Sign in with Facebook
Loading...
12th out of 455 books
—
402 voters
The Essential Dykes to Watch Out For (Dykes to Watch Out For)
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 int...more
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 int...more
Hardcover, 392 pages
Published
November 12th 2008
by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
Friend Reviews
To see what your friends thought of this book,
please sign up.
Community Reviews
(showing
1-30
of
3,000)
First, an Alison Bechdel story. Last year at the NYC Comic Con, Bechdel was signing copies of Fun Home, and Mulzer and I stood in line to get our copy signed. As she was adding a quick drawing to the title page, I told Bechdel how I had bought three volumes of her "Dykes to Watch Out For" to share with the students of the GSA I'd started at my high school in the Bronx. Every one had been borrowed and never returned, so she could be happy knowing that her work must be very appreciated by my stude...more
How spectacular to finally find nearly all of Dykes to Watch Out For in one volume (there are omissions, but not very many, and the exclusions were carefully chosen so as not to disrupt plot lines). Alison Bechdel hits the perfect balance of lovingly depicting her community and its concerns, exploring the inner lives of her characters, while also cheerfully skewering political posturing, blind spots, and self-righteousness. Her drawings are playful (check out the endlessly amusing t-shirt slogan...more
After reading and loving every single panel of Fun Home: A Family Tragicomic, her National Book Critics Award finalist, I jumped on the Bechdel-bandwagon and queued myself up for this recently published 400-page hardback collecting the greatest hits of her long-running series. I first heard of this strip years back; although I didn’t get to read it as it was published in alternative rags that I neither read nor subscribed to. Humorously enough, I did co-opt the title as a catch-phrase whenever r...more
I confess to having little interest in lesbian writing and graphic novels. As a male, I find it hard to connect with text that is processing an anger directed at my gender (i.e. me) simply for having been born a male.
I don't disagree with the need for the anger - the patriarchy tends to screw things up - but it doesn't make the work inviting. It's like reading Frantz Fanon's Black Skin White Masks. Its an amazing work, but as a pasty guy it's hard not to take parts of it personally.
And, back t...more
I don't disagree with the need for the anger - the patriarchy tends to screw things up - but it doesn't make the work inviting. It's like reading Frantz Fanon's Black Skin White Masks. Its an amazing work, but as a pasty guy it's hard not to take parts of it personally.
And, back t...more
The lesbian soap opera that preceded The L Word is, unsurprisingly, much better. Bechdel's sense of humor is all over the histrionics of her hyper-learned and hyper self-aware characters, but there are also serious and important conversations to be found here.
The collection is overwhelming in scope: 20 years in the lives of seven women, with major and minor recurring supporting characters coming in and out of their world. Their many romantic affairs and infidelities share the focus with the sta...more
The collection is overwhelming in scope: 20 years in the lives of seven women, with major and minor recurring supporting characters coming in and out of their world. Their many romantic affairs and infidelities share the focus with the sta...more
"Love is a many gendered thing, pal. Get used to it."
I can honestly say, after spending almost 400 pages with these people, I know them better than any "comic book" characters I've ever met. They are bright, funny, committed to saving the environment, strong supporters of civil rights, and they DO SOMETHING about their beliefs. They attend rallies and protests. They go to work for "worthy cause" organizations. They don't just sit at home reading books like I do.
This is a (mostly) all-girl soap o...more
I can honestly say, after spending almost 400 pages with these people, I know them better than any "comic book" characters I've ever met. They are bright, funny, committed to saving the environment, strong supporters of civil rights, and they DO SOMETHING about their beliefs. They attend rallies and protests. They go to work for "worthy cause" organizations. They don't just sit at home reading books like I do.
