Comic Rec: Dykes to watch out for
"Dykes to watch out for" by Alison Bechdel not only passes the Bechdel test, it invented it.
You can read some of it online but I got "The Essential Dykes to Watch out for" out the library and it was great reading all 27 years of it in one continuous remarkably consistent story.
It's the story of a group of friends in the lesbian community of an American town, and is a mixture of soap opera, humour, and political commentary. The characters grow and change and by the end cover a range of ages, genders, sexualities, identities, ethnicities, religions, political affiliations and nationalities (plus one of them is disabled. Not sure what the term for that would be :)) This sometimes feels a little tokenistic but overall what I love about the comic is that everyone is written with affection, even the *gasp* straight, male and republican characters.
The way the characters rant about the politics of the day as a way to avoid dealing with their more mundane problems reminds me of my family, though it's depressing seeing rants about George Bush and the Iraq war and the possibility of gay marriage from the early 90s and knowing how long things took to get even slightly better.
It's also a little geeky here and there. One of the later characters is a teenager who is OBSESSED with Harry Potter, from an blog official blog post called "Some Fanfic" I came across this adorable piece of fanart of her..and the fanartist turns out to have done Monstrous Regiment femslash and fancomics, yay!
Bechdel has also written a really good autobiographical graphic novel "Fun Home".
You can read some of it online but I got "The Essential Dykes to Watch out for" out the library and it was great reading all 27 years of it in one continuous remarkably consistent story.
It's the story of a group of friends in the lesbian community of an American town, and is a mixture of soap opera, humour, and political commentary. The characters grow and change and by the end cover a range of ages, genders, sexualities, identities, ethnicities, religions, political affiliations and nationalities (plus one of them is disabled. Not sure what the term for that would be :)) This sometimes feels a little tokenistic but overall what I love about the comic is that everyone is written with affection, even the *gasp* straight, male and republican characters.
The way the characters rant about the politics of the day as a way to avoid dealing with their more mundane problems reminds me of my family, though it's depressing seeing rants about George Bush and the Iraq war and the possibility of gay marriage from the early 90s and knowing how long things took to get even slightly better.
It's also a little geeky here and there. One of the later characters is a teenager who is OBSESSED with Harry Potter, from an blog official blog post called "Some Fanfic" I came across this adorable piece of fanart of her..and the fanartist turns out to have done Monstrous Regiment femslash and fancomics, yay!
Bechdel has also written a really good autobiographical graphic novel "Fun Home".