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Thank you for the fresh new thread, I'll let the paint dry before tampering with the title. Dykes to Watch Out For #26 (1991) Spoilers for nudity   I wanted to save this one for NYE but frankly I fell asleep early and just woke up now, at 3:30 AM. This is the last regular strip included in Dykes to Watch Out For: The Sequel, the fourth volume in Firebrand Books' collections. We still have a long bonus story, "Serial Monogamy," which is not part of the ongoing narrative but is an interesting preview of Bechdel's eventual autobiographical turn. Travis Place was a mail-order clothing company that specialized in cotton women's underwear. It got a little hype in the early 90s for being women-owned and having sort of witty catalogs so Bechdel might just be giving a free shoutout here. For those just jumping on, Dykes to Watch Out For was a long-running serial strip that began in the 80s and ended in the early aughts, with a brief return in 2016. It details the travails of a bunch of lesbian friends, room-mates, and lovers in what people generally seem to agree is a small East Coast city. Our main character, Mo Testa, is a political pessimist and anxiety time-bomb of a type very familiar to the current moment. In recent strips we've seen friction begin to emerge between her and her more sanguine girlfriend Harriet, and tensions emerge at work when a position both Mo and her friend Lois Macgiver had been competing at Madwimmen Books for is given to a new character, Thea. Meanwhile Toni Ortiz and Clarice Clifford are beginning to embark on a long subplot about their efforts to have a kid. Lois' room-mate, Ginger Jordan, is also unusually prominent at around this point, simultaneously finishing her dissertation and beginning a long-distance romance. Bechdel is perhaps more famous now for her full-length graphic novels Fun Home and Are You My Mother? but for years DtWOF was a cultural touchstone for American lesbians, and the strip is pretty dense with allusions to national and global current events as well as subcultural nods, homages, and references, so I try (when I'm not half-awake and crabby) to provide decently substantial annotations. It's funny, well-drawn, soapy, and a really fascinating time capsule of queer culture! How Wonderful! fucked around with this message at 09:56 on Jan 1, 2021 |
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Jan 1, 2021 09:44
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It literally ended this morning so for the Boop-haters in the audience, please rest assured that you will not have to worry about it for much longer.
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Jan 1, 2021 19:02
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Mo would never, that's all I'm sayin
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Jan 6, 2021 01:40
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My free time is in shambles right now but I just wanted to pop in and say that I'm teaching excerpts from Little Women in a course I'm doing on the construction of gender in US literature and I'm definitely going to throw that Rae the Doe arc in on the Canvas module.
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Jan 15, 2021 05:50
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I have legitimately come to relish and love early Kevin & Kell. It reminds me of reading like, picaresque novels or Lautremont or something. It's fun to look at this world where the laws of god and man are just completely higgledy piggledy. Like rock on Council of Birds, keep up the great work. Absolutely. Good thing you had a talk-show host carcass around! The tone is just 100% suis generis in that it swings from that kind of classic funny-animal "what if this animal was in this human situation?" but within the context of this absolutely bananas system of world-building. I feel like the best way I could describe it is if there was just some middling sitcom going on just off-screen in a Samuel R. Delany novel. I cannot think of anything like this and I adore it.
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Jan 17, 2021 19:06
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I'm still having grievous phone problems but here's a little something: the title page to "Serial Monogamy," the book-only autobiographical story that Alison Bechdel included at the end of Dykes to Watch Out For: The Sequel. It's a good story and an interesting prelude to her later turn towards memoir.
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Jan 25, 2021 22:24
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Dykes to Watch Out For Another page of "Serial Monogamy." One page at a time really does not serve this story well but I think I've gotten things sorted out and should be able to post slightly larger batches soon.
