Buddy Buys a Dump: The Complete Buddy Bradley Stories from “HATE” Comics, Vol. III

Fantagraphics

Written and drawn by Peter Bagge

Jun 04, 2014 Issue #50 - June/July 2014 - Future Islands By Jeremy Nisen

The past decade-plus worth of HATE comics certainly are paced differently than the prior volumes. Buddy Baker’s life is less frenetic, having settled down with the certifiable Lisa Leavenworth and started a family. In the ‘90s version of HATE, Peter Bagge’s stock-in-trade was parodying societal norms through Buddy’s increasingly outlandish misadventures and gaffes.

Domestic life with Buddy isn’t quite as over-the-top, but the stories are a bit more poignant for it. There’s a degree of realism in the aging Buddy trying to provide for a family and dealing with other issues of getting older that the ‘90s HATE didn’t have (or need). Don’t get me wrong: Buddy’s solution to his financial woes is buying a dump, and his more sordid past keeps turning up like a bad penny (literal skeletons, as one he thought was buried needed to be re-buried in this volume…twice).

Volume III, we’ll submit, is not quite as funny or viscerally pleasing as the first two volumes, but it captures a stage of life—the onset of adulthood—as well as or better than the original comics captured being young and dysfunctional in the days of grunge. It’s an honest progression that remains funny, sharp, ridiculous, and expertly cartooned. Maybe this is just because we’re older than Buddy now (whereas he was about 10 years our senior when HATE #1 launched in 1990) but this resonates more than ever, and we like it just as much. (www.fantagraphics.com)

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