Bagge made his reputation with the wicked social satire of Hate
, but since 2001 he’s also produced these short comics for the libertarian magazine Reason
—mostly reported pieces about politics and culture, but also some single-page opinion strips. The formula is that Bagge attends some sort of event (the opening of a tribal casino, an “exit strategy for the war on drugs” conference, a lecture by the author of a book about the founding fathers), observes everyone and mocks them mercilessly. His visual style—in which people are all huge-mouthed, squinty-eyed, rubber-limbed caricatures—is turned up all the way to “jeer”; it’s also pretty funny on its own. Bagge aims his (constitutionally protected) satirical blunderbuss at both the left and the right, and occasionally points it at fellow libertarians and even himself. He follows up a piece in which he eviscerates self-righteous antiwar protesters with one in which he notes his own failure to do much to oppose the Iraq war. And when he meets with Ron Paul, he observes both that Paul was his favorite candidate in the 2008 primaries and that “the betrayed part of me just wanted to punch him in his kindly old racist-pandering face.” (June)
