Most Helpful Customer Reviews
7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
If the fallout doesn't kill you, Perry will, April 22, 2008
This review is from: Apocalypse Nerd (Paperback)
People who read Apocalypse Nerd are likely familiar with Peter Bagge's older work, and may find this book is not what they were expecting. Apocalypse Nerd is probably the darkest and most violent comic Peter Bagge has ever written. The two main characters will prove instantly recognizable to Bagge fans, being the interchangeable males who appear in nearly all of his comics in some guise or another. But the classic Bagge wiseass humor fades quickly, and we are left with...death. Lots of it. After the North Korean nuke of Seattle which presumably leaves a couple million people dead, the survivors head for the surrounding Cascade mountains, and everything devolves into some kind of survivalist nightmare: people kill and steal with no visible remorse or second thoughts. This applies in particular to the "hero", Perry (who looks an awful lot like Bagge himself), who, after an intial phase as a clueless girly-man, essentially goes on a killing spree in the name of survival. Perry and his buddy Gordo chuck the body of man they've just killed over a cliff. An entire family, including an infant, is killed. A truck carrying relief supplies is attacked, and its drivers shot. Bagge's signature cartoony art softens the blow of this chaotic world; if this had been drawn by Steve Dillon, this comic would be pretty disturbing. Finally, it is my understanding that the single-issue series had supplemental material, comics about America's founding fathers, which is not included in this trade.
Help other customers find the most helpful reviews
Was this review helpful to you? Yes
No
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Really disturbing stuff, December 20, 2010
This review is from: Apocalypse Nerd (Paperback)
Perry and Gordo are the kind of losers that Peter Bagge loves to write about and while this is an improvement over Other Lives HC which saw Bagge coasting on his old characters, it does feel like he's cruising. Only in this case he's free from all restraints since Seattle gets nuked in the first chapter. In the absence of a city or a civilization, Bagge is free to work with losers in a world without rules. And in a world without rules, they kill a lot of people. Gordo disappears somewhere in the middle and Perry goes off with a woman that he meets at a lesbian collective who is equally as homicidal. At one point she kills someone he knows and he asks her why she did that and she replies that the dead guy just raped and killed everyone. The fact that Perry doesn't react much more than a shrug shows you how morbid a turn this story has taken. By the end there is some indication that civilization has come back. In which case, Perry is now merely a psychopath and murderer so he doesn't really know how to function. Actually the story ends before the civilization can really get to Pery. Radiation and the like. And it should be noted that the founding father stories that accompanied these chapters in their original form aren't in this collection. That's fine but they were the best parts of the original series.
Help other customers find the most helpful reviews
Was this review helpful to you? Yes
No
4 of 6 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
brilliant, disturbing, hilarious fun, May 29, 2008
This review is from: Apocalypse Nerd (Paperback)
Peter Bagge has to be one of the sharpest and most vivid writers working in any medium. It's a crime that this guy isn't more well known. Case and point: I read "Apocalypse Nerd" after finishing the current best-selling novel "Water For Elephants".... and after reading 300+ pages of said novel, I thought to myself: this novel spins sort of a nice yarn or whatever, but after reading 300+ pages of it I have NO IDEA who these characters are... none whatsoever. So then, I pop open this new "Apocalypse Nerd" collection and after reading about 2 pages of it, I know EXACTLY who these guys are, and they feel real, palpable. Such are the powers of Peter Bagge in capturing modern life in all of its splendor... the guy just has an innate understanding of the nuanced illogicality of the human condition, and a gift for bringing it to life. If you are already a fan of Bagge's, you should love "Apocalypse Nerd"... it's some of his funniest and most frenetic stuff in years. If you are NEW to Peter Bagge, thank your lucky stars that you came across this, because it's going to bust you a brand new you-know-what. Once you're finished, you will definitely want to pick up one of the "Hate" collections, which still ring hilariously true to this day and are absolute strokes of genius. My only complaint with Bagge is that I wish he was more prolific, because if he was cranking out these types of comics every other week I'd be gobbling them up. For now, I guess Ill have to content myself with whatever I can get from the guy.... but after years of bread crumbs, this "Apocalypse Nerd" collection certainly feels like a 5-course meal of funny.
Help other customers find the most helpful reviews
Was this review helpful to you? Yes
No
|