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Yeah, Bechdel does a really good job of showing fairly realistic and believable therapy sessions while still landing punch-lines. It's incredible.
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# ¿ Sep 25, 2020 14:33 |
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# ¿ Jan 22, 2025 17:24 |
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gently caress em up, Cathy
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# ¿ Sep 25, 2020 15:10 |
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Alhazred posted:Zelda Oh, so the "my kid" in this should be read as "the kid of Zelda and Kamiya's that I was looking after"?
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# ¿ Sep 25, 2020 20:21 |
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Let's see Mark Trail's dick. Show us that thing.
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# ¿ Sep 25, 2020 22:11 |
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Mark Trail Patreon Subscriber's Only Zone (NSFW 18+) Edit: He could jam my esallen any day of the week.
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# ¿ Sep 25, 2020 22:38 |
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Some places have nice community gardens where you can get a little plot to do with as you please. She could also just have a big yard.
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# ¿ Sep 26, 2020 01:01 |
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Dykes to Watch Out For (1990) #98 I'm not sure when the "kiss-in" started as a form of protest, but they still go on, particularly in countries and states where queerness is stigmatized or faces legal repression. This extends to broader arguments for the efficacy of public shows of queer physical and romantic affection as a way of not only resisting heteronormative social doxa but in enacting new modes of social being not hemmed in by the inside/outside dichotomy of the nuclear household. In 1988, Gran Fury, an offshoot of ACT UP, organized the "Read My Lips" kiss-in in Manhattan as a show of solidarity, bravura, and public intimacy. Gran Fury's fact sheet for the event reads: Gran Fury posted:WHY WE KISS C.E. Morris & J.M. Sloop, in an article on the politics of the kiss as queer protest, add another corollary: "Read my lips is a queer recruitment poster, citing the skillfully conveyed intimacy, strength, and seemingly effortless sexiness of the wheatpaste poster famously advertising the event. We see this last element at play in the strip above: kiss-ins were not only public protests, but release valves, a chance for queer people to perform in public forms of intimacy all too often reserved for heterosexual couples. They were also events charged with the eroticism of disclosing what's normally concealed, and of seeing and being seen as a creature of romantic and sexual dynamism. Lois' moral imperatives fall short where the frisson of public affection suceeds. Anyway that's all I have to say about kiss-ins except I never went to any in college because I was bashful and I considered too many of the GSA people my enemies and didn't want to kiss them. So please take care today to idea to kiss a queer goon in public, or if you are in quarantine, near a window at least. Sam's Strip (2/17/1962) Sam here is rejecting the services of Charlie Chaplin's Little Tramp character, who was created in 1914. Why's he showing up in a comic strip? Because of Charlie Chaplin's Comic Capers, a 1915-1917 daily strip which was one of the first to attempt to capitalize on the popularity of a real-life celebrity. Comic Capers was created by talented Stuart Carothers, who tragically died at 22 after falling out of a window. While he largely based the gags in the strip on pre-existing jokes and stunts from Chaplin's films, his comics have a really appealing, delicate sensibility to them. After a stint by two semi-anonymous fill-in artists, "Warren" and "Ramsey," the strip was taken over by another 22 year old E.C. Segar, later of Thimble Theater fame. While Carothers and his immediate successors were happy to hew closely to Chaplin's film stunts, Segar immediately turned towards inventing his own scenarios, even introducing a sidekick for the Tramp. You can immediately notice him honing and refining the sense of anarchic physicality that he'd master in Thimble Theater. There was another pseudo-Chaplin strip at the same time, too, a retooling of Charles H. Wellington's "Pa's Imported Son-in-Law" which, when it switched artists to Ed Carey, abruptly transformed the titular son-in-law, a pretentious and stuckup British aristocrat, into a clone of the Tramp. In short, what was Sam thinking??? That absolute garbage man. That dumb piece of poo poo!
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# ¿ Sep 26, 2020 15:44 |
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Gardening with friends is fun as poo poo and getting to cook and eat with produce you've had a hand in growing is awesome. Everybody in this plot is going to have a great time, even if the set-up kind of just has Tiff agreeing to stuff in a daze. Even though everybody is acting silly and kind of rude because this comic is not very good, I envy them getting to hang out in an aysnchronous dumbshit world without Covid.