This is a (mostly) all-girl soap o...more
Having read and totally loved Alison Bechdel's two graphic (as in graphic novel) memoirs, Fun Home: A Family Tragicomic and Are You My Mother?, I absolute had to go and read everything she's written. It's not enough but it's wonderful. The Essential Dykes to Watch Out For is a collection of her Dykes to Watch Out For strip. Selections have been chosen from over 25 years of work. We follow the lives of a group of friends. The stories are personal, political, philosophical, poignant, and (enough w...more
So few strips were left out that I wish it had been a complete collection instead of an "essential" one, although the preamble about essentializing the queer women's experience played into the title nicely. I didn't read this strip when it came out--in fact, I disliked it whenever I saw it in the local queer newspaper--but I decided to read it after I fell in love with Bechdel's Fun Home. It was great reading them all in one sitting, because the more dramatic strips actually made sense. I was su...more
Jul 28, 2011
Kerry
added it
For any fan of Bechdel's graphic novel, or her many years of DTWOF strips, this is heaven-on-a-strip.
The collection covers all the years of annual output, plus a few catch-up inclusions from 07-08 which handles the McCain/Obama presidential stoush, and assorted liberal panic reactions to the events of those years.
Plus all the usual characters of her world, living with open eyes and hearts, and dealing with the consequences of post-Millenial adulthood in the queer-verse.
It was in a library colle...more
The collection covers all the years of annual output, plus a few catch-up inclusions from 07-08 which handles the McCain/Obama presidential stoush, and assorted liberal panic reactions to the events of those years.
Plus all the usual characters of her world, living with open eyes and hearts, and dealing with the consequences of post-Millenial adulthood in the queer-verse.
It was in a library colle...more
http://tinyurl.com/kjjoqt
I've never reviewed a collection of comic strips before, and it's quite possible I never will again. But I feel it's my duty to proselytize this particular strip for two reasons: a) it reflects a lifestyle that too many people know next to nothing about and b) it is invigorating and eye-opening.
This comic is far from one-sided, and I believe that's one of its strengths. As a heterosexual myself with not as many gay friends as I might like, I'm sure I had one and only vie...more
I've never reviewed a collection of comic strips before, and it's quite possible I never will again. But I feel it's my duty to proselytize this particular strip for two reasons: a) it reflects a lifestyle that too many people know next to nothing about and b) it is invigorating and eye-opening.
This comic is far from one-sided, and I believe that's one of its strengths. As a heterosexual myself with not as many gay friends as I might like, I'm sure I had one and only vie...more
What a blast from the past. I started reading Dykes to Watch Out For when I was sixteen. I'd purchase copies of Off Our Backs from Books & Co. in Dayton, back when it was the largest independent bookstore in Ohio, before it was bought out (and subsequently closed) by a megalochain. The comic was one of my favorite parts of this radfem newspaper; it showed me a world full of interesting women, women who were a lot more like me than the backwoods-new-money types I went to school with, and who...more
The Essential Dykes to Watch Out For is a compilation of Bechdel's comic of the same name. The book spans over 2 decades, through which the reader sees characters fall in and out of love, get married, have children, have affairs, and wax and wane political. Perhaps this last element is the most interesting to watch develop from the late 1980s, when the book begins, through to the years of Bush the second. The character are introduced as very political beings, attending marches and protests, but...more
Have you ever read something for so long you felt like you were friends with the characters? I used to read all of the DTWOF books and would be so pleased when I came across one in a alternative newspaper. Reading this was like catching up with old friends.. I knew the first 2/3rds of the book.. but I will admit that after 2002 I dropped them off my radar.. so the last 1/3 was completely new to me. I think Bechdel's drawings are so rich and interesting. Her style has changed, the characters have...more
An epic collection of Bechdel's comic strip about the lives of a group of lesbian friends which ran from 1983 to 2008. Bechdel herself describes it as "half op-ed column and half endless, serialized Victorian novel" which sums it up well. One of the most interesting aspects of this collection is the way you see the narrative responding to current affairs as they occur. This distinguishes it from an epic novel covering the same period, which would be marked by a sense of hindsight. It is more lik...more
Think For Better Or Worse, but with a 90% lesbian, 5% gay, 5% straight cast, well-drawn and well-written. Bechdel has apparently called it a "half op-ed column and half endless serialized Victorian novel", & that's pretty much right. It does, however, leave out the tourism aspect.
