Getting Over Dykes to Watch Out For

For the past few years, I've been carrying a torch for a few things: Alison Bechdel, Dykes to Watch Out For, and the notion that one day the former would go back to creating the latter. Bechdel started DTWOF in the early '80s, and continued expanding the cast and their increasingly tangled relations right until 2008. In 2006, she also published Fun Home, which was Time's book of the year and enjoyed a run as the acceptable graphic literature of the bookish set. There isn't an award for that, but if there was I think it should be called the Mausie for Spiegelman's enduring legacy to the genre. Anyway, as much as I enjoyed Fun Home, I feel that DTWOF should receive an equal amount of attention and even more critical praise. Though published in serial form - first as comic strips in alt-weeklies, then mostly on Bechdel's blog - it's more of a graphic novel than half the stuff filed as such on bookstore shelves.

I'm talking novel in the sense of those 19th century novels, where a large cast and complex interwoven plots take up a brick's worth of paper. Think Middlemarch, but with the American Midwest instead of the British Midlands, and more on lentils, tempeh and the Iran-Contra affair. Bechdel wrangles a huge number of characters over nearly three decades. They're mostly lesbian, largely queer, but diverse in race and earning potential, each one developed sympathetically. The Essential Dykes to Watch Out For collects most of the strips, so you can see the characters grow and Bechdel's art evolve, all in one convenient volume. A note about the switch: according to The Indelible Alison Bechdel, her linework thickened after she collaborated on a project for the Village Voice with Howard Cruse, whose Stuck Rubber Baby is also worth reading. She found that her drawings disappeared next to his.

Then 2008 hits, and they all stop, before Obama could even be inaugurated. I've been waiting since then for Alison Bechdel to write more, though I know she's working on a sequel to Fun Home. What did the characters think of the Obama presidency? The death of Osama Bin Laden? The extended recession? Somehow, I care more about Mo would think than what real-life columnists do think. But, almost four years later, I've decided it's time to let go. I keep on hoping Bechdel will come back and give readers a big epilogue so we know if Clarice and Toni got back together, if Mo and Sydney ever broke up, if Sparrow ever made Stuart get a real job. But I suppose it's more in keeping with DTWOF for it to end without a finish, just like a visit with friends. Read it!