Reading: The Essential Dykes to Watch Out For

The Essential Dykes to Watch Out For collects most of Alison Bechdel's Dykes to Watch Out For comic strips. Originally published between 1987 and 2008, the strips chart the ups and downs of life in the lesbian community of a medium-size US city: relationships, breakups, careers, parenthood and much more. Over the course of more than 300 strips we get to know the characters - right-on Mo, fun-loving Lois and many others - as they age from twentysomethings to fortysomethings and the world around them changes. It was fascinating seeing the focus of the LGBT+ rights movement shift and make room for questions of gender (later strips include a trans man, and teenage trans girl, and a gender non-conforming lesbian) as well as just sexuality; it was also fascinating (and possibly a bit depressing) to see just how closely the worries and political frustrations of the Reagan/Bush/Clinton/Bush eras mirror the current concerns of the Trump and Biden presidencies.

(The collection does not, however, include the famous strip that was the origin of the Bechdel test - that dates from an earlier era of the strip, before Bechdel switched to following the same cast of characters, and the collected volume only begins after that change.)