Speaking for me, part of the pleasure of DTWOF is that the strip's community lives inside the leftist gestalt of (what once was?) the gay mainstream. (In one sequence, Moe takes grave offense when Harriet calls her...more
Speaking for me, part of the pleasure of DTWOF is that the strip's community lives inside the leftist gestalt of (what once was?) the gay mainstream. (In one sequence, Moe takes grave offense when Harriet calls her...more
I loved it. Bechdel's drawing style is so likable that I have been compulsively doodling journal-comics for the past week while reading DTWOF. Through the lives of more than a dozen well-realized characters, Bechdel takes us through the last 30 years of gay/lesbian culture, documenting the movement's progression from a radical uprising to a more mainstream, if no less passionate fight for civil rights. As with any compilation, it's great to watch the author's art and storytelling sharpen over th...more
believe it or not, i had never read "dykes to watch out for" before. i mean, i'd seen a strip or two in my day, but that's it. so i check this 400-pound behemoth (not the entire collection, but close) out of the library & spent alike a week plowing through it. fabulous! can't recommend it enough. the only reason it got four stars instead of five is because i found mo so insufferable, & all the couples cheating on one another over the years, while perhaps realistic, made me have a few inf...more
What a good anthology of a deservedly long-running and still content-rich comic. I like the characters, I care about what happens to them, and other than some amount of soap-operaesque* sleeping around (*may in fact be quite realistic, but if so than I am sadly under-romanced), very true to life.
Aside from the story, it was a really interesting look back at culture and politics, with a queer feminist liberal etc bent (heh, bent). DtWOF started in the 1980s! I was barely human, without opinions,...more
Aside from the story, it was a really interesting look back at culture and politics, with a queer feminist liberal etc bent (heh, bent). DtWOF started in the 1980s! I was barely human, without opinions,...more
Alison Bechdel's distilled collection of her comic strip spanning 20 years is a tricky one to rate numerically. As a weekly comic strip, it's top notch, managing the rare combination of being both intensely funny at times and presenting characters that the reader comes to really care about. As a collection it's wonderful to see the strip evolve over the course of years in a way that is rarely so evident in comics - the characters age, the political and social events of the time are a constant un...more
Reviewing the last twenty-five years of history through the eyes of Bechdel's fantastically neurotic lesbian community is a delight. Not only did I get to re-live each strip, but I also got to see what we were thinking and shouting at each treacherous stage in our recent history. And I learned something: everything that happens has happened before. I know, Battlestar taught us that, but it is kind of amazing to see what I perceive as the threats to end decent society previewed in all of the old...more
This volume collects several hundred of the DTWOF comics, covering twenty years' worth of major story arcs. I lost track of DTWOF about four years ago, so it was fun to get reacquainted, even if there were only about two years' worth of material that I hadn't read at the very end of the book. I also felt like it ended a little abruptly, as if the last pages of the book were chosen arbitrarily. Still, those are minor complaints. Bechdel has created a universe populated by characters with complex...more
1 like · like · see review
Jul 21, 2009
Matthew Gatheringwater
rated it
5 of 5 stars
Shelves:
gay-and-lesbian,
formative_fiction
The graphical introduction to this book provides a interesting contrast between Bechdel's mature and early style, which is one of the nice things about seeing over two decades of her work collected in one place. If you, as I have, eagerly waited for each next issue of your local gay rag to read Dykes to Watch Out For, the compressed experience of reading them one after another may feel something like eating ice cream too fast. Delicious, but you're really better off pacing yourself before you ge...more
I adore the Dykes to Watch Out For series but was disappointed with this collection because it leaves out a substantial amount of much-loved story lines. I realised how much is missing when I compared the full Hot, Throbbing Dykes to Watch Out For with the material included in the Essential DTWOF. The whole of the actual sex scene between Mo and Sydney has not been included, which left me feeling bereft as I'd found that scene richly erotic, beautifully penned and sketched, and appealing on a nu...more
I forgot how very much I love Alison Bechdel and DTWOF. I first read this comic as a teenager on planetout, and it was my first real glimpse at adult queer couples. Going back and reading it now, as an adult, made it all the more hilarious. The characters are all loveable in their neurotic, totally human ways. The stories are fantastic; Bechdel has that rare talent to write stories that switch from hilarious to absolutely heartbreaking quickly, and more importantly, well. I have the utmost respe...more
I loved reading this strip when I was at Smith. It almost felt like Bechdel was living in Noho and just reporting on the daily dyke drama/ political activism/ fluid gender norm/ alternative family scene. Reading through the strip from start to finish (in 4 days) gave me a fresh look at the evolving queer leftist political scene. It was like readingsome one's life story in hyper drive.
