Dykes to Watch Out For - buying the collected volumes is sucking up all my pocket money. Are any other Barbeloids enamoured?
It’s a twenty-year running strip based round an ensemble cast of queer women and their friends, family, offspring, partners. Mo, stripey-jumper-wearing political ranter; Sydney, her queer theorist unscrupulous girlf; Toni and Clarice and their kid Raffi; Lois, activist lothario.
I feel quite extraordinarily fond of the characters - I think it’s partly the format, whereby each double page is a self-contained strip with its own theme/punchline, but they fit into the wider storyline also. And they’re cute, and their interractions are heart-plucking. And her sex scenes (although rare) are sexy. Considering they're only black and white line drawings of tiny women. Ahem.
My other favourite things:
I love the way it handles bisexuality, transgender issues and so forth. Sparrow the bi-dyke, Stuart her partner, Lois the drag king get as much emotional depth and affectionate ribbing as the other characters. It manages to stay committed to being a lesbian strip without doing a ‘back to basics’ lesbian feminism (and ignoring or kicking discussions around bi/trans/sex toys/kinky sex/nonmonogamy...)
If you buy the collections, you get a little mini-epic in the back of each one that isn’t part of the archived strips. These experiment more with the form and some of the most touching moments are here (one montage had Ginger rattling off the completion of her PhD thesis, Sydney and Mo having first-time sex on the carpet surrounded by queer theory books, and Clarice totting up the balance sheet to find out whether the bookshop (where Mo and Lois work) was bankrupt, in a lusciously-drawn sequence of celebrations and random hallelujahs.)
And you get to see how her style’s improved over the years, which really inspires me to draw more.
The official webpage is half-built here.
The amount of backstory might put you off but if you can cope with retcon’d X-Men it’ll be a breeze. |
