Readers may think I’m crazy, but the other important female character I’m going to write about this week is Buddy’s manic, crazy-as-a-loon, on-again off-again girlfriend Lisa Leavenworth from Peter Bagge’s Hate. Lisa might be a character in need of serious therapy, but I still think she does a wonderful job depicting the struggles of growing up as a modern American woman. She has major confidence and body issues. She latches on to Buddy Bradley (or any male character for that matter) more to define her personal identity than to commit to a loving relationship. Her weight and fashion style fluctuates throughout the series, even given way to a regrettable shaved-head Marilyn Manson Goth phase. Yet, she is more true to life than any female character in the big breasted, male fantasy superhero worlds, and as the series progress you watch her become a more defined woman… though she still has a lot of real life problems.

From the beginning of Hate, Buddy and Lisa’s relationship is rocky. They start dating again in issue 10 in the aptly titled story called “The Nut,” where Lisa follows Buddy home wearing only a potato-sake and begs to move in with him. Buddy had previously dated Lisa’s more desirable roommate Val, but had that relationship fall apart when he pays more attention to managing his best friend Stinky’s band than their romance. The early issues of Hate really do a good job of depicting young lust, and dating in small social circles where everyone knows and awkwardly dates each other.

Buddy and Lisa stick together and eventually move across the country to live with Buddy’s parents in New Jersey. Of course, Lisa doesn’t know anyone in Jersey and spends more time nursing Buddy’s sick father to occupy her time than being an average twenty-something. This new isolation only makes Lisa more crazy and hard to live with, and Bagge depicts this by her sleeping all day and throwing Spaghetti-Os on the wall to Buddy’s dismay. After a few years of outrageous yelling matches, she eventually leaves Buddy without even a note as to why. When he confronts her about this a few issues later she tells him she was saving him from her. Nowadays young people, especially women, have to find themselves before they can commit to others, and Lisa Leavenworth is the perfect comic example of this.

She may not be a super-heroine, but I sure like reading the crazy misadventures of Lisa Leavenworth just as much as I like reading about Buddy.

-Jon

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