Seattle is the place to be this Friday – the awesomeness that is Peter Bagge will be in the Fantagraphics (1201 S. Vale Street) store Friday November 25th from 7pm – comics, signings, chat and brews will be the order of the evening, followed by decamping to next door club Mix where Bagge’s “power pop combo”  Can You Imagine? will be rockin’ it. Comics, brews, music and an excuse to post up some Peter Bagge art, that sounds like a damned fine Friday night…

Fans of Peter Bagge, take note : in the third (or actually, the fourth) issue of the Belgian”graphical press” El Rios, Bagge makes fun of how little he and his fellow Americans know about our little country by the sea.  El Rios is a beautiful publication by the Brussels design studio Coiffeurs Pour Dames, who manage to bring out a sixteen page, full colour, tabloid-sized magazine on heavy stock every three months and only charge € 10 for it.  In each issue they try to follow the news  (the magazine was originally intended as a rather anarchic column in the Belgian daily Le Soir), and this time, it’s the Belgian situation, and how to explain it to ever more perplexed foreigners.   In addition to Bagge, this issue also features comics and illustrations by Jean Bourgignon, Bruno Moldave and Philippe Nihoul and a host of others.

Incidentally, Coiffeurs Pour Dames is slowly but steadily evolving from a graphical production studio, mostly working as a provider of editorial illustration and cartoon work, advertisments and general merriment, into a full-fledged (albeit still small) publishing house.  In January they published Burt’s festival impressions (which originally ran in the summer of 2009 in the weekly Le Vif/L’Express Focus) as a handy, CD-sized booklet (actually packaged in a CD jewel case), and in September they published their first real book : Sois Pédagogique (Be pedagogical), the “notes of an adventurer of the mundane” by Fifi, chronickling his daily struggle with his less-than-motivated students and colleagues.  Now, if only those Belgian small-press cartoonists stopped using those silly aliases…

All books and publications from Coiffeurs Pour Dames are available around ze globe from their webshop.

Fallout: Teaser Trailer from tupaq felber on Vimeo.

Fresh images from the Vertigo blog of Peter Bagge’s 2010 Original Graphic Novel; Other Lives. It does look good – don’t you think?

Peter Bagge‘s rather brilliant family comedy The Bradleys is in development at Fox right now according to the Fantagraphics blog:

“Exciting news here… Our own Peter Bagge has a development deal with FOX for THE BRADLEYS and the network has just ordered a pilot. The only details we can reveal just yet are that Bagge has a pilot script deal with FOX for an animated prime time series featuring The Bradleys (i.e.: the pre-HATE era when Buddy Bradley was a teen and still lived at home).”

Now I seem to remember MTV were going to do this many, many years ago and that never materialised. hopefully we’ll actually see a finished series here and Peter Bagge will ensure it stays true the the original. Fingers crossed.

by (deep breath) Nick Bertozzi, Paul Pope, John Leavitt, Molly Crabapple, Junko Mizuno, Dash Shaw, James Kochalka, Johnny Ryan, Michael Kupperman, Peter Bagge, Nicholas Gurewitch and Jason.

Marvel Comics

(Paul Pope and Jose Villarubia’s cover to Strange Tales 1.)

There’s something strange going on in comics at the moment, with three major books from three different publishers all utilising the best in the alt-comics crowd. First we had DC’s Wednesday Comics, a harking back to the tabloid sized comics of yesteryear filled with full page artwork by the likes of Kubert, Pope, Allred et al. And Matt Groening has just published an issue of Treehouse Of Horror thaat lets the Kramers Ergot crowd loose on the Simpsons.

And then there’s Strange Tales, where a host of creators get their mitts on Marvel’s finest. Now the first thing I thought when I got hold of issue 1 was that it’s almost perfectly indicative of that moment in the 60s when Marvel exploded onto the scene with Stan, Steve and Jack blowing the cobwebs of DC’s stuffy icons away with fresh, interesting and frankly slightly strange superheroes – a geeky teen with spider powers? How bizarre. And that’s just how Strange Tales feels – because for all of it’s worthy nostalgia, the abiding memory of the 12 issues of DC’s Wednesday Comics is one of wonderful format with slightly dull content. Once the surface gloss wore off, we were left with a series of stories that didn’t really live up to the presentation.

(Lockjaw may be the most powerful of all the Inhumans, but to be honest all he wants is someone to open the tin of damn dog food. From Paul Pope’s Inhumans strip in Strange Tales #1 © Marvel Characters Inc.)

Whereas Strange Tales is faster, shorter and much more fun. It’s  only three issues for a start so it will barely have time to grow stale on us. Similarly, it’s full of short strips – the longest here being the 8 page Paul Pope Inhumans tale where Lockjaw tries to get a jar of dog food open. All of the writers and artists here are concentrating on making their strips as silly and funny as possible, gently taking potshots at the characters whilst showing us they actually have a lot of love for them.

(Dash Shaw’s Ditko-esque psychedelic Dr Strange strip from Strange Tales #1 © Marvel Characters Inc.)

Standout moments in this first issue are many; Dash Shaw’s psychedelic Dr Strange strip comes off brilliantly and turns up the Ditko to 11, James Kochalka’s Hulk Squad is a riot of poster paint colour and gleeful kiddie fights, Jason gives us Spider-Man vs Doc Ock silliness with poor wimpy Peter trying to get into a bar fight just to keep up with Flash Thompson (and all done in Jason’s usual talking dog style). Nicholas Gurewitch (of The Perry Bible Fellowship) gives us two very funny pages of silliness that will leave a huge smile over your face.

(James kochalka’s technicolour Hulk strip and Jason’s signature style on display as Peter Parker does his best to get into a bar fight. From Strange Tales #1 © Marvel Characters Inc.)

Peter Bagge’s long delayed Incorrigible Hulk is just as manic, repressed and strange as  you might expect. The good news is that Bagge’s strip is appearing in full, across all three issues.

There isn’t a strip here that’s less than enjoyable. Even those that don’t quite reach the heights of those I’ve mentioned are certainly worth the couple of minutes it will take you to read them. Overall Strange Tales succeeds where Wednesday Comics failed. The concept is just as great but the content actually gets somewhere near fulfilling the incredible amount of expectation so many people have had for the comic. It’s 48 pages of really strange fun.

(Peter Bagge’s long delayed Incorrigible Hulk strip finally gets published in Strange Tales #1 © Marvel Characters Inc.)

Strange Tales #1 sold out very quickly, but a second print is available with a very nice b&w Pope cover. The two issues to come have more and more great artists including Stan Sakai, Tony Millionaire, Becky Cloonan, Paul Hornschemeier, Jay Stephens, Matt Kindt and many more. Issue 1 is out now, issue 2 was out October 8th and issue 3 is out in November.

Richard Bruton.

Tom Spurgeon’s Sunday interviews are usually worth taking a look at, but this week it’s a special occasion – this week it’s Peter Bagge.

Bagge’s Everybody is Stupid Except For Me looks absolutely lovely. In his usual twisted, cynical and angry way..