It looks like Dykes To Watch Out For has been reinstated to The Buzz in Ithaca, thanks to some really great person who got a petition going. Heartfelt thanks to whoever that was, and everyone who signed.
Bears tore down my birdfeeding setup last night. Can you see how they bent that cast-iron pipe? Man! The feeder itself is lying strewn across the lawn in many pieces. I know this has nothing to do with Dykes To Watch Out For, but I felt compelled to share it with you.
I am, therefore I blog.
I can’t say I was surprised recently when The Buzz, a weekly in Ithaca, dropped my strip. More surprising was the fact that the Gannett media conglomerate-owned paper wanted to pick it up in the first place. But they did. They ran it for a few months. And then the publisher decided to pull it.
I’ve heard that 250 people have signed a petition to bring the strip back, which is great. But I’m wondering if maybe the Ithaca Times, the alternative weekly there, might be a better forum for a latte-sipping, Volvo-driving, New York Times-reading, left wing freak show comic strip about a bunch of lesbians.
I e-mailed the editors of the Ithaca Times to suggest this, but inexplicably they have not yet replied.
So if you’re an Ithacan, feel free to let the people at the Buzz know that you miss the strip (if indeed you do), or ask the Ithaca Times to pick it up. I’d really love for my work to continue to be available in Ithaca, especially since the erstwhile Ithaca-based Firebrand Books published my books for many years.
PlanetOut is behind in posting the strip. Episode 464, which is all about the judicial filibuster hullaballoo, should have gone up on April 21st, and they’re still on 463. This frustrates me. It’s hard enough keeping the strip timely when it only comes out every two weeks, and Jon Stewart has already made every possible joke there is to make before I even sit down to write. But to have it run a week or more late is maddening.
That’s all. Just had to vent. Thank god I have a blog, or I would have been doing something constructive in the ten minutes it took me to compose this.
Just found out that tomorrow, Allison J. Kelaher Young, a professor in the College of Education at Western Michigan University, is presenting a paper about Alison’s comics during a panel at the American Educational Research Association conference in Montreal. The paper’s called “Presentation of Self in Not-so-Everyday Comics: Curricular Implications of the Comics of Alison Bechdel,” and it’s part of a panel entitled, “The Performative Discourse of Identity in Queer Studies.”
This isn’t actually the first time somebody’s written a paper about Alison’s work. We know of a few others, including “Humour in Alison Bechdel’s Comics,” a thesis penned by Finnish student Tuula Raikas in 1998. Anybody know of some we should add to our list? We also know that sometimes professors put Alison’s books on their syllabi. Anybody ever take a class where they had to (got to) read DTWOF? I want to compile a list for posterity.
I recently did an interview for a Swiss lesbian magazine called “Skipper.” The interviewer translated my answers from English into German. One of her questions was, “With regard to the re-election of Mr. George W. Bush, I wish to extend my condolences to you and the entire homosexual community in the United States of America. Do you not get nervous and suffer sleepless nights in light of your continual criticism of the Republican Party?”
I answered, “Thank you for your condolences. Thank you, in fact, for letting an American sully the pages of your magazine. I would still rather believe that the election was rigged than that a majority of voters here are idiots, but either possibility is pretty horrifying. Surprisingly, I don’t lose sleep. My comic strip is a very good catharsis for all my anxiety. Without that outlet, I would go start raving mad.”
I just received the issue in the mail, and although I don’t speak German, I could make out enough to tell that she’d deleted my comment about “letting an American sully the pages of your magazine.” Maybe she thought I was joking.
Genia V. Stevens posts a new interview with Alison on her site, SistersTalk. Genia, a professional blogger, writes for Blogs By Women and for a site run by the The Wisconsin State Journal.
Blogs by Women looks interesting. It’s a directory of, you guessed it, blogs by women. Add your site for free. We’re gonna add ours.
More revealing fan art from bonnieslashfiend. I agree, that Cynthia sure is a compelling character. Check out the details of Cynthia’s bedroom — Mel Gibson poster, crucifix, and a copy of Ann Coulter’s Treason. Very dtwof-esque, indeed.
The last couple weeks, Alison’s had me erasing her pencil sketches on the art for the long piece that appears in the back of DTWOF book 11, Invasion of the Dykes to Watch Out For. I use a special eraser that gets rid of the pencil marks but leaves the ink intact.
I’ve gotten a sneak peak at the whole sordid story. Lucky me, right? Just one of the many perks of being a cartoonist’s part-time minion.
Alison hasn’t inked in the dialogue yet, so I’ve only seen the drawings. I thought I’d post one of the panels with a blank speech bubble and invite you to put some words in Mo’s mouth.
I didn’t want to give anything away (and I had to be careful, because there’s a lot to give away), so I picked one of the more innocuous panels. This is Mo, Sparrow, Carlos, Stuart, and JR getting ready for a rally of some sort.
Have fun with it. More to come in the months ahead…
I feel like the cool girls invited me to sit at their lunch table. Bitch Magazine asked me to give something to their eBay fundraising auction. You can bid on this drawing I did to promote breast exams, or on stuff from Lynda Barry, Rebecca McBride, Hugh D’Andrade, Trina Robbins, the Guerrilla Girls, Michelle Tea, Ophira Edut, Nellie McKay, and lots of other kids who sit at that intimidating table at the other end of the cafeteria.
