Hate Revisited!

The anarchic, antisocial Gen Xers of Eisner winner Bagge’s 1990s Hate series squirm through a present-day reunion that’s equal parts raunchy and reflective. Buddy and Lisa, former Seattle slackers with a tumultuous, on-off relationship, now live in the relatively cheaper Tacoma with their underemployed adult son, Harold. Buddy’s sister Babs has just broken up with her latest fiancé, his brother Butch collects guns and follows QAnon-style conspiracies, his mom has gone MAGA, and his old roommate Stinky is (still) dead. Buddy himself has mellowed but retains his knee-jerk nihilism: accused of supporting Trump, he shoots back, “I always vote for nobody! He’s my main man.” Bagge intersperses flashbacks to the ’90s, ingeniously contrasting the contemporary narrative’s full color with the familiar black-and-white of the original comics. Throughout, Bagge’s art jiggles with trademark elastic charm. His animated, rubber-hose-limbed characters vibrate on a frequency midway between the aggro exaggeration of Robert Crumb and the emotional expressiveness of Charles Schulz. The volume concludes with an off-putting chapter collecting off-color Stretchpants strips, a gross-out character who has made a fortune by squashing people under his butt for money. Still, fans who have been following the main Hate characters through their ups and (mostly) downs won’t want to miss out on encountering this crew again. (July)