Hate & Gregory reviews

At the London Deanery's The Art of Psychiatry trainee conference in November, I was invited to give a presentation on my placement in Ghana from earlier in the year. At a workshop on Psychiatry and Graphic Novels, Dr Ian Williams facilitated a conversation with Darryl Cunningham and Philippa Perry about their publications, Psychiatric Tales and Couch Fiction respectively.  I later met and discussed with the conference organiser, Stephen Ginn about the comics I'd read while at medical school. 


That led to a commission / challenge to write these 150 word reviews for the London Division of the Royal College of Psychiatry newsletter. Stephen has since been published them on his own dedicated blog The Art of Psychiatry. In case you hadn't seen them there, then read on... 

Hate No. 24 by Peter Bagge 
With its enduring depiction of Seattle’s ‘grunge’ culture, the 1990s serial comic Hate benefitted by association with its location during its first 15 issues. However, when the suburban, slacker everyman, Buddy, returned to live with his family in New Jersey for the next 15 issues, Hate’s slapstick and tragic dynamics expanded to include three generations struggling to live the American dream and with each other.

Psychiatry features most directly in issue 24 when Buddy insists his emotionally unstable girlfriend, Lisa, sees ‘a shrink’ after her latest ‘irrational’ outburst. More of Hate’s stock-in-trade counter accusations follow; ‘You’re the one that’s crazy, not me!’, before Lisa attends a male Freudian analyst and then a female, cognitive therapist. Both are professional but tied to their ‘agendas’ and ultimately unable to overcome her lack of purpose. As Buddy and Lisa drive home after a final revealing joint session, Lisa impulsively suggests they have sex. An exasperated Buddy succumbs and their ‘love’ continues, though this time the reader is spared one of Hate’s graphic displays of tension obliterating intercourse. GN

Issues 1-15 of Hate are collected in Buddy Does Seattle (2005) and 16-30 in Buddy Does Jersey (2007) both published by Fantagraphics Books.

Gregory I-IV by Marc Hempel 
While comic book characters commonly have ‘funny’ shaped heads, Gregory is unique for depicting a mentally disordered, straightjacketed boy whose vocabulary is limited to grunts and shouting aloud his name repetitively. Still despite the unlikely setting for humour of his isolation cell, that doesn’t stop Gregory’s adventures or those of his visiting friend; Herman Vermin, a vain, grandiose, imaginary (or is he?) rat.

The playful use of perspectives, including through Gregory’s eyes, enables readers to experience his tragic and hilarious humanity. Dramatic compression and expansion of the comic strip panels, the four walls of Gregory’s world, reveals him to be both oppressed and contained by his environment. Similarly, despite his ‘helpless’ state, Gregory has a profound effect on those he encounters in this sympathetic portrayal of the tensions and tedium within a psychiatric institution.

Gregory was published as four books Gregory I – IV by Piranha Press and later reprinted in two volumes by DC comics as A Gregory Treasury Vol. 1 & 2 (2004).