Split-Level Dykes to Watch Out for: Cartoons [Paperback]

Alison Bechdel (Author)

Book Description

Series: Dykes to Watch Out for | Publication Date: October 1998

Big changes are set in motion when many of Alison Bechdel's best-loved lesbian gals find themselves on the move in this eighth cartoon collection.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

The thousands of devoted readers who follow the weekly chronicles of Bechdel's cartoon heroines--Lois, Sparrow, Ginger, Jezanna, and Mo, among others--probably already know that the strips read best in book form, where Bechdel's sly observations of lesbian life in the 1990s can blend with her ongoing narrative into something like a sketchy but provocative novel. Split-Level Dykes, the eighth collection in the series, is no exception. Its two dominant story lines--politically correct Mo commits herself to the brainy and self-absorbed Sydney, while Clarice and Toni, lesbian moms of color, nearly break up over their move to the great white suburbs--keep the reader enthralled and anxious, easy prey to the comic relief of Sparrow's heterosexual panic and the dating foibles of the swashbuckling Lois. With an anthropologist's eye for social detail, Bechdel fleshes out her two-dimensional world into something you could consider either the best kind of beach reading or the stuff of doctoral dissertations. --Regina Marler

From Publishers Weekly

It's moving day for Bechdel's (Hot, Throbbing Dykes to Watch Out For, etc.) multicultural cast of characters in her latest collection of literate and satirical comic strips. Using breezy jargon, Bechdel redefines race and gender roles while taking aim at some of the pungent topics of the day (the impeachment drama, the restructuring of academe, the "reclamation" of gays via Christian conversion). Her characters are exceedingly bright and ambitious: Sydney is readying a book for publication and her postcoital chatter includes asides about literary deconstruction; recent Ph.D. Ginger mulls over a job offer from Buffalo Lake State U., a no-place that nonetheless attracted 463 applications for a teaching post with little pay and no perks. Much of the book concerns the "demographic rift," which begins when the house that Ginger, Lois and Sparrow occupy as a kind of latter-day commune is offered for sale and the trio decide to buy it themselves. Toni, Clarice and their son, Rafael, are also moving?from their apartment to a suburban house?despite Clarice and Ginger's sudden, lustful preoccupation with their old love affair. The disparate tales are tied together by a moving truck that everyone shares, ratcheting up the hectic atmosphere of the moving-day finale. Funny, irreverent and fearless, Bechdel delivers the thinking woman's funny papers. (Dec.) FYI: Bechdel's cartoons are syndicated in newspapers and periodicals in the U.S. and Canada.
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

Product Details

• Paperback: 136 pages
• Publisher: Firebrand Books (October 1998)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1563411024
• ISBN-13: 978-1563411021
• Product Dimensions: 5.5 x 8.5 x 0.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 5.6 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,253,535 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

10 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The Human Comedy, 90's Fashion, February 16, 2000

By 

Michael Weber "fairportfan" (Atlanta) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Split-Level Dykes to Watch Out for: Cartoons (Paperback)

I've been reading Alison Bechdel's "Dykes" books since i discovered her stuff in the "Funny Times" when there were only three books out.

She just keeps on getting better and better.

Speaking as a heterosexual male, i can say with some authority that Ms. Bechdel consistently touches on matters and issues that transcend her setting and move into the range of Consideration Of The Human Condition.

While the strips contained in this volume (as always) appeared on a weekly basis in various "alternative" publications, the best way to read them (again, as always) is in the form of this collection, in which one can follow the sweep and development of the story and the lives of her characters without having to wait a week for the answer to that question that is the bane of the wellpaced storyteller, the eternal "And then what happened?", and, as always, Ms Bechdel's book readers get some much=appreciated lagniappe, in the form of a book-only continuation of the story, showing us the barely-orchestrated chaos of trying to co-ordinate several near-traumatic moves and only one truck.

Buying this book, like buying any in the series (except the first, which is really for completists only), is your ticket to an evening of watching a cast of wonderfully-eccentric old friends going through all the things you or i go through -- only funnier.

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Buy the entire series, October 19, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: Split-Level Dykes to Watch Out for: Cartoons (Paperback)

Alison Bechdel's take on life, love and sexuality is not only thought provoking but hysterically funny as well. It's hard not to regard the characters as old friends. Whether you're a lesbian or not, you'll love the book.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Wonderful, June 23, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: Split-Level Dykes to Watch Out for: Cartoons (Paperback)

I moved two years ago, and I *really* empathize with what virtually every character in the strip endures in this one. And I will never, never hear the line "I'll take it. Do you gift wrap?" in the same way again.

If you're a fan of the series, buy it. If you aren't, buy it anyway. Hilarious!!!