Random Thoughts

Neat Stuff #1-15 by Peter Bagge.

I don’t quite recall how I felt about Peter Bagge’s comics when I was a teenager. I certainly wasn’t obsessing about it like I was with, say, Chester Brown or Moebius. That the first issue of Neat Stuff that I have is a third printing from the mid-90s is a sign: I wasn’t sufficiently into Neat Stuff that I bothered to seek out and buy the first issue at the time, but picked it up a decade later.

Which makes my delight in reading these issues now something of a surprise.

The first issue opens with a glowing editorial by Gary Groth, as was the tradition back then. But I think he’s under selling the work: It’s totally insane.

Just look at this Girly-Girl page of mayhem.

Or this way out wacky double page spread.

Such advanced humour! And then suddenly:

Seriousness! The first few issues of Neat Stuff is pretty well described by the title: It’s a grab bag of randomness, and it’s awesome. Like this nice glossary (that was later turned into a poster):

Bagge’s most enduring creation, the Bradley family, shows up in the first issue already. It’s the most sit-com-ish of all the series, and, I think, the weakest strip in this issue.

I mean, doing the dishes with a hose is a pretty old gag, and the only real twist Bagge does on the sit-com format is having (almost) all the characters being horrible, violent brats.

But I’m obviously in the minority here. Buddy Bradley would become the star of Bagge’s 90s series Hate, and went on to become a slacker/grunge fixture and made Bagge a super duper star.

The second issue, otherwise fantastic, introduces Studs Kirby, a right wing radio talk show host. I’m not sure exactly where Bagge wanted his storyline to go. It’s, by far, the most realistic of the recurring characters, and it just isn’t very funny or interesting.

Bagge sure knows his humour cliches, which is a good thing, because he mostly avoids them otherwise.

Bagge was the editor of Weirdo for a few years, taking over after Robert Crumb. And here’s Bagge paying homage, I guess.

What makes Neat Stuff such a satisfying package is the way Bagge delivers these surprise oddball strips in between the recurring serials. Several of the issues also have a theme going throughout all the stories: In issue three it’s music.

Ok, the Bradley’s aren’t totally on the sit-com track, I guess.

It is!

The final recurring characters are introduced in issue five. They don’t have names yet, and it seems likely to be more than a tad autobiographical.

Exactly. This is basically the modus operandi of the strip: Endless kvetching. But it’s pretty funny.

Bagge is still experimenting with the format. In the same issue, we get the story of Zoove Groover, a pop star, told through clippings from newspapers and record sleeves.

Junior explains how to best deal with the world. I’m taking notes.

Babs Bradley tells it all to her diary. That’s an old story-telling stand by, of course, but in the Neat Stuff context, it makes things more interesting…

From this point on, things seem to get less exciting. Bagge does a number of long Studs Kirby episodes that are, frankly, tedious. He also does more and longer stories featuring Junior, and these are better, but also seem to go nowhere. Gone are also the random wackiness; instead there’s virtually nothing going on but the main serials, and even they way over-the-top Girly-Girl pieces seem to be getting less inspired.

The artwork continues to evolve, though. I think that’s the most Bagge drawing ever.

The pose doesn’t work as well seen from the back, though…

I’m including this slightly skewed sit-com moral because of this panel, from a few years back:

Obnoxious characters are great for comedy, but the temptation to make everybody more human, to give them more “depth”, always lurks in the corners. The Bradleys started off with them as total obnoxious caricatures, but by this point, they’ve all been made into fully rounded human beings. This is probably what enabled them to become the centre point of Bagge’s meteoric rise to fame in the 90s, but were they funnier when they were horrible?

At least Girly-Girl avoided that fate. But slightly interesting, here’s Stinky appearing in the final Girly-Girl story. He’s later become a major character in the Buddy Bradley stories.

Issue 14 has three ten-page stories (Goon on the Moon, Studs and Junior) all told structurally the same way, as one-page strips with a punchline at the end of each page. It’s an fun approach and works quite well, especially since none of the characters are that interesting.

The final issue explains why Bagge is cancelling Neat Stuff. That he’d run out of ideas for most of the characters had been pretty obvious for a while.

Anyway, I really enjoyed re-reading these comics. They’ve been reprinted in various formats over the years, but this autumn Fantagraphics is republishing them in a nice hardback format.

That’s probably going to be a nice format to read them in, but I kinda think that reading them in the floppy format is rather ideal. Each issue is a nice, satisfying chunk of madness, mayhem and humanity. Well. Except for perhaps the last few issues.

I’ll be interested in re-reading Hate later. I remember virtually nothing about that title, except that I liked it? And… Buddy grows up? And it becomes more drama like? Or something?

This post is part of the Fantagraphics Floppies series.

Pedestrian Vulgarity #1 by Dennis Worden.

Another one of those one-off magazines that Fantagraphics published at random during the late 80s and early 90s. This time it’s a collection of mostly one-page funny strips by Dennis Worden, who is best known for doing Stickboy for quite a while.

