You probably missed signing up for the Pacific Northwest
College of Art’s Graphic Novel Intensive Program (GNI), a nine-day
workshop series about writing and publishing comics and graphic novels,
but it’s not too late to explore some of the comics-y action happening
in conjunction with the program before it wraps up on June 29.
Powell’s, Floating World, and the Someday Lounge are all hosting
graphic-novel related events, the most exciting of which is a Powell’s
reading from underground comics legend Peter Bagge. Bagge is best known
for his series Hate, an influential comic that tracked the life
of the hapless Buddy Bradley as he negotiated the Seattle grunge scene.
On Friday, Bagge will be reading and signing from his most recent
release, Apocalypse Nerd.
The six-issue Apocalypse Nerd series was recently released as
a trade paperback by Dark Horse Comics. Its title fairly well sums up
its subject matter: A nerd (of the old school, socially inept,
genuinely unfashionable variety) is forced out of his element and into
survivalist mode after a nuclear bomb is dropped on Seattle.
Perry is a software engineer at an “enormous corporate
behemoth”—Microsoft, presumably—camping in the Cascades
with his pot-dealer friend Gordo when the bomb is dropped. Forced to
live in the wilderness and survive by any means necessary, things get
ugly, fast. As food runs short, ethical trappings and social
taboos—like the ones against killing babies and raping women, for
example—quickly fall by the wayside.
While the book can be quite funny, it’s for the most part an
uncomfortable read: Bagge doesn’t shy from imagining a worst-case
scenario, in which bands of roving survivors form alliances based on
race and gender, and resources are so scant that murders are committed
over a bottle of 7-Up. If you aren’t terrified of nerds already,
this book will probably do it.
Further GNI events include a free, open-to-the public panel on
Saturday at the Someday Lounge called “Comics and the Internet,” which
includes Bagge as well as Daniel Duford, Neal Skorpen, Dylan Meconis,
and Jenn Manley Lee. After the panel, Bagge will head to Floating World
Comics, which currently houses an exhibit of his work, for another
signing.