By Peter Bagge
Publisher: Fantagraphics
Books; Box edition (August 30, 2016)
Hardcover, 488 pages- 2
Volumes
This is the box edition
of the complete series for Neat Stuff, collecting all 15 issues of the indie
comic from the 1980s. For those of you who might know the name of Peter Bagge,
it probably comes from his indie comic sensation Hate about the adventures of
disaffected youth Buddy Bradley in Seattle in his early 20s. It was the right
comic at the right time and dead-on hit Generation X just as they began to
bloom. But before that, the comic was Neat
Stuff. It was an anthology comic. Each issue varied between a collection of
wildly different characters, and that might have been its flaw. The reader was
never sure what to expect. One issue might feature a variety of small bits,
while the next would be dominated by a single story.
The features for Neat Stuff are: Girly Girl - a leering troublemaker who finds
humor in dead animals, festering sores and clobbering child psychologists with
baseball bats. True to form, her first strip appearance ended with her being
squashed underfoot by her unseen "biggest fan". Studs Kirby - a
reactionary talk radio host who lives in the past, gets drunk, rants on with
his ill-informed opinions. Junior - a hulking wimp social inadequate who lives
with his mother and is terrified of the outside world. The Goon On The Moon - a
pornography obsessed, friendless loser who lives on the moon. Chet and Bunny
Leeway - a young couple who are dissatisfied with their increasingly tedious
lives.
The standouts, however,
were The Bradleys - a dysfunctional
family, apparently based on Bagge's own family. Brad Bradley, the father, is an
overweight, perpetually complaining slob. Betty Bradley, the mother, is a
God-fearing, occasionally foul-tempered 'woman of the eighties', whilst their
children, Butch (a gullible, war-mad pre-teen), Babs (a plain, self-absorbed
teenage girl with retainers on her teeth) and Buddy (a retro music-loving
slacker) alternate between fighting each other and their own parents. These
characters carried onto Hate.
For more readings, try books by Rex Hurst
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