Y!
Yeah! – When you see the names Peter Bagge and Gilbert Hernandez, two of the biggest names in underground comics, attached to a new venture, you take notice. Yeah! is the tale of three ladies (Krazy, Woo Woo and Honey) who are Shonen Knife-like rockers in New Jersey; the main point of the story is that the girls are struggling in their musical careers on Earth, despite being major celebrities on other planets, and possibly maybe the biggest band in the universe (their manager Old Crusty has a great connection with the scene on Uranus and Jumpiter).
The book goes from episode to episode in languid, goofy Archie-esque fashion, the characters enduring plenty of silly episodes, various humiliations from mean people (the sleazy music mogul, the nasty musical rivals, the former best friend who has become an enemy, heartbroken ex-fans turned adversaries, a conquering alien force, etc), and all sorts of other nuttiness. Love the onstage catfight during a concert at an all-girls Catholic school.
After getting to know our lovely ladies briefly, Bagge and Hernandez turn back the clock and show the nutty way in which the band came together. Awww!!! Later on there’s a cool story-line where Old Crusty gets a groovy alien girlfriend, and when the lead singer of World War 1234, Hobo Capiletto, falls in love with Woo Woo (on a date with her and Krazy, who gets jealous); there’s weird media mogul goings-ons, and later on the fighting Yeah! troops get involved in a space war (!!!???). At the end there’s a very cool sub-plot with Peter Bagge showing us “A Day In The Life Of The Snobs.” Great, great, great!!!
One of the coolest things about this comic is seeing with what great ease the creative duo come up with great names for bands. And it’s not just Yeah! (and the anti-Yeah!, called !Heay), the book also refers to nonexistent bands called The Ramoans, World War 1234, the Snobs, Miss Hellraiser, and others.
Reading the foreword, it’s clear that Yeah! didn’t take off the way the creators had hoped. Fans of Hate, and Love And Rockets (Bagge and Hernandez’s respective comics) just didn’t enjoy the innocent fun, and new audiences didn’t latch on to the stories or the characters (for the life of me I just can’t see why not – how could you not love characters with names like those, man?!?!). It’s a shame really, but I’m sure glad I came across this lovely little comic. Congrats, Bagge, man, good going Hernandez – let’s have some more Yeah!
The Ramoans
Little Miss Hellraiser
Oh, we’re from CANADA!!
- Where do you girls originally hail from?
- We’re from… er… Canada.
- Canada? No wonder they look and act so different than us.