Bagge more or less cemented his association with the Grunge subculture in 1992 when he devoted two issues of Hate to a story where Buddy Bradley manages his best pal Stinky's grunge band, Leonard and the Love Gods, whose original lineup included three guys named Kurt. Bagge's characters are some of the most fully realized in comics — Buddy, the slacker antihero; Valerie, Buddy's Prozac-normalized ex; Lisa, his masochistic, worm-eating latest flame; Stinky, his selfish, venereal-warted roommate; and George Cecil Hamilton III, the resident 'intellectual,' who sits in his room scribbling depressive arcana into his notebook — they display their emotions so openly, so helplessly, so graphically, and with such precision as they attempt to negotiate the ragged terrain of early adulthood that it would all be rather horrifying if it weren't such a riot. Bagge's cartooning aids the cause, with one of the most idiosyncratic and inspiredly elastic and cartoony drawing styles in comics history.