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# ¿ Sep 26, 2020 17:46 |
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Cathy is growing on me, some of the facial expressions are wonderful.
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# ¿ Sep 27, 2020 05:13 |
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Dykes to Watch Out For #99 (1990) If you look carefully Lois' t-shirt is a teeny tiny little version of the "Read My Lips" flier I mentioned yesterday. "Nobody Knows I'm Gay" and "Promote Homosexuality" are on the other shirts I can make out, pun not intended, which I'm not sure have any particular history I could find. Both are slogans I've heard and seen before on shirts and stuff, so I would not be shocked at all to find that they date back to the ACT UP era as well. Sam's Strip (2/19/1962) Pamela Pigeon is, apparently, a character on the Peppa Pig cartoon which was not a going concern in 1962. It was also the name of a notable cryptographer for the British during WWII. I don't think is a joke about her so I don't know, kind of a nothing strip.
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# ¿ Sep 27, 2020 19:24 |
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Dykes to Watch Out For #100 (1990) The 100th strip is this fairly low-key, sweet domestic scene. I am curious about how far in advance Bechdel plotted her strips, because while I think this is a pretty charming interaction between Harriet and Mo you can also see notes of tension and miscommunication, and tellingly, still not a lot of direct eye-contact between the two characters, a tell-tale sign of discord in Bechdel's visual vocabulary. The exceptions are the wonderful 7th and 8th panels, where disagreement about who has the shittier bed melts into something like exhausted tenderness, with the great detail of the cat clambering around between them. Sam's Strip (2/20/1962)
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# ¿ Sep 28, 2020 18:09 |
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Dykes to Watch Out For #101 (1990) "Womon" is, like "womyn," "wimmin," etc., a neologism for women adopted by some feminists in the 70s and 80s to divorce the word "women/woman" from the suffix "-men/-man," although may of these words had earlier etymological roots-- "womyn" in Scots English for example, or "wimmin" as a proposed variant in 19th century spelling reform. The most popular usage, I'd think, would be the Michigan Womyn's Festical, which began in 1976 and which Bechdel has several autobiographical strips about before, iirc, cutting ties with the event over its trans-exclusionary attendance policies and increasing commercialization in the 90s. "Womon" in particular is the singular form of "wimmin" and as far as I know is mostly a thing in Wiccan circles. I guess the video they're watching is "Justify My Love," directed by Jean-Baptise Mondino and released in late 1990. It showed Madonna kind of wandering around in a noir-esque sexual fantasia, showing couples in various BDSM and kink-related outfits, an androgynous threesome borrowing from Lilliana Cavani's The Night Porter, and, briefly, queer kissing and nudity. These last two bits, probably, are what got the video banned from MTV and spurred the decision to release it on VHS as sort of a "too hot for TV" video single. The VHS itself was actually designed and packaged to vaguely resemble a "seedy video," further heightening the illicit appeal of what appears, in 2020, to be quite tame. For what it's worth the market price upon release was about $9.98 for a five minute video-- so Mo's initial annoyance isn't like, totally out of left field. Sam's Strip (2/21/1962)
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# ¿ Sep 29, 2020 17:03 |
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I got an early birthday present, the enormous and beautiful D+Q collection of the Tove Jansson-drawn Moomin comic strip. Of course I've read most of the strips included in it right here in this thread already, but there's something really nice about being able to curl up with it and a little tea and dessert. And it really is very, very large. And extremely sturdy too. I got a little verklempt thinking about pulling it off the shelf for my own future kid someday.
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# ¿ Sep 30, 2020 09:45 |
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Hey, not much commentary today because I'm obviously throwing these up very late. I had a mega productive dissertation streak today and just now looked up and realized that it's 3:45 AM. Dykes to Watch Out For #102 (1991) We're into 1991 so I imagine the protests mentioned here are part of the wave of anti-Gulf War demonstrations that were ongoing at the time. The March on Washington here could be a few things but I'm assuming it's referring to one of two major marches in January, one on the 19th and one on the 26th. Depending on how long-term a planner you imagine Lois might be, planning sessions for the 1993 "March on Washington for Gay, Lesbian, and Bi Equal Rights and Liberation" began in early 1991 too. As always it feels grimly reassuring that the world has been teetering consistently for at least 29 years. Sam's Strip (2/22/1962) That sea monster looks really familiar but I can't place it.
