Sweatshop #1 Review

Reviewer: Jesse Baker
Story Title: The ‘Hammies’ / The New Recruit

Written by: Peter Bagge
Pencilled by: Peter Bagge (The ‘Hammies’) / Stephen DeStefano (The New Recruit)
Inked by: NA
Colored by: Joanne Bagge
Lettered by: NA
Editor: Joey Cavalieri
Publisher: DC Comics

Indy comic darling Peter Bagge (famous for his anthology series Hate) is back with a new title at DC called “Sweatshop” that revolves around the seedy underbelly of working on a nationally syndicated comic strip. The series revolves around Mel Bowling, whose comic strip “Freddy Ferret” is drawn and written by a group of horribly abused and underpaid interns, who find themselves simply servicing Mel’s out of date and extremely right-wing ideas of what a comic strip should be. The shrine to Rush Limbaugh in the office coupled with Mel’s habit of going off into a rant at a drop of a hat add towards the hellish environment that is working for Mel, who prospers off of the backs of these poor soles who are forced to work for him to eek a living at their craft.

Here is a review of the two stories featured in this issue:

The ‘Hammies’

When “Freddy Ferret” is nominated for a “Hammy”, a prestigious annual award given to the best comic strip of the year, Mel Bowling finds himself on top of the world. But this feeling of elation doesn’t last long when he learns that his arch-nemesis, Wayne Goodman, is up for the same award. Making things even worse is the fact that Goodman has recently gained positive mainstream attention with the outing of one of his characters as being gay. But to Mel’s surprise, his employees dig up dirt to discredit Wayne: mainly the fact that Wayne Goodman is a homophobe and that he had to be convinced to go along with the gay storyline in order to try and drum up positive press in order to win the Hammy Award. After leaking this information to the public Wayne loses the Hammy Award, but so does Mel, as the Hammy goes to Patrick McDonnell (creator behind the comic strip “Mutts”). The story ends with Wayne and Mel putting aside their hate for each other to beat McDonnell to a bloody pulp as McDonnell reacts like a fanboy who is thrilled at being beaten to an inch of his life by two of his idols …

The New Recruit

Meet Elliot, the newest employee of Mel Bowling and who is loosely based upon Aaron McGruder (creator of the controversial comic strip “The Boondocks”). Elliot gets a crash course on working for Mel Bowling, which includes writing totally non-offensive jokes about airline food and holding one’s tongue when Mel goes off on one of his right-wing rants about liberals. Elliot also has to deal with one of his new co-workers, who deems Elliot a threat to his position as the boss’s favorite and as the token minority on the team.

Peter Bagge gets off to a decent start, but one has to wonder if he can keep up the satire and commentary about the comic strip genre, or if the series will de-evolve into a book about the workers and their lives. Peter Bagge’s art definitely is non-mainstream, so fans of the more realistic work of most artists will be definitely taken aback when they see Peter’s art for the first time.