Peter Bagge's Everybody Is Stupid Except for Me

Jesse Brown, a BoingBoing guest-blogger, is the host of TVO's Search Engine podcast.

I've been enjoying cartoonist Peter Bagge's contributions to Reason Magazine for years now, which I've always read on their website. But now Fantagraphics has collected them into a great-looking trade paperback! Here's a PDF of a free chapter (link).

Fans of Bagge's from his HATE days are sometimes turned off by the politics of his Reason comics. I'm not. I think Bagge has been doing really interesting work, mixing field journalism with humor and opinion in an entirely novel way.

As an essayist Bagge is never preachy, and he often points out the shortcomings of his fellow libertarians (his account of meeting Ron Paul is particularly funny). He explores more than he rants, and when he does let loose, he's got a healthy sense of self-satire.

These comics will piss you off, and that's good. (Amazon link)

• [das memsen]

  What I love about Bagge’s no-bullshit approach is that the fierce, sharp humor is balanced by intelligent observation. He’s kind of like the comics equivalent of the Minutemen.

  His Reason comics aren’t always on target- sometimes you can tell he’s making a bigger issue out of a molehill just because he has to say something (he is getting paid, after all, to go to these crazy events and report back) so they definitely aren’t as sharp as his fiction work, but they’re quite thoughtful nonetheless. And he gives libertarians a good name, by illustrating the real meaning behind the philosophy, rather than the stereotype of an asshole who just wants a system of government that allows him to be as selfish as possible.

  I don’t see why anyone should be offended by that!

• [SKR]

  I had not seen the preview chapter. Now that I have, I may just have to go buy this.

• [Halloween Jack]

  I remember Bagge as being a little too impressed by Alan Keyes in one of those Reason strips, but then again he also published an essay in one of his Hate annuals in defense of Mike Love, and highly critical of Brian Wilson, because Love kept the group together while Wilson was mentally out to lunch. I’ll still read Bagge’s work, though, even if he’s being contrarian to the point of being utterly stupid.

• [Brainspore]

  I take my political views from the libertarians and the socialists in roughly equal measure. There’s nothing inherently wrong with either philosophy until you start applying them to every situation.

• [st vincent]

  Q: How many Libertarians does it take to screw in a lightbulb?

  A: None. A Libertarian will just tell you to screw yourself.

• [Anonymous]

  No one writes and draws the average american nitwit like Bagge.

• [waharnum]

  It’s a great volume. Lacks one of my favourites, though, his wonderful deconstruction of the immigration debates–though it’s available at http://www.reason.com/news/show/118271.html

• [eltonbong]

  Bought it and its a great little collection for fans of the man…..