Dykes and Sundry Other Carbon-Based Life-Forms To Watch Out Forby Laurie J. AndersonReviews may contain information that could be considered 'spoilers'. Readers should proceed at their own risk. Publisher
Credits Grade: 8 For 20 years now, Alison Bechdel's comic strip Dykes To Watch Out For has been blithely ignoring mainstream comic strip conventions by detailing the lives, loves and outspoken opinions of a diverse group of lesbians, give or take a few gays, bisexuals, transgenders and the occasional heterosexual. This collection, her latest, covers pre- and post- terrorist America. The characters are aging, some getting a little wiser in the area of relationships; many still stumbling. Ginger grieves over the loss of her old dog Digger and retreats from all relationships; Toni & Clarice experience couple ennui; Sparrow learns she is pregnant; Mo acquires an email admirer and is tempted to leave her current consumerist girlfriend; and Madwimmen books, that bastion of revolutionary feminism, is going out of business. Where is the energy of their earlier years? Is the mainstreaming of the lesbian movement a bad thing?Unlike many other comic strips, Bechdel's demimonde is racially-, age- and disability-aware, and she takes time to develop each character beyond mere foils for issues or gags. One gets the feeling that these two-dimensional lines on paper have lives off-stage, outside the panels, and that you could pass them on the street, such as single mother Jasmine, whose young son Jonas favors Power Puff Girls over G.I. Joe, or Lois, who performs male roles in agit-prop theater, or Jezanna the bookstore owner who has an aging father to watch. The line art is careful and controlled, slightly reminiscent of the newspaper strip Curtis by Ray Billingsley or the long-running Archie series, but with greater attention to details (the cartoonist cites Hergé and R. Crumb as stylistic influences). She enlivens fairly static dialog scenes with incidental background action and sight gags — cynical book titles or newspaper headlines that are amusing to read, children playing, shared meals of odd (but politically correct) food, or other people just doing things unrelated to the primary dialog. The strip's strength lies in those amusing incidentals, the careful art style, and the interplay of satire and sympathy as a wide-ranging, literate cast tries to make sense of both their own lives and the events of the wider world. It is weakest when the soap box speeches overwhelm natural dialog, or the outrage gets too strident, though Bechdel mitigates this with a willingness to poke fun at her own characters. Mo, possibly the most outspoken of all the cast, can get pretty wearing, but her friends don't hesitate to remind her of this. In the introduction, Bechdel puzzles over the current state of lesbian culture and her comic strip's place in the world. When once unthinkable acts such as gay marriage and ordainment become reality, when sexual lifestyles formerly considered extreme are mainstreamed and when niche markets are absorbed by corporate behemoths, where is the need for a comic strip like Dykes To Watch Out For? " ... the whole point of a liberation movement, after all, is to render itself obsolete," she muses. Luckily, Dykes To Watch Out For has never strictly confined itself to lesbian issues — and although this reader wishes Bechdel would give equal time to heterosexuals, one needn't be gay or even liberal to enjoy her portrayal of people and subjects everyone is familiar with — struggling relationships, child-rearing, job insecurity, and political absurdity. Enough for another 20 years of comic strips. Written: January 3, 2004
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