Hate Revisited #4 by Peter Bagge- Mini Review

With Hate Revisited #4, there’s the sense that the more things change, the more they stay the same. Peter Bagge has been revisiting Buddy Bradley, his family, and his friends, catching up with them in 2024 just as Buddy is doing on a trip back to New Jersey. As a longtime reader of Bagge, there’s the sense of familiarity here but there’s also the sense of surprise, discovering that Buddy’s brother Butch is practically (and unknowingly) in a right-wing militia or finding out that his sister has a new boyfriend, someone from Buddy’s past. 

While Bagge is playing with nostalgia in this series, counting on his audience’s relation to this cast, Hate Revisited #4 is not a nostalgic book. Bagge and Buddy aren’t melancholic for “the good old days” Both look back on their past with a sober realization of it’s the past— it’s where and who they were while recognizing growth and change. There are a couple of moments in this issue where Buddy demonstrates how he’s changed over the years. He’s still Buddy, Lisa is still Lisa, and Butch is still Butch but they’re also the culmination of their experiences and we just don’t know what they’ve been up to or done since we last spent some time with them. It’s noticed by his sister and wife in small but meaningful ways. 

Returning to Hate, Bagge captured that feeling of catching up with someone after years of not really staying in touch. There are the memories of time spent together (or in our case, reading their misadventures) and the realization that we all have changed over the years. The memories bring us together but there’s still that distance created by time. And eventually, we part, promise to call or write, and return to our normal lives. Things changed but they also stayed the same.