School, college and other closings for Monday

MPR News helps you turn down the noise and build shared understanding. Turn up your support for this public resource and keep trusted journalism accessible to all. 

Turn Up Your Support

You can never tell what's going to hit — or when. Back in 1985, when Alison Bechdel first proposed a formula that women could use to pick movies, she couldn't have imagined she'd be known for the "Bechdel Test" three decades later. For that matter, she probably didn't imagine people would use something called the Internet to argue about it. The test, which asks that a movie feature at least two women who have a conversation about something other than a man, has proven resiliently controversial. The latest salvo was fired just this week, when 

 it "a meaningless way to measure whether movies pass the feminist litmus test."
The test's fame is just one of the many ironies that have marked Bechdel's career. 

, her friend Liz Wallace did. And many people who cite it have no idea where Bechdel first wrote about it: in the long-running, foundational and criminally overlooked comic strip 

.

As a judge for NPR's poll of readers' 

get votes — though, to my mind, far too few. It came in well behind Bechdel's 2006 memoir 

 which was adapted into a Tony Award-winning musical. To those familiar with Bechdel's name only from the Test or the play, the strip is a footnote. To critics who view 

 as the pinnacle of Bechdel's artistry (often giving short shrift to 2012's subtler follow-up, 

 was some kind of 25-year warm-up exercise. But for countless readers of gay newspapers from the '80s through the '00s, it was a crucial resource — to say nothing of a singular example of the expressive possibilities of sequential art.
It started as a collection of humorous one-offs about lesbian life, but 

 quickly resolved into a running saga about a circle of friends in a small college town. There's neurotic Mo; Lois, the impulsive, trend-following sensualist; Clarice and Toni, the longtime couple who eventually have a child; Ginger, the rational yet terminally ambivalent professor; Sparrow, a new-age optimist; and Jezanna, the alpha-female owner of the local feminist hub, Madwimmin Books.

Thinking about 

, it's easy to focus on the content. Character and theme are so central, some might put the strip in a class with its artistically unambitious forebear, 

. People always mention its politics, particularly its treatment of different races and genders. But look deeper, and you can see the depth, complexity and ambition of Bechdel's graphical achievement. Her unique line is curvaceous and fleshy, with much more physical impact than most comic creators'. The linework of the mid-'90s strips often tops that of 

. With the latter, Bechdel was clearly pouring out scenes she had firmly established in her mind. In DTWOF, her line is more exploratory — she's following wherever her nib leads her.


In depicting the characters' emotional storms, Bechdel is constantly thinking about what comics can express that they haven't before. She treads pensively back and forth between cartoony distillation and vulnerable realism. Approaching every strip like a formal problem, she tinkers continually with composition and pacing, layering in nuances of feeling so that each 10- or 12-panel episode feels longer than it is. Her best strips overflow with movement and texture.


Why hasn't such a treasure been given its due? The comic-strip format as a whole has stagnated for decades as the graphic novel has become the default form for highbrow comics. Mostly, though, I blame the vicissitudes of alternative media. In its original run in gay papers, 

 was often relegated to the bottom of a back page and then smushed to fit an arbitrary, too-small space. The small publisher that issued the 

 books also erred. When it issued reprints of the early collections, it replaced Bechdel's original covers with muddy, amateurish designs.
Fortunately, such injustices add up to a phenomenal opportunity for anyone who knows Bechdel only through 

 or the Test. Though the strip took a while to hit its stride and sometimes seemed hastily drawn in its last years, that still leaves two decades' worth of solid delight. Spend a few weekends (re)discovering Mo and the gang. It sure beats arguing on the Internet.  Copyright 2019 NPR. To see more, visit https://www.npr.org.

Arts and Culture

The Thread® - Books and Literary News

Etelka Lehoczky

Author

Alison Bechdel is one of the few cartoonists who appears twice on our list of 100 favorite comics and graphic novels -- but many readers overlooked her beloved cult strip "Dykes To Watch Out For."

A favorite in waiting: Alison Bechdel's 'Dykes To Watch Out For'

Go Deeper.

Like this?

News you can use in your inbox