There’s only one page of stick persons in this book, and it’s all a bit random…

First of all, that title:

So it makes perfect sense to call this magazine that. But is it pedestrian?

Worden anticipates the present fascination with zombies, only the 80s version is a nuclear holocaust, of course.

It’s plenty vulgar…

And kinda funny.

Hm, my selection of pages here perhaps makes this book seem less random than it is. It’s pretty random.

There’s no indication that this was supposed to be a serial comic other than it saying “#1” in the indicia. And it’s a collection of randomness from a seven year period, so perhaps it’s not meant to be?

In that case, it’s an awful strange thing to be publishing in floppy format. It is quite amusing, though.

This post is part of the Fantagraphics Floppies series.

Street Music #1-6 edited by Mark Burbey.

Street Music is a somewhat unusual anthology. It’s mainly the vehicle for the “Street Music” serial, which takes up something between a third and a half of each issue, and which is written by the editor, Mark Burbey, and drawn by Bili Turner. Neither of them could be said to be veterans in comics at this point, and neither produced a significant body of work in comics after Street Music.

What makes the anthology odd is that a number of what might be considered “back up” features, perhaps, are done by people who either were really well known already, or who would go on to be, er, stars: Carol Tyler, Richard Sala, Mark Martin, Chester Brown…

So what’s it all about?

Realness.

Burbey’s first editorial is somewhat reactive. He has more to say about those yucky super hero comics than what he finds positive about realism in comics. That’s totally fair, and especially in the late 80s. But what is realism for Burbey, though?

Here’s the first page from the first part of the “Street Music” serial, and it sets the tone. Realism is having conflict in every single scene. So on a typical afternoon, the bad kids want to torture a cat and the nice kid doesn’t want to, and drama ensues.

So much drama! Framing a Smurfs print is the thing that drives our protagonist here over the edge, quitting his framing job. It’s not that depicting conflict is bad, but it’s in virtually every scene. It made me wonder whether Burbey had read that “How to Write a Damn Good Novel: A Step-by-Step No Nonsense Guide to Dramatic Storytelling” by James Frey just before starting to write. His main idea is that every scene (every scene) should have both a primary and a secondary conflict. Otherwise that scene is boring and a waste.

Working in banking, this scene totally horrified me. Somebody working for a bank blabbing to a customer about how much money another customer has? Where are my pearls! I need something to clutch! *swooning*

*smelling salts*

That better. Richard Sala illustrates a short little story by Burbey, and it works wonderfully. Sala’s characters are even weirder when he’s doing art for a normal, mundane story than for his own, weird stories. Love it.

And I also adore Carol Tyler’s stories. There’s one in just about every issue of Street Music, and they’re all funny and interesting and wonderfully drawn. Here she is working in the framing business, which is something of a theme in this anthology. (I believe all her stories were collected in the Job Thing collection a few years later, and it’s highly recommended.)

Every issue also has a few text pieces. This one is by Michael Now and it’s about how dogs are awful.

One other problem with the main serial (apart from the So Much Drama bit) is Bili Turner’s inconsistent artwork. Things seldom seem to fit together. Is that a very tiny car? Is the driver’s body supposed to poke out underneath the car? Or is there no motor under that hood, but instead a place to extend your feet? And why is the standing woman’s head so high and narrow?

And then the very next panel:

Gorgeous.

Despite the flaws in the main serial, it does work. I mean, I did care about the characters, and I was interested in what happened. I found it to be an enjoyable read, and quite touching.

And such good taste in music! That’s the sleeve of the 4AD compilation “Lonely is an Eyesore”.

Meanwhile, Carol Tyler continues with her stories about various jobs. I found this one about working in a book store in the boondocks particularly funny. And her artworks just continues getting better.

While being kinda “undergroundey”, the only underground artist to appear in Street Music is Guy Colwell, most famous for his Inner City Romance comics from the early 70s. It does fit in with the theme of the anthology very well.

Issue four has a really lovely cover by Chester Brown that refers to this piece by Burbey and Dave Marshall:

Which is a story originally written for the horror anthology Taboo, but which was rejected because it wasn’t horror-ey enough. It’s about a serial killer and how he got to be that way, and I don’t need to hum more bars: You already know all the details without reading this story. So, less real than just a recap of all the cliches you know about serial killers. It’s still a pretty powerful and horrific story.

I just had to excerpt this in-house ad for Graphic Story Monthly. “The first great comics magazine of the ’90s.” And the ad ran in the December 89 issue of Street Music, so the Fantagraphics people were probably correct.

This issue also features the first of two very powerful stories by Angela Bocage, about growing up, abuse and cutting. It’s quite high on the “eeek” scale. And wonderful scratchy art.

So that’s it: Street Music, the anthology. I found re-reading it to be a pleasant surprise. I remember I really loved it when I was a teenager, what with its mix of touching drama (the main serial) and shocking reality (from pieces like the Bocage ones). While I’ve grown up to be way too critical and grouchy, I think it’s a really successful book. The different parts make for a satisfying whole.

This post is part of the Fantagraphics Floppies series.