Author Archive
April 28th, 2005
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.
April 12th, 2005
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.
April 7th, 2005
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.
April 5th, 2005
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.
March 17th, 2005
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.
March 15th, 2005
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…
March 5th, 2005
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.
March 3rd, 2005
Apparently, bonnieslasher from the DTWOF livejournal community thinks there’s some sexual tension between Ginger, Samia, and the earnestly conservative Cynthia…
February 23rd, 2005
Here’s a draft of some panels from the long piece in Book 11. Alison emailed them to me yesterday. She asked me to snap a few pictures like this of me and my car, and email them to her so she could see what this would look like in real life.
I’m not really sure who these characters are, but I guess we drive the same kind of car. Perhaps they’ll end up looking a bit like me in the final version. FYI, this mode of support is sadly not tip-of-the- nibb-able.
February 15th, 2005
I snapped a picture of AB when she went out to feed the birds this afternoon. She said it was the first time she had left the house all day. No, she’s not sick–merely chained to her drawing board in the basement working on DTWOF #11 and her super secret, nearly complete graphic novel.