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Jan 26, 2021 18:23
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Dykes to Watch Out For Continuing on with the next chunk of "Serial Monogamy"...      pp. 109: Ok. "____s I Have Known" is a popular little joke format deriving, I think, from the naturalist Ernest Thomas Seton's 1898 book Wild Animals I Have Known. Sample riffs include the novel Riots I Have Known, the memoirs Five Germanys I Have Known and Pianos I Have Known, Dead People I Have Known, Barney Fife and Other Characters I Have Known, and so on. Young Bechdel is sitting here listening to "The Woman in Your Life is You," by the folk singer Alix Dobkin, off of her 1975 LP Lavender Janes Loves Lesbians, which of course Bechdel is also holding. Unfortunately judging by Dobkin's later years and her editorial writing, Lavender Jane Does Not Love Trans People so let's move on. The Second Sex is a classic 1949 text by the feminist existentialist Simone de Beauvoir and remains staple reading for highschool and college students. The basic argument is that in a patriarchal society, women are defined as the shadow of men, and are only perceptible through the negative outline of what's constituted as masculine. She also argues that women have been shackled by the emergence of commerce and, eventually, capitalism, being at once excluded from many forms of labor and often coerced into simply serving as a reproductive unit to create future labor power. It's a good book. Next to that she appears to be reading a Tintin album-- I can't make out the lettering on the bottom of the cover so I don't know if it's a real Tintin or a pastiche. Bechdel has written in various interviews about the influence Herge had on her art-- I think the thumbprint is pretty obvious. Gyn/Ecology: The Metaethics of Radical Feminism is a 1979 book by the philosopher Mary Daly, linking "female energy" to the vagina and the fundamental power of creation. It came under fire by Audre Lorde shortly after its publication for being narrowly Eurocentric and rather oblivious to the myths and lives of women of color. It also includes these following transphobic gems, which, no lie, shoved me all the way into the back of the closet in despair and disgust in college when I first read the drat book, so this page has turned into a true loving bummer to annotate! quote:"Today the Frankenstein phenomenon is omnipresent . . . in . . . phallocratic technology. . . . Transsexualism is an example of male surgical siring which invades the female world with substitutes." quote:"Transsexualism, which Janice Raymond has shown to be essentially a male problem, is an attempt to change males into females, whereas in fact no male can assume female chromosomes and life history/experience." quote:"The surgeons and hormone therapists of the transsexual kingdom . . . can be said to produce feminine persons. They cannot produce women." She was also the dissertation advisor to Janice Raymond, who would go on to publish her thesis as the foundational TERF text The Transsexual Empire. Young Bechdel, get your poo poo together! pp.110: Alison Bechdel's parents will later become central to her two full-length graphic memoirs, Fun Home and Are You My Mother? pp.111: This is just TV trivia. The Brady Bunch was a notoriously wholesome sitcom with a groovy twist, about a widower and a widow with three kids each who get married and wind up with this big rambling household. It ran from 1969 to 1974 and sure enough Florence Henderson, who played Carol Brady, the mother, had a series of affairs during her time on the show. One persistent rumor had it that she (36) dated the 16 year old actor of Peter Brady, which provided plenty of grist for the gossip mill. Danny Bonaduce, who played Danny Partridge on The Partridge Family, was indeed arrested in 1991 for beating and robbing a trans sex worker. Butch Patrick, who played Eddie the werewolf child on The Munsters, has been in and out of rehab several times. pp.113: Bechdel is now reading Tintin Meets the Shakers which sounds like a delightful time. She's also singing "Simple Gifts," a Shaker tune I'm profoundly fond of, composed in 1848 by Elder Joseph Brackett. Some Shakers maintain that it was dictated by an African American spirit, a "gift song" handed down from heaven, which is a lovely and moving theological notion but I'll stick with giving Elder Brackett his shake. How Wonderful! fucked around with this message at 20:14 on Jan 27, 2021 |
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Jan 27, 2021 19:33
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Transmodiar posted:Meanwhile, this fat turd can't even go a week without stuffing his face with empty calories. It's been awhile and I don't think it has been stated in this iteration of the thread, but there are a million ways to do your civic duty of showing contempt for Dustin without resorting to fat jokes. Please try to avoid this kind of thing in the future. It's not a major thing but I just think there are better ways to say gently caress Ed Krudlick. Also I'm away from home working on buying a house until Sunday so no more "Serial Monogamy" until then.
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Jan 29, 2021 03:30
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I'm back from following in Bechdel's footsteps and buying a house in gently caress-off Vermont so here is more of "Serial Monogamy"! (NSFW for nudity)      
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Feb 1, 2021 17:40
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I wish I was still a mod because I know some of you pervs out there are looking at whatever is going on on the right side of this panel (a mystery to me, because I'm good) and justice must be served.
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Feb 4, 2021 01:15
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Ghostlight posted:It's a sign that says "Do not read this sign" hth Futilely mashing the permaban button to no avail
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Feb 4, 2021 03:30
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More "Serial Monogamy"-- just a few more pages than back to DtWOF proper       
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Feb 13, 2021 18:30
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curtadams posted:This is a profound observation. Yeah. I'm teaching a class on queer amlit this semester and one of the things students keep striking on is how intimate and intense queer friendships are in a lot of the texts. It's something that many of the queer students have really found refreshing to see in older literature, and it's something that's interesting for me to see develop over the generations.
