A Year in Seattle Preview: The Young Cynic with Peter Bagge

Published: April 7, 2015, 11:42 p.m.

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In downtown Seattle, Colin talks with comic artist\\xa0Peter Bagge, creator of the legendary alternative comic series\\xa0Hate, contributing editor and cartoonist at\\xa0Reason\\xa0magazine,\\xa0and author of such graphic novels as\\xa0Apocalypse Nerd,\\xa0Other Lives,\\xa0Reset, and\\xa0Woman Rebel: The Margaret Sanger Story.\\xa0They discuss whether Seattle is still the place to be for the Buddy Bradleys of the world; the cheap "place to invent yourself" he first found there; the ever-increasing importance of place in his work, and its necessity\\xa0in telling longer stories; how Seattle won out as a storytelling location versus the other "cities where hipsters gather"; what Seattle once looked like from his perspective in Manhattan; the feeling of a "pioneer town" then and now; how he found Seattleites who took\\xa0the time to live elsewhere differed from Seattleites who\'d never left, and what it has to do with the Seattle inferiority complex; the relationship between Seattle and the alternative comics scene; how he convinced\\xa0his publisher Fantagraphics to come join him in Seattle, and how the town came subsequently to crawl with cartoonists; Buddy Bradley as a young cynic, and Seattle\'s accommodation of the young cynic; what the fictional life of Buddy Bradley and the real life of Margaret Sanger have in common, beginning with their premises of "doing exactly what they want to do"; which of Sanger\'s many accomplishments and battles (which she never fought\\xa0on straight gender lines) he usually uses to explain her life; why Sanger\'s achievements in birth-control legalization became so important\\xa0to all society; our transition out of\\xa0"the age of stuff"; the probable fate of bookstores, and how they might succeed through the social dimension; why conventions have become more important than ever to comics, and why cities have become more important than ever to life; the impossibility of the Spokane swinger; what\\xa0his visit to the depleted city of Detroit\\xa0taught him, especially about the ways the government itself holds back a potential revitalization; where he thinks Seattle goes too far, politically; why he prefers the monorail Seattle might have built to the light rail system it is building; whether governments just can\'t build transit right, or whether specifically American governments just can\'t do it right; what happens when anyone\'s shovel hits an Indian artifact in Seattle; and how to win mayoral office by campaigning against the inevitable.

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