Peter Bagge's Reason Cartoons: In Book Form and Publisher's Weekly Approved

Reason magazine's own supercartoonist Peter Bagge has a brand-new collection of his Reason comics journalism collected in the covers of a real book, and available as of right now. It's called Everybody is Stupid Except Me, and Other Astute Observations.

Publisher's Weekly interviewed him about it. Excerpts:

PWCW: Has the post-9/11 America actually become even more insane, or was 9/11 just an excuse to allow the collective madness to run rampant with fewer questions asked?

PB: Both! Our collective response to 9-11 has been appalling, in that most Americans were (and are) totally willing to throw the Constitution right in the trash heap without any hesitation. Most of us have no idea what's even IN the Constitution, let alone why. My daughter recently graduated from public school, and her teachers didn't discuss the Bill of Rights once in those 13 years. They never taught her a single civics lesson! The paranoid part of me can't help but think that was intentional.

PWCW: In the wake of your observations and Libertarian-leaning opinions, have you received any backlash from readers who find your observations to be "anti-American?

PB: Not so much "anti-American, but I've received a lot of harsh feedback from people who are deeply offended by my libertarian-leaning worldview, which to them is bad enough.

PWCW: What has doing a series that's all social commentary taught Peter Bagge?

PB: That doing social commentary is difficult! At least when it comes to getting your point across as clearly as possible, while still being entertaining. I also tried to reach out to fence-straddlers and avoid preaching to the choir as much as possible. I could have taken the Doonesbury route and pandered to my fellow libertarians by pretending I (and they) had all the answers, but that would have been both too easy and dishonest. If I felt ambivalent about something I would say so, rather than pretend otherwise.

And you can buy it on Amazon, and you should! A while back, the Washington Post praised Bagge's political cartooning.