Though presented in domestic sitcom terms (the title is the clue), the Buddy Bradley tale has darker undercurrents. "Just when I though you outgrew your old crazy ways, you go out and pull a stunt like this," Buddy moans as he confronts his wife, and we're meant to get the idea that if Lisa isn't given something else to do, she's likely to spin off into even worse stunts. Basically, the strip is about living with the mentally ill, though Bagge relies on our knowing enough about the characters' pasts to get this point. Many newer readers are just as likely to take the tale on its "mundane middle-class" terms.

Two other strips are much less complicated. "Dildobert Joins the Al-Qaeda" is a parody done in collaboration w./ Angry Youth artist Johnny Ryan. It's a studiously "offensive" piece that re-imagines Scott Adams' core characters as members of a terror cell. But the sum effect of it is ultimately rather mild. (Bet if Ted Rall had composed a panel that featured Dildobert & his animal chums all jerking off to footage of the WTC attack, we'd already be buried in outraged Internet postings, though.) The "Murray Wilson" strips are libelously hilarious if you're a nerdy Beach Boys fan (as am I), though I preferred 'em as animations.

Bagge ends this issue w./ a back cover lamenting the devolution of his youth culture (describing the rote moves of mid-90's "alternative rock," for instance, he notes, "I became immune to it's [sic] relentlessly whiny, cynical lyrics. Its [sic] no wonder 'grunge' was quickly supplanted by Hanson and the Spice Girls!") It reads like something Crumb would produce - if that lovable underground crank were twenty years younger - and it ends on a particularly droll note: the "middle-age" Bagge reading one of his Weirdo pieces and noting about his 90's strips, "When I re-read them today I'm amazed someone didn't put me out my misery!"

But, Peter, we need good comics that'll make misery funny. Long may Hate fester. . .