Throbbing Dykes to Watch Out For

Fave line, for no good reason: "What are we having?" "Szechuan vegetable PULP!"

Yeah, that hardly ever happens...

by the way Elisabeth some of the series are at the Auckland Public library in the comics/graphic novels section.

A friend got me The Essential Dykes to Watch Out For for my birthday. It's surprisingly good! I remember reading part of one of the shorter compendiums from 2000 (Bush elected aw shit) a few years ago and thinking 'oh geez, I could never make it as a lesbian...I only watch the news 2 or 3 hours a day,not 16.' After reading the collection my friend got me, which starts out...I think when I was born!...and goes through 2k8, I really, really appreciated it. The op/ed stuff is secondary to the awesome, detailed characters and their AFFAIRS and WOES and LOLs.

Will share more thoughts if anyone is interested.

Getting the history of U.S. lesbian culture within your lifespan in comic book form is a damn fine gift; anyone else who finds a way to do that, should.

They make a 'one-legged black lesbian in a wheelchair' joke!

it's bizarrely frustrating that the new book is "essential" and ends up being most of the strip, rather than greatest hits or complete - would love to be able to stop hoping to fill holes in my paperbacks and get one handy compilation.

Yeah it looks like, what, 15% of them are gone? I have no idea why.

DTWOF is one of my favourite comics ever! I love how it's both a history of the "dyke scene" and American politics in general, and also a funny newspaper strip, so there's a nice balance of serious political content, soap opera and sitcom. I haven't read the Essential Edition but the smaller collections; those they're worth checking out, because each of them has a longer, multi-page story (as opposed to a two-page strip) which I think is missing from Essential book.

We've got the hardcover of this (that Char got signed by Allison when she came to the local Barnes N Noble). I've only browsed it, but it's really really great.

i hope yall have read 'fun home.'

Fun Home is good, but I'd say DTWOF is really Bechdel's magnum opus, as far as I know there's really no other comic like it, if you consider the scale and depth of the whole project. It's great that Bechdel finally got her due praise because of Fun Home, and I guess the format makes it easier than DTWOF to digest for the occasional comic reader (one graphic novel vs. a 25-year series collected in several paperbacks), but I do hope the success of Fun Home makes more people discover DTWOF too.

Yeah it looks like, what, 15% of them are gone? I have no idea why.

I haven't read the Essential collection, but I assume they've left out the strips where the main story/stories don't move along? Like the occasional postmodern gag strip, where the protagonists know that they're characters in a comic series, or where Bechdel herself steps in to comment the strip.

Fun Home's a great story, but the horrible computer lettering gives me a headache. I like Dykes better as comics anyway, but even if not, it would always beat FH on the strength of the hand-lettering.

there's really no other comic like it, if you consider the scale and depth of the whole project.

WFT tho? Frank King?

Somehow I had totally missed it until today, but Bechdel actually published a new DtWOG strip in November! I guess it's not surprising that Trump getting elected would be the thing to make her break an 8 year hiatus.

I doubt this will mean she'll start drawing it again, but wouldn't it be awesome if that happened?

At first I didn't even realize who the guy fist-bumping with Jiao is, but obviously it's Raffi, all grown up! Awwwwww! <3