From Publishers Weekly
That sprawling crew of feisty counter- and not-so-counter-culturalists are back in a 20th-anniversary collection of Bechdel's popular lesbian-themed strip. Devoted readers may be happy to find some things never change: Mo is still a social malcontent, and her colleague, Lois, is as rebellious as ever. (This time, she's tweaking Mo by pretending to consider becoming a man.) The bookstore where they work has its usual financial difficulties, and everyone still hates the president. But not all is as it once was. For one thing, same-sex marriages (well, unions) are now legal in Vermont, and one couple, Clarice and Toni, consider whether to make their relationship official in the state's eyes. Then there's Sparrow: a long-time member of the group house where Lois lives, who has fallen in love with another housemate-a man-and seems to be unexpectedly pregnant. And Ginger, an academic, is facing the purgatory of a non-tenured position at an undistinguished school; buried under papers to grade, she barely even notices when a lovely waitress at a local juice bar makes a move. While first-time readers may lack the back story that's developed over the past two decades with these and several other characters, Bechdel is a master of interwoven plot lines, and she sprinkles helpful summaries through the panels so new readers can tell where they are in the tale. An introduction covering highlights of the past 20 years illustrates how far Bechdel has come; from impressionistic sketches to work that is rich, funny, deep and impossible to put down.
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For 20 years, one of America's best comic strips has appeared fortnightly primarily in--of all places, some might say--gay and lesbian newspapers. It's the work of lean-faced, studious boyish-looking Bechdel, who possesses terrific draftsmanship, nonpareil satirical flair, and an appreciation of personality deep enough to make the frostiest "conservative" with any intelligence recognize the humanity and forgive the "progressive" rigidity of her characters and their milieu. The strip's cast--earnest, politically obsessed Mo, modeled on but more obtuse than her creator; her feminist-professor lover, Sydney; her black-feminist employer at Madwimmin Books, Jezanna; her Latina and black comother friends, Clarice and Toni, and their son, Raffi, now eight (
tempus sure fugit!); her four communalist pals, Sparrow, Stuart, Lois, and Ginger; and others less prominent in this book--is certainly PC in personal characteristics and heartfelt beliefs, but each member of it knows they all swim in a distracting, corrosive, consumer-society sea and can laugh at their own inevitable inconsistencies. Some inconsistencies are less risible than others, of course, such as longtime Madwimmin customers browsing there and buying on the Internet, quietly brewing a crisis for the independent bookstore that simmers here as several others take, develop on, and depart from center stage. For core
Booklist readers, the best of the lot arises when Mo finally opts for a career: librarianship.
Ray OlsonCopyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved