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# ¿ Oct 1, 2020 07:59 |
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Cabin in the Sky is really interesting and pretty good, I like that Billingsley gave it a little nod here. I hope it inspires at least a few people to go check out the movie.
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# ¿ Oct 1, 2020 16:55 |
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Dykes to Watch Out For #103 (1991) George H.W. Bush's son Neil was a member of the board of directors of Silverado Savings & Loan and was involved with the Savings & Loans scandals of the 1980s. Although he was never indicted he was widely seen as being responsible for all sorts of financial improprieties. Sam's Strip (2/23/1962)
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# ¿ Oct 1, 2020 21:07 |
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Dykes to Watch Out For #104 (1991) The 1991 State of the Union Address was delivered on January 29th so there you go, we can date this one pretty neatly in terms of when it takes place if not when it ran. Norman Schwartzkopf led all coalition forces in the Gulf War after being appointed commander of United States Central Command in 1988. His ambivalent memories of Vietnam informed many of his tactical decisions in the Gulf, especially his preference for swift and brutal-- even theatrical-- strikes. A side effect of the combination of these tactics and the new degree of media saturation accompanying Desert Storm made him a celebrity of sorts in a way that contrasted starkly with the reception of generals in the aftermath of Vietnam. The glib and spectacular adulation he received from the mainstream media and the Republican establishment contributed, I imagine, to how sharp Mo's revulsion here is. I was a tiny little wee baby kid at the time but even I remember finding it very hard to distinguish between how the Gulf War was framed on TV and the way that cartoon violence a la G.I. Joe looked. I even remember a line of glossy Gulf War trading cards by Topps which always tempted me at the checkout aisle when I went grocery shopping with my parents, but my mom, to her credit, never let me get them. (they are a grim artifact, incidentally, as I've just discovered while double-checking that I didn't just imagine them: Sam's Strip (2/24/1962) How Wonderful! fucked around with this message at 00:54 on Oct 5, 2020 |
# ¿ Oct 5, 2020 00:51 |
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Julet Esqu posted:
Maybe it's an unusually big groundcherry that she peeled very very quickly off-panel. One of my favorites.
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# ¿ Oct 6, 2020 05:32 |
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Dykes to Watch Out For #105 (1991) Bechdel will occasionally begin to do more strips like this and I almost always like them. I love Mo kind of wiping her nose or sneezing at the beginning. I also am a big fan of Ginger waving off Lois' subplots from all the way over in another panel. Nancy Lieberman was a WNBA legend as both a player and a coach, dubbed "Lady Magic" in reference to Magic Johnson, I imagine. Prior to the formation of the WNBA in 1997 she played on a variety of women's and co-ed teams, including perennial Harlem Globetrotters nemeses the Washington Generals, where she met her future husband Tim Cline who I guess is alluded to here. Mo's up in arms about it for somewhat mysterious reasons, since the marriage was not really timely in 1991-- she married Cline in 1988 and they divorced in 2001. It was, however, a wrench in the works for persistent rumors about Lieberman's lesbianism, including an alleged relationship with the openly gay tennis star Martina Navratilova. It still feels like a weird joke to make in 1991 but maybe I'm missing something. Sam's Strip (2/26/1962) I'm not sure if the specific phrase "sophisticated western" meant anything in particular but the early 60s and late 50s were the peak of a more literary and nuanced Western revival of sorts. Have Gun Will Travel was lauded for its refined and cerebral protagonist, and 1956's The Searchers served as a high water-mark for the more reflective and morally ambivalent approaches to the national and racial myth-making of the popular Western form that flourished right before the rise of the Spaghetti Western, such as 1962's The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance and a whole slew of psychologically intense and unnerving Anthony Mann films like 1953's The Naked Spur. So who knows. How Wonderful! fucked around with this message at 19:13 on Oct 6, 2020 |
# ¿ Oct 6, 2020 19:09 |
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I like Rex Morgan in the same way that I like overhearing peoples' little day to day interactions when I'm on a walk or the subway or wherever. I enjoy it and I like that most of the characters seem to like each other in an uncomplicated and somewhat sweet way.