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Feb 14, 2021 00:35
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It's the end of Serial Monogamy! I apologize again for the long delays here. I'm defending my dissertation in under two months, am in the middle of buying a house, and I'm also trying to settle all my outstanding medical stuff while I'm still here.      ...and that's it for Dykes to Watch Out For: The Sequel, volume four of the collected DtWOF! Next up is 1993's Spawn of Dykes to Watch Out For!
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Feb 20, 2021 17:31
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Mos Before Bros This is the beginning of a new volume so Bechdel has a new batch of character bios in the front. I'll say that, weirdly, these little intros reflect where the characters are at the end of the book more than where they are at the start, so don't freak out that you missed a pregnancy. I'll spoil these just to be safe, also for nudity.    The first page is a bunch of gags about the ongoing commodification of queer culture in the early 90s-- for example ".01 Percent" is a riff on the Michigan-based "Ten Percent" which became "OutPost" in 1996 and ran until 2003, while "on our fax" is yet another joke on "off our backs." The joke behind all of these is the glut of high-end, gimmicky items marketed glibly towards a queer demographic, eg. the "Absolut Dildo" and "Absolut Trust Fund," based on the line of glossy Absolut vodka ads:  The Ginger/Sparrow/...Malika!?? household on the other hand is reading real stuff. The East West Journal is (was?) a naturopathy and new age-y health and lifestyle magazine founded in 1971, while The Nation is an extremely long-running progressive magazine founded in 1865. Kind of a fun juxtaposition between the very crunchy granola side of early 90s lesbian culture and the more hard-edged leftist pragmatic side. Hothead Paisan: Homicidal Lesbian Terrorist is a comic strip by Diane DiMassa which debuted in 1991 and quickly found a loyal following among queer and punk comic fans. In recent years DiMassa has become markedly transphobic but for 1993 it's just a fairly hip reference and a tip of the hat to a fellow small-press lesbian cartoonist.  Hothead's adventures are much more over the top and cathartic than DtWOF's usual style but in the early 90s they were peers in a not yet very crowded field. Anyway! Now that we're all reacquainted: Dykes to Watch Out For #127 (late 1991)   Mo and Harriet's relationship issues continue to be a thread heading into 1992 although I think you can sense Bechdel kind of getting tired of the perpetual slow-burn fraying. This arc will come to a head pretty soon.
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Feb 23, 2021 03:30
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They forgot to draw it but in between panels her cousin hit her with a javelin. It was horrible. There, all explained.
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Mar 7, 2021 06:46
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Ok, I have something cool to share. But first: Dykes to Watch Out For #128 (1992)   "In re Guardianship of Kowalski" was a landmark court case that ruled, after a long and arduous legal battle, that Sharon Kowalski's long-term partner Karen Thompson could be declared her legal guardian after Kowalski suffered serious physical and mental injuries in a 1983 car crash. Guardianship of Kowalski was initially granted to her father, who stripped visiting rights away from Thompson and did everything in his power to deny the pair's romantic relationship. Issues swirled around what legal rights could be extended to same-sex partners, and the ability of the mentally diminished Kowalski to consent to the terms of her care, but eventually-- nine years later!-- Thompson was named her guardian, with rights "tantamount to a spouse." This was a landmark decision in the long, bumpy road towards legal gay unions and eventually marriages, but it was a hard-won and extremely expensive victory for Thompson. The stuff on the second page is a little close to home but is accurate for 1992 and scarily close to being accurate for the surprisingly recent past. Next the return of Sam's Strip (3/9/1962)  And finally-- I just discovered, courtesy of drrockso20 over in the Touching/Moving Panels thread, that there was a short-lived Batman comic strip that debuted in the wake of the tremendously popular movie in 1989. This was kind of an all-star strip-- it was initially drawn by the legendary Batman artist Marshall Rogers and written by Max Allan Collins before shifting to William Messner-Loebs and Carmine Infantino. A stacked lineup by any definition. You may recognize Collins' name from his great Road to Perdition or his long stint on Dick Tracy. Messner-Loebs is a legend in his own right who I'll cover when we get to the creative turnover. The strip ran from 1989-1991 and looks very promising, so I want to give it a little trial run here. You'll hopefully be struck by how beautiful the art is right away-- that is a hell of a cityscape, perfectly sharp and moody. Please let me know if you'd like to continue seeing it! It does have kind of a slow start but let's see how things go? Batman (11/6/1989)  Edit: I have skipped ahead and a little and oooh buddy, this comic eventually delivers on the kind of content this thread craves:  How Wonderful! fucked around with this message at 18:00 on Mar 7, 2021 |
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Mar 7, 2021 17:40
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Dykes to Watch Out For #129 (1992)  I forget how old these characters are supposed to be at this particular point-- I know that eventually Lois' 29th birthday hits and most of them were either the same year at college or close, but this is definitely what a house full of mid-twenties grad students is like. Come on Ginger, get it together. Sam's Strip 3/10/1962  Batman 11/9/1989  Rick Radian appears to be a new character without a DC comics counterpart.
