satire. We were just trying to be funny. CBC: What were your inspirations at the time? Peter: Mostly the funny comic strips in the daily and Sunday papers. Plus MAD magazine. I loved Peanuts, by far my favorite comic strip. But other than that, my brother and I also used to buy all those paperback collections, not just of Peanuts, but Dennis the Menace. We loved all the Dennis the Menace paperbacks. We would also collect the old MAD paperbacks. After Peanuts, my next favorite of the paperback collections were MAD’s Don Martin books. I read all of them dozens of times as well. We also would buy Beetle Bailey, and a beautifully drawn kids strip called Tiger… I remember even owning a Marmaduke collection. Why not?! And when B.C. started out, I thought that was hilarious. It was one of my favorites. I can do without it now, but it seemed really “hip” to me at the time. But, to me, there was Peanuts, and than there were all the others. Even as a kid, I knew there was so much more going on, it was just so much deeper. It operated on many more levels than those other strips did. It was contemplative and very philosophical, yet it was cute little kids with big round heads who were saying these things. A deceptive duality was going on there — something that always is the hallmark of great comedy, to my mind. CBC: Did you identify specifically with any? Peter: I identified with Linus. He was by far my favorite character when I was a kid. Though my favorite stuff both then and now was any and all interactions between Lucy, Linus, and Charlie Brown. When I was only 12 or 13, I quickly got fed up with the strip, starting around 1970, when he introduced Woodstock. All of a sudden, all the jokes were really light and there was lots of Snoopy and his alter-egos. Charlie Brown was suddenly just Snoopy’s straight man, which was a huge waste of one of the greatest comic characters ever. But Schulz had a great 20-year run, and especially in the early ’60s, it’s Comic Book Creator • Fall 2015 • #10

just the best stuff anybody’s ever done. CBC: Did you always appreciate Peanuts for the artistry? Peter: Yes! I thought it was a knockout in every single way, the writing and the art. CBC: Even the lettering was something. Peter: It’s because of Schulz, too, that I wanted to be a daily strip cartoonist. But then, in the ’70s, and all of a sudden the daily strips, as you recall, started getting smaller and smaller, so the artistry was counting for less and less. Even though I liked the cartoony stuff, like Dennis the Menace and Mort Walker, and all them, those guys are really good artists, too. It’s cartoony, but it still was really good artwork, excellent cartooning, with style and personality. Then, out of the blue, we had Doonesbury, which was supposed to be the new, hip, “smart” strip. I thought Garry Trudeau’s artwork was hideous. I couldn’t even look at it; it was so ugly. I also couldn’t believe it was so popular. I still can’t look at it. I despise his drawing style. And it’s so smug, too. There’s nothing the least bit self-effacing about the humor. It’s so self-righteous, you know? It’s like being in church, only it’s from a liberal, secular worldview, but it’s still a religion. And whether I agree or disagree with what he’d be saying was besides the point. It embarrassed me when I agreed with him! And then, all of a sudden, there was Ziggy, which was hideous. And Cathy? These strips weren’t even funny, they were pathetic, and the art was so f*cking boring and ugly. Now it’s all Garfield and Zits and Dilbert — the latter of which is, at least, kind of funny, but again, the art is so blah. It’s not good

Above: The Bradley Family strip, much the center of the one-man comics anthology Neat Stuff, was a wild caricature of Bagge’s own brood growing up, which would over time result in focusing on the exploits of oldest son Buddy, the star of Hate, seen here with his pals. Below: The first Bradley Family strip appeared in the last issue of the tabloid Comical Funnies, #3, in 1981.