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# ¿ Oct 7, 2020 20:39 |
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ikanreed posted:Teaching isn't at all an easy career, but most teachers aren't working 80 hour weeks. I can only speak for college instructors but sadly putting in 80 hours a week is not at all uncommon. Back when I bothered to log stuff like that I averaged around 60 or so and I have the luxury of only having to teach a few courses a semester (to be fair I also counted research, dissertation and article writing, and revising on top of stuff like office hours, grading, lesson planning and actually teaching).
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# ¿ Oct 11, 2020 00:09 |
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Some Guy TT posted:Yeah maybe I'm just lazy but this was what I meant in PMs when I said I think I'm still probably not a culture fit for academia. On a related note for anyone else interested Bechdel drew a review comic in the May 2019 PMLA magazine. I'd post it except I only have the physical magazine, not the online access. I can grab it as penance for slacking the past few days (apropos of my previous comment I've been swamped with grading midterms and diss revisions):
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# ¿ Oct 11, 2020 01:00 |
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Stultus Maximus posted:Do you happen to know which book she's referring to? Hillary Chute's Why Comics?
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# ¿ Oct 11, 2020 01:47 |
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I'm somewhat shocked to see "cool" used that way in 1917! But it turns out that yeah, it originated at the very latest at around that time, with some more maybe arguable usages as far back as 1848 in sketchy compilations of black vernacular by white writers. Still-- very neat to see it just pop up in And He Did! of all places!
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# ¿ Oct 11, 2020 02:40 |
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Dykes to Watch Out For #106 (1991) Queer lit was undergoing something of a moment in the early 1990s, as increasing public visibility and incremental advances in institutional support led to both more commercial viability for queer books ergo more shelf-space in mainstream bookstores, as well as more freedom for queer authors to write candidly and frankly. Not to say this was entirely novel-- I've spent years studying queer, sometimes very explicitly poetry and fiction from the post-war era and feel like I've barely scratched the surface-- but like, you weren't going to run into a Barnes & Noble and find Century of Clouds chilling next to a row of Kathy Acker books. Anyway in this strip Bechdel is having a little fun with some of the more popular of these books. There are a few that are stumping me but here I go: "Lifting Belly" is a long autobiographical erotic poem by the brilliant modernist author Gertrude Stein, composed in 1917 for her lover Alice B. Toklas but largely neglected by scholars for decades. Don Juan in the Village was a novel by Jane DeLynn, published in 1990, about a sexually adventurous lesbian and her various adventures. Sexing the Cherry was a 1989 novel by the great Jeanette Winterson, a magical realist novel about a 17th century giantess and her protege skipping around through time and space. It's really cool. Glad You're Not Here must be a spoof of Rita Mae Brown's series of novels about a cat who helps solves mysteries. She pivoted to these after a few decades of very political writing, including the landmark Rubyfruit Jungle in a somewhat shocking turn. Fire in the Fog and Afternoons of an Artichoke are on the tip of my tongue but I'm blanking on what they could be puns on. The only Alison Prine I'm aware of is a Vermont poet who I think must be way too young to be the person referenced in the margins here. Sam's Strip (2/27/1962) Ernest Siplo seems to be a made up name. How Wonderful! fucked around with this message at 01:18 on Oct 12, 2020 |
# ¿ Oct 12, 2020 01:12 |
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catlord posted:Jesus, I want to ask if Bush actually said that but I know I'm going to be depressed because I'm absolutely sure I know the answer. I'm so sorry.
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# ¿ Oct 12, 2020 01:28 |
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Kavak posted:Bush Sr. has been out of office for almost 28 years and dead for almost 2. Mo and Ginger didn't know this at the time which is why they're so upset.
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# ¿ Oct 12, 2020 01:45 |
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Hey, just a quick reminder of the forum rules to head things off at the pass:Waterhaul posted:Don't Be A Creep. But also: How Wonderful! posted:6) You are only allowed to be a creep about a comic character if it is about the new Mark Trail and his hard, hot body.
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# ¿ Oct 12, 2020 15:05 |
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There are two Grokes fighting in each person's heart...
