Discendo Vox posted:

"Christmas seals"?

Hempuli posted:

B. Virtanen
That third strip has probably actually been a valid logic for a lot people

Ghostlight posted:

キューライス

Ghostlight posted:

キューライス

MiracleFlare posted:

Wait... Admittedly I don't know my Holbrook lore, but the impression I'm getting from this is that she and her husband both work in the same office. And they're just... okay with the fact that they're being forced to live apart solely because their boss is an egomaniac who wants to monitor her employees' personal lives? It's lovely enough that she's quarantined them all in her McMansion, keeping them away from whatever obligations they might have had at home (Kids and pets to feed? Elderly parents to care for? Too bad!), but here she would rather split apart a family than just let them both work their office job from home.

Like, this isn't a case of an actual medical professional saying "hey, it's safer if you two live apart due to X reason". This is their employer dictating where they should live, with no timeframe for when she or any other employee will be allowed to leave.

Kennel posted:

Alhazred posted:

Zelda

Manuel Calavera posted:

Foob

Manuel Calavera posted:

Alhazred posted:

LazyQ posted:

Mämmilä



Introducing the over-eager and dim youth pastor (not ordained) Heidi "Hema" Marjasto. She will pop up from time to time to complicate people's lives.

Strontium posted:

Fort Knox

kidcoelacanth posted:

I feel like we don't talk enough about how much Fort Knox sucks.

FrumpleOrz posted:

Kevin & Kell

FrumpleOrz posted:

Safe Havens

Kennel posted:

Surgeon's Tales

El Spamo posted:

Are... are they loving?

Alhazred posted:

Zelda

Kennel posted:

FrumpleOrz posted:

FrumpleOrz posted:

El Spamo posted:

Are... are they loving?

Some Guy TT posted:

Such are the perils of relying on urban dictionary for jokes. Ain't that right mah roosevelts?

How Wonderful! posted:

Dykes to Watch Out For #91 (1990)
-Alison Bechdel



Once again Bechdel is playing around with popular stereotypes about lesbian relationships and mining more meaningful character drama out of them-- the stand-up comic Lea DeLaria, the first openly gay comedian to appear on American late-night fwiw, coined the term "U-Haul syndrome" in the 90s to describe a supposed tendency of lesbian couples to commit to long-term relationships (specifically moving in) very early on in a relationship. Her joke went: Q. What does a lesbian bring on a second date? A. A U-Haul.

From what I've found this exact joke post-dates this strip, but the cliche of lesbians jumping eagerly into emotional and lifestyle commitments with a partner had roots in the 50s and 60s, when such rapid bonding was as much a survival tactic as anything else. Here it coincides with the more pernicious but equally ubiquitous "lesbian bed death" cliche-- as Mo's relationship with Harriet flounders on the emotional and physical level, she tries to save it by jumping onto big, drastic lifestyle changes. I love that Bechdel is so good at portraying unhealthy or unsuccessful relationships without depicting anyone in them as monstrous or evil-- here we just have two more or less good people unable to get to the heart of what's wrong, Mo swinging for the fences and Harriet just clamming up in the hopes of maintaining an unsatisfying status quo.

I also love that after so many strips in which physical intimacy has been an issue for the two, and in which they've frequently appeared separated or kept at a distance formally and literally, we see Mo's aggressive sales pitch accompanied by a ramping up in leaning in and eventually just clutching onto Harriet. The sequence of Mo's staging and Harriet's facial expressions in the final row of panels is great-- Mo almost melting and slouching into her partner whose face goes from skeptical to curious to coyly persuaded, then Mo throws a wrench into the conversation, peels back and away, and Harriet's face reverts to dead-pan.

The "tip of the nib" to Judith Katz is a little murky. There are numerous Judith Katzes who could fit here but I'm presuming that Bechdel is referring to the novelist who was also published at Firebrand Books at around the same time-- she wrote two novels, Escape Artist and Running Fiercely Toward a High, Thin Sound which attracted a lot of attention and acclaim in the queer literary community but which unfortunately have largely faded into obscurity (although Running Fiercely recently got a nice 25th anniversary reprint). Running Fiercely makes sense, since it has a subplot about the protagonist's lesbian lover trying to rush her into marriage. But the 25th anniversary thing is the rub-- neither of Katz' novels had been published yet when this strip came out. Complicating matters, in 2017 Bechdel published a blog post about merging libraries with her partner and having to get rid of books they each had a copy of-- one of which was a signed copy of Running Fiercely Toward a High, Thin Sound. Her blog also has a photo of her, Katz, and Nancy Bereano hanging out at the 1997 BEA-- which might not mean anything. You hang out with all sorts of people at conferences and cons and certainly the BEA in particular is a big weird mingling station, and they were all apparently kind of there "on the clock" staffing the Firebrand table, although I also know that kind of thing is often a volunteer gig and an excuse to, again, just hang around with your buddies. I don't think it's unlikely that as writers moving in similar circles, Bechdel might have had conversations about the subject with Katz or even read earlier drafts of the novel. It's not a perfect answer but it's the best I can come up with.

Anyway-- I think the stuff on Bechdel's blog is actually pretty interesting so here's her at the 1997 BEA and a few tantalizing shots of her library (these are specifically books both her and her partner had copies of), something I'm always intrigued by with writers I like:





The Moosewood Cookbook is extremely unsurprising but makes a lot of the vegetarian cooking jokes throughout DtWOF even funnier to me, not to knock a well-deserved classic.