Americaware

elefantebu:

Peter Bagge is better known by his continuous and almost life-long Hate series, and by his early work in Punk Magazine, along with writers such as Art Spiegelman. He was also related to Weirdo, an anthology of comics edited by Robert Crumb, who eventually passed the bat to Bagge himself. That is a fine resume so far, I think. But more than that, he paired up with one of my all-time favourite comic writers for a crazy series called Yeah!, first published by DC Comics, from 1999 to 2000, and recently published a book by Fantasgraphics (2011). I am talking about Gilbert Hernandez, one of the masterminds behind Love and Rockets, who beautifully made all the art for Yeah!. It is a sort of parody or pastiche of 1960s girls magazines, of the likes of Archie and Josy and the Pussycats. Gilbert, thus, helped re-creating this retro feel. Yeah! is funny, lightheaded, odd, Sunday-morning-cartoons-like, but is not the best work either by Bagge or by Hernandez. I think it is worth it only because you can see such different artists as Bagge and Hernandez collaborating in a totally different environment. To summarize, Yeah! tells the crazy adventures of a girl group that is huge in outer space, but that is struggling to be recognized, or even play, on their own planet earth. You can try to find some irony, or something hidden behind the seemingly crazy stories, but I think you will have a hard time. Bagge himself mentions in the introduction to Yeah! that he was just trying to write a story for kids, and that is all. When first published, nobody got it. Not even kids—not to mention fans of the Hate series.