The Essential Dykes to Watch Out For [Hardcover]

Alison Bechdel (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: November 12, 2008

From the author of Fun Home -- the lives, loves, and politics of cult fav characters Mo, Lois, Sydney, Sparrow, Ginger, Stuart, Clarice, and others

For twenty-five years Bechdel’s path-breaking Dykes to Watch Out For strip has been collected in award-winning volumes (with a quarter of a million copies in print), syndicated in fifty alternative newspapers, and translated into many languages. Now, at last, The Essential Dykes to Watch Out For gathers a “rich, funny, deep and impossible to put down” (Publishers Weekly) selection from all eleven Dykes volumes. Here too are sixty of the newest strips, never before published in book form.

Settle in to this wittily illustrated soap opera (Bechdel calls it “half op-ed column and half endless serialized Victorian novel”) of the lives, loves, and politics of a cast of characters, most of them lesbian, living in a midsize American city that may or may not be Minneapolis.
Her brilliantly imagined countercultural band of friends -- academics, social workers, bookstore clerks -- fall in and out of love, negotiate friendships, raise children, switch careers, and cope with aging parents.

Bechdel fuses high and low culture -- from foreign policy to domestic routine, hot sex to postmodern theory -- in a serial graphic narrative “suitable for humanists of all persuasions.”

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Starred Review. This ongoing comic strip chronicles the lives of a tight-knit group of lesbian friends over an astounding 21 years of life, work, love, boredom, political activism and countless reversals of fortune. At its heart are six women: the promiscuous Lois, a feminist bookstore clerk with a penchant for gender-bending; her two roommates, the overworked academic Ginger and self-identified bisexual lesbian Sparrow; their domestically partnered friends Clarice and Toni; and Mo, who despite (or perhaps because of) her frequent politically charged outbursts of neurosis is the hub of her circle. These characters, flawed but endearing, are brought to life by Bechdels quirky artistic sensibility. Facial expressions are carefully nuanced, and she seems to take great joy in using small details to differentiate emotions. Late in the collection, when a character receives treatment for cancer, a tiny caret in her cheek is enough to transform her from a fresh-faced mischief-maker into a sallow and frightened chemo patient. What cannot be overemphasized is the sheer scope of the collection, which follows these women from idealistic young adulthood to contentedly disillusioned middle age and, for some, parenthood. All eventually end up a little more haggard than they began, but there isnt one whose Bechdel-illustrated bags under her eyes were not hard fought for and hard won. (Nov.)
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From Booklist

*Starred Review* The greatest lesbian soap opera—527 episodes and, though suspended at the moment, counting—is Bechdel’s miraculously well-sustained chronicling of a circle of friends over the course of 20 years, Dykes to Watch Out For. Like its only possible peer among current comic strips, Lynn Johnston’s For Better or Worse, and its great forebear, Frank King’s GasolineAlley, Dykes plays out in real time. Characters age, change, see their parents die, and have children. Basically, everything revolves around erstwhile radical lesbian Mo, whose worries for the future persist as she and her friends realize their dreams. Life does get better for gay people, though struggles continue, as the determined-to-be-transgender preteen son of a newer cast member and the dissolution of two long-lived lesbian marriages remind them and us. Mo’s kvetching centrality is complemented by the chorus of skewed radio and TV commentary and headlines that strikingly often intones a satirical leitmotiv under the characters’ conversation, which is always pitch-perfect for the highly intelligent, well-educated, earnestly committed, and witty bunch they are. Bechdel’s comics autobiography Fun Home (2006) has brought her much greater general attention than Dykes ever did, but make no mistake—the strip is her masterpiece. --Ray Olson

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 416 pages
• Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt; None edition (November 12, 2008)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0618968806
• ISBN-13: 978-0618968800
• Product Dimensions: 9.5 x 8.2 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2.2 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (13 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #128,241 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

ALISON BECHDEL has been a careful archivist of her own life and kept a journal since she was ten. Since 1983 she has been chronicling the lives of various characters in the fictionalized "Dykes to Watch Out For" strip, "one of the preeminent oeuvres in the comics genre, period" (Ms.). The strip is syndicated in 50 alternative newspapers, translated into multiple languages, and collected into a book series with a quarter of a million copies in print. Utne magazine has listed DTWOF as "one of the greatest hits of the twentieth century."

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

19 of 19 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Brilliant! The latest DTWOF book along with a hefty retrospective, November 11, 2008

By 

Gen of North Coast Gardening (California) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (TOP 500 REVIEWER)   

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: The Essential Dykes to Watch Out For (Hardcover)

Whether you've been anxiously awaiting the next installment after Invasion of the Dykes to Watch Out For, or have lost track of our favorite lesbian heriones and want to get caught up, this is the book for you.

Hardcore fans will be delighted to see that we have an entire new book's worth of fresh, unpublished comics to get us up to date. I looked at how many comics each of the previous books has had, and we have an equal amount of new content in this one. But, for only a little bit extra, you get this thick, glorious retrospective which takes us through the entire series, giving us clips and the best highlights from over the years.

If you missed the last couple books - no worries - this will catch you up enough to enjoy the latest comics at the end. And if you've read everything and just want the latest book - you won't be disappointed with everything else included. I've read every book multiple times, and I enjoyed reading the entire thing as a lead-up to the new comics at the end.

Bechdel is my number one favorite cartoonist ever, and I'm not even a lesbian - I just find her characters are so human and so interesting that I connect with their lives deeply.

So if you read Fun House and aren't sure if you might like to move on to this series, I'd encourage you to pick up this book and give it a try.

13 of 14 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Essential Goodness, November 13, 2008

By 

Edward Aycock (New York, NY United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: The Essential Dykes to Watch Out For (Hardcover)

And there they are on pages 76-77, the first DTWOF strips I ever saw. They were in a student run women's paper in the Fall of 1991, I had just arrived at the university and my life was about to change for the better. Therefore, it's impossible for me to be completely objective when I talk about this strip and its brilliant creator (channeler?), Alison Bechdel. At first I didn't know what to make of the strip - I feel like I walked through my first two decades in a haze because I was not used to a comic strip dramedy. It didn't take me long to fall in love with it. I bought all the collections that were available at the time (three books!), saw Bechdel's slide show when she came around to my school and even wrote her a letter - and she responded. I still have that letter.

It's great to see so many strips reproduced here, forming a running narrative of twenty years in the lives of the characters. Not all of the strips are here nor are the nifty little supplements that the older books included but for the first time reader, I don't think they'll feel the loss. They can also go and seek out some of the older books for completion.

This is one of the best graphic arts collections of the year.

8 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Good enough to keep, good enough to give away, November 25, 2008

By 

Alex Knisely (London, UK) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Essential Dykes to Watch Out For (Hardcover)

Some books you read and pass along; some books you read and keep; the best books are those that you read, keep, and buy copy after copy of to ensure that EVERYONE you know reads them too.

You may not have been there all along, grabbing the fortnightly alternative paper from the top of the jukebox and leafing through it to see if a new episode of DTWOF had appeared - reading it with glee whilst ignoring the offer of the strikingly good-looking (YOUR GENDER HERE) to buy you a drink - but now you have your chance. Catch up. Read it straight through, or dip in again and again. It's the counterculture FRIENDS: You'll never get tired of DYKES TO WATCH OUT FOR.

Buy at least two copies, all right? And make not just your own but also someone else's Yuletide gay.