The artwork is phenomenal in it's ability to make dozens of female characters distinguishable from each other wit...more
The artwork is phenomenal in it's ability to make dozens of female characters distinguishable from each other wit...more
I came quite late to DTWOF. I picked up after reading (and loving) Fun Home and Are You My Mother? I identify A LOT with Mo's righteous anger and when I first heard about "dyke comics," I figured there was no way they'd have any relevancy to my "true" dyke life. WRONG. Reading DTWOF was like stepping into an incredibly accurate and relate-able past but it also felt keenly relevant - like none of what Bechdel was writing about was *so* specific that it stayed locked in the past; it didn't feel "d...more
I've resisted this series for a long time--whenever I ran across it, it seemed like all the characters ever did was kvetch.
That was a few years ago. Now, I'm less involved in the gayness of it all--I no longer live the constant drama of the recently outed and also no longer pick up the lgbtqia periodicals (and so stopped seeing this little strip). Instead, I listen to NPR and read the NYT, obsess over the state of the economy, and am prone to ranting about the corruption of governments until I r...more
That was a few years ago. Now, I'm less involved in the gayness of it all--I no longer live the constant drama of the recently outed and also no longer pick up the lgbtqia periodicals (and so stopped seeing this little strip). Instead, I listen to NPR and read the NYT, obsess over the state of the economy, and am prone to ranting about the corruption of governments until I r...more
Having caught this strip only occasionally throughout my college years, I was extremely excited to find an anthology of it in the stacks at EMU. Finally, I have had a chance to meet and understand each of the characters individually instead of just getting short glimpses at random intervals. I sympathize with Mo and many of my friends may see me in her though I'd rather be Lois. (Too bad nobody else will help me achieve that!) But I'm probably closest to Sydney and unlike Mo I completely underst...more
All the story strips of Bechdel's defining work, Dykes to Watch Out For, gathered in one place. This isn't a comprehensive collection by any means, but it covers all the important character strips and events to follow this (decade-spanning!) comic. In it, we see a multitude of gay/lesbian relationships and friendships happen surrounded by a backdrop of politics, history, and global events. Aside from being a sensitively drawn strip about touchy issues like gay parent adoption, gender, sex, and d...more
I decided to take a break from my usual hyper-masculine, blood-soaked science fiction and picked up this volume that collects 25 years of Alison Bechdel's "Dykes to Watch Out For."
Bechdel's "Fun Home" was one of my favorite reads of 2006, and I knew that the real bulk of her career and the reason anyone knew about her was for DTWOF. And I wasn't disappointed. Yes, it's about lesbians. But it's really about people, and how they navigate a world that can at times be hostile to who they are. But t...more
Bechdel's "Fun Home" was one of my favorite reads of 2006, and I knew that the real bulk of her career and the reason anyone knew about her was for DTWOF. And I wasn't disappointed. Yes, it's about lesbians. But it's really about people, and how they navigate a world that can at times be hostile to who they are. But t...more
There are no discussion topics on this book yet.
Be the first to start one »
Alison Bechdel is an American cartoonist. Originally best known for the long-running comic strip Dykes To Watch Out For, in 2006 she became a best-selling and critically acclaimed author with her graphic memoir Fun Home.
More about Alison Bechdel...
Share This Book
No trivia or quizzes yet. Add some now »
Feb 13, 2009 02:49am
Aug 16, 2010 05:14pm