Peter Bagge is not only one of the primary architects of the alternative comics scene that exploded in the 1980s and 1990s (alongside peers including Gilbert Hernandez, Jaime Hernandez, and Daniel Clowes), but also someone who helped fashion the aesthetics and attitudes of an entire youth movement. His comic book series, Hate, chronicled the exploits of twentysomething Buddy Bradley and his gang of lovable losers through the rise and fall of the grunge era (and eventually beyond). Bagge’s style became a part of the Gen X zeitgeist and Hate became the best-selling alternative comic of its era, with Bagge’s illustrations gracing countless album and magazine covers as well. The Complete Hate Volume 3 collects all the Buddy Bradley stories from Hate Annual (nine issues, 2001–2011), as well as a host of other odds and ends from the original Hate series, Details magazine, I Like Comics, and much more. Now in his 30s and married, with a child, onetime slacker hero Buddy Bradley shaves his head, dons an eye-patch, quits his “real” job and buys the local dump — because what better place to raise a toddler? Part screwball comedy, part soap opera, part loose autobiography, Hate is an enduring chronicle of the 1990s as well as riotously relatable to anyone bumbling through their twenties.
