Peter Bagge on Comics, Politics, and His New Book Reset
"If you're an artist type who lives in a city like Seattle," says cartoonist, author, and Reason contributor Peter Bagge, "It is just so much easier to toe the Democratic Party line and go along with whatever it is our Dear Leader wants us to believe in."
Bagge's latest graphic novel is called Reset and follows the misadventures of washed-up comedian and actor Guy Krause, who volunteers for a research experiment in which he is hooked up to a virtual reality machine that allows him to re-do important or traumatic events in his life.
Reason TV's Zach Weissmueller sat down with Bagge to discuss his book, how politics inform art (and vice versa), how the internet has affected comics, and what it's like to be a libertarian in an industry full of doctrinaire liberals.
Reset is available for purchase online, and you can also pre-order Bagge's next book, Peter Bagge's Other Stuff.
Scroll down for downloadable versions and subscribe to ReasonTV's YouTube Channel to receive notification when new material goes live."
Runs about 9 minutes.
Interview by Zach Weissmueller. Shot by Tracy Oppenheimer. Edited by Weissmueller.
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I find Bagge’s animation style off-putting. I am fairly certain it has something to do with some deep-seated, cartoon related childhood trauma. Someday, when Obamacare provides me with free therapy, I’ll get past it.
His work could benefit from some HBO style gratuitous nudity, but then again so could all art.
tow the Democratic Party line
Not merely wrong, but wrong from all angles.
Right, it should be tow the lion.
Huh, and I thought everyone from those Tarzan movies was dead.
Many of the 60s-80s underground and 90s alt comix artists had and have libertarian leanings.
They had countercultural leanings sure, but actual bona fide libertarian leanings? Very rare. Ragging on leftist sophistries? Sure. Any sort of laissez faire attitude towards the market? Unless it was about the narcotics black market, not so much.
I wouldn’t consider them official members of the Libertarian Party but they shared many positions of libertarians.
I also consider 60s-early 70s hippies to be more libertarian than liberal.
Huh. I always thought his last name was pronounced “baggie”.
Me too. Thanks to Reason for clearing that up. His self caricature is better looking than he is, probably because it froze at a younger age — or maybe because I just like cartoons better than real life people. Unless they’re, you know, Kaz or Segar style. No, come to think of it, even those styles of faces & bodies I’d like to see as real people, provided I could laugh at them. They’d be so entertaining. But Popeye, Bluto, and Snuff would probably take turns punching me to the Moon if I laughed at them to their faces. Bagge’s figures couldn’t get much into a punch, their arms would just bend on contact with me.
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Where did Zach’s glasses go? Disappointed.