Yeah! By Peter Bagge and Gilbert Hernandez (Fantagraphics, 2011)
Before there were the Yeah Yeah Yeahs, there was Yeah! “The most popular band in the history of the universe”—except, unfortunately, on their own planet Earth—the pop trio of Krazy, Honey and Woo-Woo took the Josie & the Pussycats scenario of underrated, up-against-it girl band and took it to several extremes—more outer space than the TV cartoon Josie & the Pussycats in Outer Space, more distinct and clashing personalities than She’s Josie (the quaint teen comic where the Pussycats first formed), more gritty than Midvale (neighboring town to Riverdale).
Hard not to overdo the Josie comparisons, yet Yeah! is also the product of two great indie-comic minds, Peter Bagge of Hate and Gilbert Hernandez of Love and Rockets. Both men gave cartoon gravitas to confused modern teens and helped build a thriving college-age readership for their black-humored real-life-scaled adventures. This was their attempt to create and maintain a regular mainstream title for a younger audience, for a major publisher, DC. They made their deadlines, raised a few eyebrows, and lasted nine issues.
Yeah! is well worthy of reprinting by Fantagraphics, the usual publisher of Bagge and Hernandez’s best-known indie grungeworks. I collected Yeah! as it came out originally, and miss the splashy colors, but I like the strong blacks and whites of this book too. It’s a heftier volume than nine issues would seem to demand, reminding you that even ten years ago comics were still pretty fully packed

The band’s interplanetary adventures give them license for imaginative, outrageous concert set-ups. With their solo work, usually it’s Hernandez who can’t keep his feet on the ground and sends his Love & Rocket cast into

Here, Hernandez is the artist and not the writer, yet it’s Bagge—whose down-to-earth delineations of the Seattle and New Jersey youth scenes of the ‘90s nailed a generation of slackers and posers—who wastes no time freaking out in the cosmos. It’s a good writing/drawing combo.

Hernandez reads Bagge right. Pop music is a fantasy. Even the downside of the business is a fantasy. Having a band tour in a seedy rocketship, forced to don ugly costumes whenever they play Jupiter so the natives won’t revolt, having to compete with a derivative band called Haey! which is stealing their interplanetary thunder… Yeah, the tone is just right.

I dig Yeah! just as I did when it first came out. At the time he was launching this kid-friendly project, Bagge was also writing essays in defense of the current stream of bubblegum bands such as Spice Girls and Britney Spears. A lot of my admiration was thus mixed up in Bagge’s (and Hernandez’s) willingness to challenge the indie status quo.

A stronger recommendation for Yeah! would come from my daughters, who were aged eight and six when I brought the Fantagraphics Yeah! compendium home from the comics store a few months ago. They each read it cover-to-cover in one sitting, and it’s been brought on several long car trips. It’s right in the mix with their (and my) beloved Archie comics. They have no sense of irony or subtext when devouring Yeah! They just like knowing how the band will escape the Mongrel Mogul’s Halloween party.