The Bradleys [Paperback]

Peter Bagge (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: February 1, 2007

With sharp characterization and dead-on satire, this book collects some of the sharpest, funniest stories about American life ever set to paper. Butch, Buddy, Babs, Mom and Dad redefine "nuclear" family: as in fissionable!

Meet the Bradleys, America's most dysfunctional family: Pops, Mom, Buddy, Babs and Butch Bradley. This volume collects all of Bagge's early, explosively funny pre-Hate tales of the dysfunctional Bradley family from Neat Stuff, including "You're Not the Boss of Me!," "Merry F*cking Christmas!," and "Rock 'n' Roll Refugee." The best-selling humor cartoonist of his generation, Bagge has been hailed as one of comics' great satirists along with James Thurber, Harvey Kurtzman, and Matt Groening. The Bradleys remain his most enduring creation. Created in the 1980s while Bagge was also editing R. Crumb's Weirdo magazine, this family for the ages has its roots firmly planted in All In the Family's Bunker family and MAD magazine, with a healthy punk rock anger occasionally exploding—think of an R-rated Simpsons and you're close. 160 pages of black-and-white comics

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

The Bradleys are like the Simpsons gone bad. A family of misfits, nerds, and losers, they leave a wake of disaster as they tromp through their middle-American lives. Keen wit and master of caricature Peter Bagge takes the expression of suburban angst and rage to new levels of comic cruelty with the volatile Bradley brood. As Mom goes back to work, the kids torture each other, Dad fixates on the television, and Sis pours out her heart to "Dear Diary," you'll find their folly universally, frighteningly funny.

From Publishers Weekly

The art is what readers will notice first about this alternately hilarious and harrowing collection. All members of the Bradley family—Dad, Mother, little brother Butch, young teen Babs and disgruntled high school senior Buddy—have bodies that contort like writhing eels and faces that swell, twist and stretch expressively. These lively pages are balanced by scenes in which the characters fumble their way through "normal" conversations. No one could constantly live at such an extreme emotional pitch, and these white, middle-class New Jerseyans only sometimes awaken from their zomboid routines to recognize their anger at their family and all the other phonies around them. That realization is typical of the perceptiveness that's kept these stories from Neat Stuff alive for this 15th-anniversary edition. Bagge's strange art is stranger than that of R. Crumb, but it feels more realistic. He's not especially kind, yet still fair to the world's irritating people. Bagge could have used Buddy to jeer at the conformist idiots who try to bring him down, and he could've easily sneered at what a pathetically inconsistent twerp Buddy can be. However, Bagge is too sharp an observer to overlook both how real the characters' pain is and also how funny they are as they frantically struggle to deal with problems. Eventually, Buddy breaks loose from this set of frustrations, though, natch, more problems are sure to come.
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Product Details

• Paperback: 160 pages
• Publisher: Fantagraphics Books (February 1, 2007)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1560975768
• ISBN-13: 978-1560975762
• Product Dimensions: 10 x 7.5 x 0.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 14.1 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,370,728 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Funny!, April 18, 2008

By 

Michael 'De Smurführer' Thomsen (Denmark) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Bradleys (Paperback)

This book is one of four books that collect Peter Bagge's early comics from the late 1980s comic book magazine "Neat Stuff". The Four books are: 1) "The Bradleys", 2) "Studs Kirby", 3) "Junior and Other Losers" and 4) "Stupid Comics. They're all recommended. The stories in this book about Buddy Bradley's early life are not reprinted in the the two collections "Buddy Does Seattle" and "Buddy Does Jersey", so you'll need this volume to get all the major Buddy stories.

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Stinging humor..., January 17, 2002

By 

Takis Tz. (InYourHead) - See all my reviews

The Bradleys is the kind of comic book that makes you want more and more once you're through. Splendid characters (Bradley himself kix!) terrific dialogues, reads more like an illustrated hilarious sitcom than a comic. And it gets better: the drawing is superb (if that matters to you, but it matters to me) and the plot is never dissapointing. It's kinda like the simpsons with a different edge really. A classic!!!

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Fine Comic from Bagge, April 20, 2008

By 

Rextrent (Wichita, Kansas USA) - See all my reviews

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: The Bradleys (Paperback)

Fine satire on a middle class family in 1980's America. This is not crass underground stuff. It is neat stuff.
It was a different world when cd's were beginning to infringe upon vinyl, home computers and mobile phones(which were HUGE) were VERY expensive and thusly rare; and dvd's were nonexistent.
Excellent P.Bagge laughs in this comic material.