Peter Bagge – The Neat Stuff Years

Memorable Characters Emerged From 1980s Fantagraphics Comic Mag

Jun 7, 2009

Cartoonist Peter Bagge's Neat Stuff magazine captured late-1980s pop culture. Its issues were filled with graphic experimentation, satire, and enduring characters.

Peter Bagge has been cartooning since the early 1980s. At first, he published his work in adult magazines like Screw and edited Robert Crumb's Weirdo magazine, while developing his skills.

In 1985, Bagge started writing and illustrating Neat Stuff, a solo magazine-format comics anthology from Fantagraphics Books. Neat Stuff's fifteen issues introduced and developed many of Bagge's characters, honed his style of cartoon expressionism, and set the stage for Hate, his most famous 1990s creation.

Peter Bagge Introduces The Goon on the Moon and Girly-Girl

Peter Bagge's first published cartoon, in The East Village Eye, had starred "The Goon on the Moon," and the character later made appearances in Bagge's Neat Stuff magazine. An alcoholic porn addict (sometimes) found on the moon, his friend is Girly-Girl, an obscene, pre-pubescent tomboy. Girly-Girl also has a hapless sidekick, Chuckie-Boy, whom Girly-Girl subjects to much slapstick abuse.

Girly-Girl's adventures were later collected in Stupid Comics Featuring Girly-Girl, which includes the Goon on the Moon pages from Neat Stuff as well. Some of Bagge's grotesque pages – a treat for any Bagge fan – such as "Jeepers Creepers," and "Vomit Glossary" (later made into a poster adorning many a comic-book shop wall) are also featured in this volume.

Another of Peter Bagge's early creations is Junior, the ultimate mamma's boy unable to function on his own. While some Neat Stuff vignettes featured Junior giving tips on how never to leave the house, or obsessing over pornography, the story "The Road to Manhood" sees Junior, kicked out by his mother at last, try to fend for himself, with hilarious consequences.

Chester and Bunny Leeway, a cynical suburban couple, also appear in the pages of Neat Stuff. The Leeways would later re-appear in Hate Annual #3, from 2002, in strips collected from online comics Bagge had done from a few years earlier.

Both the Junior and Leeway stories, as well as other miscellaneous satirical tales, were re-published in Junior and Other Losers. Another of the volume's highlights is Zoove Groover, a pop idol-turned-hippie-turned-born again, whose rise and fall is documented in a pastiche which demonstrates Peter Bagge's keen knowledge of popular music and its pretensions.

The Neat Stuff adventures of Studs Kirby, a right-wing radio shock-jock, were also reprinted in a separate volume, called Studs Kirby: The Voice of America.

The Bradleys: Peter Bagge's Nuclear Family Send-up

The most enduring characters from Neat Stuff were the Bradleys, Bagge's dysfunctional, semi-autobiographical New Jersey family. Eldest son Buddy Bradley is a shiftless hipster, sister Babs an insecure adolescent, and youngest child Butch an impressionable pre-teen. Rounding out the clan are cantankerous patriarch Brad Bradley, and long-suffering mom Betty Bradley.

Some of the best stories from Neat Stuff magazine were Bradley tales, such as "Hippy House," a send-up of teenage parties, "You're Not the Boss of Me," a vicious mother-daughter showdown, and "Merry F***ing Christmas," an uproarious look at the holidays in the Bradley household.

The Bradleys collects all the Bradley family stories from Neat Stuff in one volume, ending with "Buddy the Weasel," which finds Buddy sleeping on the beach after alienating friends and family. His story continued in Bagge's acclaimed series Hate, in which other members of the Bradley clan also made appearances.

Peter Bagge's Neat Stuff saw the cartoonist at the height of his expressionistic style, and marked the beginning of the mature work he would exhibit in Hate and elsewhere. In particular, Neat Stuff's stories form a prequel of sorts to the adult adventures of Buddy Bradley, making the magazine required reading for Hate fans.

Ending in 1989, Neat Stuff magazine has also proved an effective time-capsule of the 1980s. Many details of the Reagan-Bush years, from He-Man to Duran Duran, are subtly lampooned in its pages. Anyone interested in fearless pop-culture satire, not just Peter Bagge, should have a look.

The copyright of the article Peter Bagge – The Neat Stuff Years in Graphic Novel/Comic Illustrators is owned by Luke Arnott. Permission to republish Peter Bagge – The Neat Stuff Years in print or online must be granted by the author in writing.