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bloodygranuaileHaving read all of her family memoirs, I decided it was probably time to check out the comic strip that made up most of Alison Bechdel’s career. The Essential Dykes to Watch Out For is a big 400-page compilation of 21 years of comic strips, starting in 1987, which, quite coincidentally, is also the year I was born. Reliving all the news headlines of my lifetime from birth to when I became old enough to drink, through the point of view of a bunch of cartoon Midwestern lesbians, was quite something, or possibly multiple somethings. I am only sorry that the cartoon seems to have ended shortly before Borders Books and Music went bankrupt in 2011, since I think that would have led to some very funny strips.
But in addition to the… well, sometimes it was nostalgia, about things that were actually timely to the publication of the strips collected here–my own personal beef with Borders, hanging out at Pandora Book Peddlers in high school (Pandora was a bit less radical than the Madwimmin Books of DTWOF; it did have to survive on Waverly Place in Madison, NJ, after all) (also, the founder just died a month ago? That’s what I get for nostalgia googling). Anyway. In addition to the trips down memory lane, there was also a lot more relatable content than I’d expected regarding the everyday nonsense of queer adulthood: various flavors of left-wing crankery are indulgently lampooned; the characters hit a variety of traditional adult milestones–or don’t–in a disorderly mishmash of timeframes and are always surprised; interpersonal conflict is reframed in grandiose political terms in order to avoid resolving it; grand political problems are turned into hippie-ass lifestyle choices. Some of the exact trends in left-wing and pseudo-left-wing goofiness are a bit dated; others are not as dated as I wish they were. The more-or-less main character, Mo, is an absolutely insufferable lifestyle cop, whomst nonetheless is gravely insulted if you call her a liberal (the strip where Harriet calls her a liberal when they’re having an argument amused me far, far more than it ought to). Mo is eventually surpassed in her lifestylism by utilikilt-wearing hippie dad Stuart, who gets increasingly intense about urban homesteading even as Mo’s resolve to consume ethically gets worn down over time by her big-spending girlfriend Sydney and also just life in general.
I am a particular fan of all the little jokes that represent our world outside the characters–riffs on popular brand names, cartoonified news broadcasts, absurd fake products. Despite Stuart and Sparrow’s attempts to raise their child solely on eco-friendly vegan crunchy granola food, little J.R. obsessed with a cereal called “Frosted Fruit Bats.” A Jane Austen merch display at Bounders (or is it Bunns & Noodle?) features a Pride and Prejudice tea cozy, which I think would legitimately be a popular item; a CD of “tunes to do needlework to,” which I would legitimately buy; and “Emma: The Novelization,” which had me wheezing for a good five minutes. The various fake “Dykes to Watch Out For” compilations in the introduction, in which our cartoonist freaks out that she’s been writing this strip for 20 years and forgot to get a job, are also gold, ranging from “Paleozoic DTWOF” to “DTWOF: Curse of the Black Pearl.”
The sense of aging really came through to me in the later comics, which might also be partly on me as a reader–I have been feeling very mid-thirties lately as I have quite recently hit a whole bunch of milestones that once seemed impossibly far off: paying off my student loans, paying off my car, house-hunting. I do like that the characters get older–including the kids, who are not stuck forever in cherubic infancy a la Family Circus, but grow up all the way into bratty teenagers before the book ends.
Some of the plotlines seem a bit repetitive when condensed into one volume–dutifully freaking out about every election; serieses of affairs, relationships, breakups, and arguments about gay marriage; characters getting landed in and out of therapy. All the same, it’s a very entertaining portrayal of a bunch of deeply neurotic weirdos who are, by virtue of being deeply neurotic weirdos, just like everyone else after all.
But in addition to the… well, sometimes it was nostalgia, about things that were actually timely to the publication of the strips collected here–my own personal beef with Borders, hanging out at Pandora Book Peddlers in high school (Pandora was a bit less radical than the Madwimmin Books of DTWOF; it did have to survive on Waverly Place in Madison, NJ, after all) (also, the founder just died a month ago? That’s what I get for nostalgia googling). Anyway. In addition to the trips down memory lane, there was also a lot more relatable content than I’d expected regarding the everyday nonsense of queer adulthood: various flavors of left-wing crankery are indulgently lampooned; the characters hit a variety of traditional adult milestones–or don’t–in a disorderly mishmash of timeframes and are always surprised; interpersonal conflict is reframed in grandiose political terms in order to avoid resolving it; grand political problems are turned into hippie-ass lifestyle choices. Some of the exact trends in left-wing and pseudo-left-wing goofiness are a bit dated; others are not as dated as I wish they were. The more-or-less main character, Mo, is an absolutely insufferable lifestyle cop, whomst nonetheless is gravely insulted if you call her a liberal (the strip where Harriet calls her a liberal when they’re having an argument amused me far, far more than it ought to). Mo is eventually surpassed in her lifestylism by utilikilt-wearing hippie dad Stuart, who gets increasingly intense about urban homesteading even as Mo’s resolve to consume ethically gets worn down over time by her big-spending girlfriend Sydney and also just life in general.
I am a particular fan of all the little jokes that represent our world outside the characters–riffs on popular brand names, cartoonified news broadcasts, absurd fake products. Despite Stuart and Sparrow’s attempts to raise their child solely on eco-friendly vegan crunchy granola food, little J.R. obsessed with a cereal called “Frosted Fruit Bats.” A Jane Austen merch display at Bounders (or is it Bunns & Noodle?) features a Pride and Prejudice tea cozy, which I think would legitimately be a popular item; a CD of “tunes to do needlework to,” which I would legitimately buy; and “Emma: The Novelization,” which had me wheezing for a good five minutes. The various fake “Dykes to Watch Out For” compilations in the introduction, in which our cartoonist freaks out that she’s been writing this strip for 20 years and forgot to get a job, are also gold, ranging from “Paleozoic DTWOF” to “DTWOF: Curse of the Black Pearl.”
The sense of aging really came through to me in the later comics, which might also be partly on me as a reader–I have been feeling very mid-thirties lately as I have quite recently hit a whole bunch of milestones that once seemed impossibly far off: paying off my student loans, paying off my car, house-hunting. I do like that the characters get older–including the kids, who are not stuck forever in cherubic infancy a la Family Circus, but grow up all the way into bratty teenagers before the book ends.
Some of the plotlines seem a bit repetitive when condensed into one volume–dutifully freaking out about every election; serieses of affairs, relationships, breakups, and arguments about gay marriage; characters getting landed in and out of therapy. All the same, it’s a very entertaining portrayal of a bunch of deeply neurotic weirdos who are, by virtue of being deeply neurotic weirdos, just like everyone else after all.