This July, Fantagraphics Books once more unleashes the works of best-selling Hate comics creator Peter Bagge in Everybody Is Stupid Except For Me (And Other Astute Observations), a decade’s worth of cartoon reporting for Reason magazine. Armed with a Libertarian-leaning viewpoint and his signature bemused approach to his exploration of human foibles, Bagge skewers the early-twenty-first century American zeitgeist like the dazed and confused beast that it is, all the while somehow wringing wry humor from the situations observed.

Everybody Is Stupid Except For Me takes readers along on a bizarre and sobering guided tour of the millennial USA, focusing on such diverse topics as the anti-war movement’s wildly unfocused contingent of protestors at a 2002 rally in Seattle (and his own laziness in regard to contributing to the movement); an informed look at gun ownership rights, the religiously and politically-motivated war against contraception and abortion, oddball sexuality, the true face of live music, Christian rock and many other facets that define the post-9/11 nation, for better or worse.

PWCW: How did an “alternative comics” icon find yourself contributing to Reason magazine?

Peter Bagge: I was doing work for a now defunct website Suck.com, and one of their other contributors, Nick Gillespie, was the new managing editor of Reason Magazine, so when Suck ended he invited me to do work for Reason. I was already a reader and admirer of Reason, so I was happy and honored to take him up on his offer.

PWCW: After being handed license to observe and comment upon the assorted madness on the loose in this country, do you find America to be a hopeless morass of coast-to-coast insanity? Are you disillusioned by the public's apathy when faced with much of it?

PB: I wouldn't say we're hopeless (yet). But I'm certainly disgusted by the direction the country's going in. Who isn't?! And the public certainly isn't apathetic, but far too many of us are way too willing to believe that the Federal Government should solve all of our problems, while ignoring the fact that they caused most of our problems.

PWCW: Has the post-9/11 America actually become even more insane, or was 9/11 just an excuse to allow the collective madness to run rampant with fewer questions asked?

PB: Both! Our collective response to 9-11 has been appalling, in that most Americans were (and are) totally willing to throw the Constitution right in the trash heap without any hesitation. Most of us have no idea what's even IN the Constitution, let alone why. My daughter recently graduated from public school, and her teachers didn't discuss the Bill of Rights once in those 13 years. They never taught her a single civics lesson! The paranoid part of me can't help but think that was intentional.

PWCW: In the wake of your observations and Libertarian-leaning opinions, have you received any backlash from readers who find your observations to be "anti-American?

PB: Not so much "anti-American, but I've received a lot of harsh feedback from people who are deeply offended by my libertarian-leaning worldview, which to them is bad enough.

PWCW: What has doing a series that's all social commentary taught Peter Bagge?

PB: That doing social commentary is difficult! At least when it comes to getting your point across as clearly as possible, while still being entertaining. I also tried to reach out to fence-straddlers and avoid preaching to the choir as much as possible. I could have taken the Doonesbury route and pandered to my fellow libertarians by pretending I (and they) had all the answers, but that would have been both too easy and dishonest. If I felt ambivalent about something I would say so, rather than pretend otherwise.

PWCW: Is there more social commentary from you on the horizon?

PB: I would love to go back and time, and do historical and/or biographical pieces on various people who had a strong libertarian worldview, even if they never identified themselves as such. But I'd also gladly do more of what I did in this book!