Amazon.com Review
Will Alison Bechdel ever put a foot wrong? Will she ever lose her sense of humor about the goofy vicissitudes of the lesbian community? If this seventh book of her
serial cartoon collection about Mo, the feminist bookseller everywoman and her cohorts, is any indication, I'd have to say no. Bechdel here sets her wry and wonderful sights on the explosion of lesbian erotica.
From Booklist
Bechdel's comic strip
Dykes to Watch Out For resembles Armistead Maupin's prose-only serial
Tales of the City, but Bechdel's all-lesbian main cast affords gays an in-group pleasure that Maupin's all-preferences cast doesn't, and her mock-soap-operatics are funnier and smarter than Maupin's. In the seventh
Dykes collection, lesbian mom Toni and her lover Clarice move Clarice's suit to become legal coparent forward; a young lesbian-deconstructionist professor comes to town and antagonizes-attracts gay-left purist Mo; African American Ph.D. candidate Ginger finally writes that dissertation; and the strip's principal setting, Madwimmin Books, weathers financial crisis and an erotica-oriented fund-raiser that mortifies owner Jezanna no end ("`I'll open a bookstore' I thought. `The life of the mind,' I thought"). As usual, the dialogue crackles with intelligence, insight, and a humane wit that Bechdel's wry draftsmanship matches. True, it probably demands an "R" rating, but any horse frightened by these dykes' doings is a pansy of a pony, indeed.
Ray Olson
--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
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