Peter Bagge's Reset No. 1 (and No. 2): Two Different Takes / Aaron Shunga, Rob Wells

Peter Bagge’s Reset No. 1 (and No. 2):

Two Different Takes

Review:

Peter Bagge’s Reset No. 1

(Dark Horse, 2012)

Aaron Shunga

(Originally presented as an entry in the blog The Mouthpiece, 26 June 2012)

Peter Bagge first got famous in the ’90s with his epic creation HATE, starring an angst-ridden cast of grunge hipsters in Seattle and later Jersey. I couldn’t help but be blown away by the pacing, acrid dialogue and hilarious situations that strike way too close to home even now, as a struggling bohemian with a bad temper and a drinking problem.

However, it is 2012, and Peter Bagge has decided to try his hand at other subject matter, which is science fiction and midlife crisis. I read the first installment of this, which was handed to me by a friend in Oakland, CA with the warning of “It sucks.” A lot of artists get softer in their old age and want to do work that either perpetuates their previous modus operandi in a watered-down way or takes a turn in an awkward way. I feel that this story is the latter. Chris Ware and Dan Clowes switched their subject matter to themes personal to them as they got older, and so does Peter Bagge, but I don't think he’s really succeeding here.

The problem is, he was never a science fiction writer, and his idea to have a character engage in a virtual reality machine designed to transport him back to his high school years is too similar to The Matrix. Adrian Tomine comes to mind, as the teenaged scarification theme arises. Our protagonist, a failed actor in Los Angeles (not a very convincing character), is transported to the day he was jilted by the love of his life, and the rest of his existence is plagued by those repercussions. I had a hard time giving a shit.

I guess the old adage “write what you know” comes into play here. The characters in Reset seem to be ghosts imitating the lively characters in HATE that I grew to love. In this context, the colorful experiences in HATE are now very cookie-cutter and not very engaging.

My critical attitude here is also strengthened by the fact that I don’t really enjoy his drawing style. The facial expressions are nice, but they have a very post-1980 Sunday comics feel which isn’t very esoteric or classic enough for me to want to sit through a sub-par storyline. These comics make me feel like I’m watching a B-movie about virtual reality or a failed pilot from the late ’90s and it’s 2011. I don’t know, I could always eat leftover Chinese food and listen to the Melvins if I wanted to feel what this comic made me feel... like some kind of faded enthusiasm sprouting from the Grunge scene, and a kind of Technophobia that might result from someone using a 56k dial-up modem.

Review:

Peter Bagge’s Reset Nos. 1 and 2

(Dark Horse Originals)

Rob Wells

Reset is a 4-issue mini-series by Peter Bagge, published by Dark Horse as part of their Dark Horse Originals line. I consider myself a Peter Bagge fan but, if I’m being honest, that is based mainly on my love for Neat Stuff – a comic that ceased publication more than 20 years ago – more than a love for any of his later work, and I was never even that keen on Hate. I liked it, but I certainly didn’t love it, maybe because I just couldn’t relate to Buddy Bradley’s grunge adventures in Seattle in the same way that I could relate to his time living (and arguing) with his family in Neat Stuff’s Bradleys stories. When Hate started, I was still living with my parents, even though I was in my early twenties, and when it ended, I had not long met and moved in with the girl I would eventually marry; and I have never shared a house with anyone I wasn’t either related to or romantically involved with, which may explain why I enjoyed Hate more towards the end of its run, when Buddy married Lisa and moved back in with his parents. I bought every issue, and even replaced them with trade paperbacks a few years ago, but it’s still something I only ever read the once (a situation I really should rectify) and I wasn’t particularly upset when the series ended. I continued to follow Bagge’s work for several years after Hate, and even bought the first few Hate Annuals, but a lot of his more recent work didn’t seem that funny at all, more like an outlet for his increasingly conservative views (like Chester Brown, Bagge is a Libertarian), and eventually I stopped following his career entirely.

Reset, then, is the first new work from Peter Bagge that I have read in quite a few years. It’s ostensibly a sci-fi story, about a washed-up comedian called Guy Krause, who is offered the chance to take part in a virtual-reality experiment. This experiment involves Guy putting on a virtual-reality helmet and reliving moments from his own past, starting with his high school graduation. His actions in the virtual-past have no impact on the real world – this is not a time travel story – but Guy is able to do things differently in the virtual-past, and is able to hit a ‘reset’ button if he screws things up again. In fact, these first two issues mostly take place in the real world, because Guy hits the reset button A LOT. At one point, Guy walks out but is forced to come back for financial reasons, when he loses an acting job to ‘a better-known has-been’, but most scenes involve Guy arguing with his new employers. He wants to know their motives, how they managed to gather so much information on his past, and the real purpose of this virtual-reality invention. Is it just an expensive porn thing, that allows men to go back in time and screw girls who rejected them the first time around? Probably not, but its real purpose is still not clear by the end of the second issue.

So far, Reset isn’t exactly hilarious, but these two comics raised quite a few smiles, and even a few sniggers. Guy is a grouchy bastard, of the Studs Kirby variety, but he’s also a self-aware grouchy bastard, who is able to take criticism, so he’s not completely unlikable. My only complaint about these two issues really is that a bit too much time was taken up with arguing, and not enough time was spent in Guy’s virtual past. I’m sure this sort of idea has been explored many times before elsewhere, but as someone who regrets almost everything I ever did or said – I don’t trust anyone who says that they don’t have any regrets! – I find it a fascinating one, and I want to see where Bagge goes with it. Sure, while in his virtual-past, Guy does try to pick up a girl who called him a ‘spaz’ at his high school graduation, uses his knowledge of future events to win money betting in Vegas, and even picks up a couple of whores at one point, but not before he has a couple of attempts at convincing his parents not to divorce, and tries to convince his dad, who (presumably) died of lung cancer, to see a doctor (after his first heavy-handed attempt, his employers hit the reset button and tell him to try again, but without sounding too much like a ‘teenage Nostradamus’). Even after winning a lot of money in Vegas, his first thought was of paying for his dad’s operation and paying off his parents’ mortgage – all of which was quite touching, and despite the James Bond-style cover for #3 that is shown at the end of #2, suggests that this series won’t be straying too far down the obvious routes that a less mature creator might have gone down. (Christ, can you imagine what someone like Mark Millar would do with an idea like this? It would be non-stop rape and murder!) I will definitely pick up the last two issues of Reset – or at least buy the trade paperback if there is one – and reading these has inspired me to see what else I’ve missed by Bagge in recent years.