The Essential Dykes to Watch Out for

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• The Essential Dykes to Watch Out For

  Review-a-Day Saturday, February 21st, 2009 Voice your opinion about this review by posting a comment on the Powells.com blog The Essential Dykes to Watch Out For by Alison Bechdel Dyke Watching A review by Chris A. Bolton Before she made her name wit ... (read full critics)

  powells published on Mon, 6 Sep 2010

1 Review

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  I'm not used to reading strip comics, and even though these were 1 page rather than a few panels it did seem really strange to have such short adventures. I did really enjoy reading these. The introduction itself made me cry! And there were some very touching moments in the stories. It really was on ... (continue)

  I'm not used to reading strip comics, and even though these were 1 page rather than a few panels it did seem really strange to have such short adventures. I did really enjoy reading these. The introduction itself made me cry! And there were some very touching moments in the stories. It really was one big soap opera with continuing storylines and no real building of climaxes or conflicts but rather just a continuation.

  It surprised me a little in the begining how political everyone was, always marching, protesting or belonging to different groups. Of course it was also interesting to see how much this changed over the years. It seemed in the later issues there was hardly any community activism, instead all the characters just sat around being angry at the tv.

  For me the best issues were the ones from the late 80s and 90s. It was interesting to see the love lives and problems which were very much how I remembered the 90s. The crazy food, the how will I ever affoard healthcare?, the "does she like me?". However as the characters aged (with the exception of library school) I found it much harder to identify with them and feel sympathy for their problems. It became very suburbanised with the couples moving to the suburbs, lots of kids and babies, and divorce and middle age problems. Plus my favourite character Louis was hardly in it at all except as a mouth piece for trans gender issues. Then I found the comics from the 2000s with George Bush particularly depressing. It seemed to cease to be about the women but much more as a reaction to the politics (and was a great reminder for why we left america when we did). For me it was sad as it was a lot of people frustrated and upset but not doing anything as it seemed like the political problems were just too big for them to do anything about. SO it became very depressing. I missed the feminists who thought they could take on the world.

  The frustrating thing for me about this collection was that it was just a collection, there would be gaps of 2,3 issues between pages sometimes which I found quite frustrating (As an obsessive completest). I borrowed this copy from the library and I think I will try and go back and buy some of the earlier collections in their entirety instead of buying this edition.

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Book Details

• Rating:
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• English Books
• Hardcover 416 Pages
• ISBN-10: 0618968806
• ISBN-13: 9780618968800
• Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Company
• Pub date: Nov 04, 2008
• Also available as: Others
• In other languages: other languages Libri Italiani

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