Buddy Go Home: Hate Coll. Vol. 4

Buddy Go Home is much different than the earlier HATE comix. The setting's gone from trendy Seattle to dank New Jersey, and the glorious black and white is now family friendly color. Rest assured, though Buddy Bradley is now in a foreign/colorized environment, he's still the cynic we've come to love, or love to hate. He's taken on more responsibilities, namely that of babysitting his niece and nephew, buying a vehicle, and doing housework, which leaves him less time to embark on the impractical meanderings that made past issues laugh out loud funny. The move to more restrained storylines makes this Hate anthology less hilarious than other issues. But it's a deliberate move. It'd be artificial for Buddy to keep on acting crazy in the face of his family. He's no longer flanked by the high voltage Stinky Brown - the low energy hippie Jay from The Bradleys is re-introduced as Buddy's constant companion. Buddy is no longer faced with wannabe grunge bands and loose groupies - the context is now dying fathers and strung out losers. As a result, the laughs involve more serious subject matter and as a result are subtler (but not much subtler - see the gag with the Marvel Comics cup). Bagge's storytelling has matured. Even though there are less laughs, it's still a cracking yarn. It's a tribute to his development as a writer than he no longer has to tell a joke every few pages to keep the reader interested. Bagge's drawing has really developed, too. Compare Hey Buddy! with Buddy Go Home and you'll see more proportionally consistent characters, better setting composition, and neater shading. The whole thing just looks better. The rampant cross-hatching that Bagge deliberately dirtied up earlier issues with is gone - characters are now colored. As if to drive the point home, the last story, a vignette featuring Buddy's dad, is left in black and white. The sudden lack of color is effective at showing how much it adds. I was wary when I learned that Bagge was going to color, but his decision - he's said that the move was to prevent the comic from growing too depressing - was a wise one. With Buddy's dad in the hospital, Lisa pretty much becoming a part of the family, and Butch drinking more and more heavily, a black and white strip would've been too much to bear. As much as I love the low fi look of past issues, color was the way to go. Plus it's great to see an artist try something new. As good as previous HATE comix, but in a different way.

Peter Bagge takes us back to where it all began: the suburban New Jersey home of the Bradley clan. Babs is now a single mother of two too cute/too annoying kiddies, Butch is an oafish simpleton, Mom is drunk, Dad's almost dead and Buddy and Lisa are still in hate with each other. Bagge's talent for charaterization and his hyperactive comic style shine in this volume. The subject matter is a little more serious than in previous HATE stories, but it is still consistently hilarious and reminds all of us grown-up slackers how lucky we are to be out of the house.

More hilarious adventures of Buddy Bradley, lowlife slacker. This time he moves back into his parents house and opens a memorabilia store. This is the funniest comic book of the 90s.