Dykes To Watch Out For
Alison Bechdel has created a large following for her bi-weekly comic strip "Dykes To Watch Out For". It runs in many Gay/Lesbian newspapers across the country. The strip is half-soap-opera, half-true-life-adventure, and is wonderfully drawn to boot. (One Famous Cartoonist has admired Bechdel's ability to draw hands, knuckles in particular.) They have been anthologized in a collection of eight books, each one adding an extra "value added" section.

The adventures theoretically revolve around Mo (no relation to my own sweetie darlin') of the striped shirt, although as the series has progressed it has begun to juggle several intertwining plots at once: Clarice and Toni's raising of their son Rafael, Ginger's doctoral pursuit, Lois's struggles with libido and Prozac. The pacing of the stories is one of my favorite parts, with each strip able to cover whatever span of time it needs to to make a good story.

One thing interesting about these tales is, despite the many intimate relationships depicted, there is much more discussion about politics and culture than about love and romance. It is clear, however, that these women find a lot of strength in their friendships and romances. In some ways, that's how I feel about romance as well; the truest affection can be found in how you act, not what you say. It gets on Mo's (real life, not the character) nerves sometimes, so I try to remember to speak up sometimes.

I guess it might be odd for a straight guy to be doing a review of these cartoons. Well, so be it, they're great stories, and I've always been interested in Gay/Lesbian culture. (The old cliché of "but some of my best friends are…" rings even more true than usual.) I've been starting from the end of the series, and working may way back to the beginning. (Her first book doesn't have the Mo storyline.) Every book in the series is available from Amazon.Com, and if you order one using the following links, the Blender gets a tiny kickback:
Dykes To Watch Out For
More Dykes To Watch Out For
New, Improved! Dykes To Watch Out For
Dykes To Watch Out For: The Sequel
Spawn of Dykes To Watch Out For
Unnatural Dykes To Watch Out For
Hot Throbbing Dykes To Watch Out For
Split-Level Dykes To Watch Out For


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