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# ¿ Oct 12, 2020 15:29 |
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amigolupus posted:
If Brooke McEldowney posted here he very well might get in trouble, who knows, but as things stand 9 Chickweed Lane is not a post, it is a comic strip. Also I'm not sure if I understand the line you're drawing between "erotic fanfiction about [...] loving [one's] own characters" and just plain old erotic roman a clef fiction. 9CL is extraordinarily bad but in my opinion it's bad because it's executed in a crummy and off-putting way-- I like Anais Nin, Robert Gluck, Dennis Cooper, Samuel R. Delany, Eileen Myles, you know, even Alison Bechdel, all of whom have written scenes, stories, or whole novels I'd describe as recognizable author proxies having sex in a way designed to be erotic. Let's make fun of McEldowney for his bad comic and the bad ways in which it's horny, not the horniness itself, which is a fine and time-honored mode for any artist or author.
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# ¿ Oct 12, 2020 15:53 |
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Dykes to Watch Out For #107 (1991) Lois' room has got some stuff in it. Phranc is a singer-songwriter with a long history stretching from electro-punk to folk, known for her androgynous stage persona and her huge influence on queercore. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZtsxfOV2Klo Enjoy some Phranc on today, the day of my birth. The Bronski Beat were a British synthpop band, openly gay in the mid-80s when explicitly queer songs were a significant risk. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=88sARuFu-tc Here's their 1984 single, "Smalltown Boy." Two Nice Girls was another lesbian band active in the mid-80s and very early 90s, headed by Gretchen Phillips who I always get mixed up with Gretchen Wilson and then Wilson Phillips. But no, Two Nice Girls wrote neither "Redneck Woman" nor "Hold On." They wrote this instead: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QhFZtIxjhYs The Color Purple was a 1982 novel by Alice Walker and an important book for both black literature and the representation of queerness in mainstream lit. It makes total sense that Ginger would be teaching it, and would not even be a particularly risky choice-- it got incorporated into the "canon" for better or for worse quite quickly. OUT/LOOK was a short-lived magazine (1988-1992) that tried to bring together the still separate stream of lesbian and gay male discourse in a provocative and rigorous way with an emphasis on politics and culture. I liked it when I browsed the archives a few years ago, it had a nice cool design-y sensibility. Queer Nation was an activist group born in 1990 as an outgrowth of ACT UP, meant to address the alarming uptick in homophobic violence rather than ACT UP's more specific remit of AIDS/HIV activism. In 1990 the work of reclaiming "queer" was still underway so the visibility and confrontationality of Queer Nation was a significant leap in LGBTQ+ people taking back what had long been a fairly brutal derogatory term. In fact it was around this time-- Winter 1990-- that "queer theory" was first used in a concrete sense, by Terese de Lauretiz at UC Santa Cruz. All together these last few references paint a pretty compelling if maybe not all the way intentional portrait of the friendship between Lois and Sparrow and Ginger-- a snapshot of a moment in which direct action, academics discourse, and cultural production were all converging in a new and exciting way as a vehicle for queer solidarity. Sam's Strip (2/28/1962) I am not really sure what kind of personification of Peace is being referenced here! Edit: I forgot! The Joan Benson in the DtWOF is presumably Bechdel's college ex, made famous-ish I guess by her role in Fun Home. You can learn more about Joan Benson in this little show-stopper here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BzLVpxt07lA How Wonderful! fucked around with this message at 02:19 on Oct 13, 2020 |
# ¿ Oct 12, 2020 19:19 |
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amigolupus posted:an "is this my life now?" deadpan expression This is the perfect way to describe that panel, lmao.
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# ¿ Oct 12, 2020 21:37 |
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Evil Mastermind posted:Cul De Sac is Pagliacci. Wow The Three Jokers is actually turning out to be pretty rad.
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# ¿ Oct 13, 2020 02:08 |
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I've appended a little update to today's DtWOF post but it's a neat enough reference that I want to point a little finger at it here. The Joan Benson credited in the margins of today's strip is, I'm almost 100% certain, the Joan Benson who features in Fun Home and who gets a song all about her in the Fun Home musical! I'm changing my major to Joan, I'm changing my major to sex with Joan With a minor in kissing Joan https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BzLVpxt07lA I usually find Bechdel's "tip of the nib" things a little inscrutable which I imagine is kind of the point-- crediting private in-jokes or goofs, and I'm sure that in 1991 Joan Benson was equally obscure to most of the strip's readers. And now she's famous! Famous to people who like Broadway musicals. Get it, Joan.
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# ¿ Oct 13, 2020 02:22 |
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As a general rule of thumb I let most snakes mellow.
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# ¿ Oct 14, 2020 00:02 |
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I want to know Cathy's veal cutlet recipe. I don't even eat veal. I want to know the veal recipe.
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# ¿ Oct 14, 2020 21:50 |
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I was probated last night so I couldn't post comics! Here's Dykes to Watch Out For #108 (1991) Attempts to reclaim "slut" began in the late 20th century, but as we can still see in 2020 have had a rocky adoption, so the tension here between Lois embracing the term and Ginger kind of sputtering around it feels organic. I also like that this isn't Ginger being a bad guy necessarily-- she's flustered from having the boundaries between teacher and student disrupted without any heads up and also just annoyed that her room-mates and friends are making a lot of noise, as if as far as this issue is concerned Lois having loud sex is no more or less obnoxious than Sparrow theoretically just banging pots and pans in the kitchen. I like this kind of DtWOF strip, where everyone has kind of a point, nobody's demonized, and the dialogue emerges from the interactions of well-defined characters working against and around one another. Anyway I think 1991 feels right for the "slut" thing. Dossie Easton and Janet Hardy's The Ethical Slut came out in 1997, and it began to be re-assessed as a term of affirmation and self-assertion in queer and I think BDSM communities well before it hit the mainstream. So I don't know. 1991 didn't raise any eyebrows for me. "Army of Loves" is a number of things. Rosa von Praunheim's 1979 documentary Armee der Liebenden oder Aufstand der Perversen ("Army of Lovers or Revolt of the Perverts" followed the trajectory of queer rights and activism in the US post-Stonewall, the title itself being a reference to the ancient "Sacred Band of Thebes," an army legendarily made up of paired off male lovers. Army of Lovers was also the name of a Swedish dance band formed in 1987. Was Bechdel thinking of them? Dunno. They were a staple of gay clubs for awhile and charted a bunch in Europe although their North American career hit its apogee in 1992 with the single "Crucified," which does, as the kids say, slap. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ptfZ3IPkAOY Sam's Strip (3/1/1962)
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# ¿ Oct 14, 2020 23:25 |
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It's weird that despite being two years younger than me Mark Trail is nevertheless my new dad.
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# ¿ Oct 19, 2020 02:29 |
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Dykes to Watch Out For #109 (1991) Creative visualization is a cognitive and therapeutic technique that has roots in Cicero and the "mind palaces" of Giordano Bruno and other Renaissance thinkers. It was re-popularized in the West by, I imagine, Frances Yates' 1966 The Art of Memory, a scholarly book with a surprising degree of crossover success, and it's arms can still be think in stuff like The Secret and even the "prosperity gospel" types although of course it also does have uses in actual therapy and well-being practices/ In 1991 Queen Latifah had not yet broken onto Living Single and was still primarily known for her raw and brutally frank 1989 album All Hail the Queen. Latifah has been private about her sexuality and romantic life for decades, and already in the 90s there was a good deal of gossip about it, a frisson which along with her bold, butch-ish persona and outspoken politics makes the poster in Ginger's room a pretty intuitive choice. I like Ginger and Sparrow's sudden swerve into prankishness at the end here, kind of an unexpected indulgence for both of them. Sam's Strip (3/2/1962) Jiggs of course from George McManus' Bringing Up Father, which ran from 1913 to 2000.
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# ¿ Oct 19, 2020 16:16 |
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# ¿ Jan 22, 2025 17:24 |
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TBF Bechdel had the benefit of having the equivalent of a Sunday strip every single time and also didn't need to churn something out every week let alone every single day. I also think of Howard Cruse ditching Wendel rather than reshaping it into a 4-panel gag strip and only coming back when offered a really luxurious amount of space to make the drawings pop and let the narrative take its time.
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# ¿ Oct 19, 2020 23:55 |