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Mar 8, 2021 16:32
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As a side note, to streamline this semester and help mitigate student stress, I wound up nixing separate midterm essays for a series of graded benchmarks towards the final paper. Today one of my classes, Queer Identity and the Construction of Gender in American Literature, handed in their final paper thesis statement worksheets/proposals and I've been working my way through them this morning. I have a few students who are totally unprompted interested in writing about Bechdel  Mostly Fun Home of course but they have no idea about the extent to which I bolted up in my chair like, I'M HERE, I'M READY
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Mar 8, 2021 17:23
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Samovar posted:I could only propose Vicki Vale. I'll go ahead and post tomorrow's early because this comes up: Batman (11/8/1992)  Vicki Vale first appeared in Batman #49, way back in 1948. Between 1948 and 1963 she was a fairly frequent recurring character, an intrepid reporter whose hunches about Bruce Wayne and Batman had to be constantly foiled. When Julius Schwartz took over as Bat-editor in 1964 he culled his supporting cast and Ms. Vale took a back seat for several decades. She returned as a more regularly appearing character in the 1980s Pre-Crisis books as part of a love triangle between batman and Alfred's daughter. the French spy Julia Remarque, but when DC streamlined and partially rebooted its continuity with 1985's Crisis on Infinite Earths, both Vicki and Julia were booted again. Vicki quickly returned though as a gossip reporter in Frank Miller's Batman: Year One and a spate of appearances in 1989 and 1990 to dovetail with the success of the Tim Burton Batman. After the early/mid 90s her appearances thinned out again although she occasionally pops up.
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Mar 8, 2021 18:09
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My kink is when this thread temporarily becomes bad to read because of interminable derails about the loving ethics of Dustin 
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Mar 8, 2021 19:50
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I'd like to cross-post something interesting I found: some very very early prose work by Alison Bechdel from the Winter 1982 issue of Common Lives/Lesbian LIves.
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Mar 9, 2021 01:13
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readingatwork posted:
pun-pun can't catch a break
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Mar 10, 2021 01:48
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No DtWOF today because I misplaced my phone charger and can't grab a picture. However: Sam's Strip (3/12/1962)  Batman (11/9/1989)  This is ostensibly a direct follow-up to the 1989 Tim Burton Batman so this roughly matches up with the end of that movie, in which Batman does in fact rescue Vicki Vale from the Joker by causing him to fall to his death, although iirc this isn't really how it was staged-- I remember a heavy stone gargoyle being involved somehow.
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Mar 10, 2021 02:13
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The dog will love eating salmon
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Mar 10, 2021 20:16
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Hey comic strip friends, I passed my dissertation defense on Friday and submitted my final manuscript to the university this morning, so if I do not have a totally clear plate yet (I'm moving in May, and will be grading finals in two weeks) I have at least eaten all the veggies off of it and can sneak on a little posting dessert. As a favor to myself I am dropping Sam's Strip for the time being. It was cute but I think posting three strips just made the whole process tip over to boring so I want to see if I can get back into a steady schedule with just DtWOF and Batman Dykes to Watch Out For #130 (1992) (spoiled for nudity)   BSE's are not generally suggested now as firmly as they were in the 80s and 90s, since it can result in a lot of false positives. Nowadays health organizations suggest a more generalized sense of breast awareness and what is and isn't a red flag. It's a complicated issue, I'm not that kind of doctor (but I am a doctor). Mo is singing "'64 Ford" by the lesbian singer-songwriter Phranc, which appeared on her 1991 LP "Positively Phranc." Let's rock with Mo. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-jvV0X8-B2U Batman (11/10/1989) 
How Wonderful! fucked around with this message at 18:03 on Apr 19, 2021 |
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Apr 19, 2021 17:58
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The Bloop posted:Dr of what, Wonderful? PhD in English, and thank you everyone!
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Apr 19, 2021 22:05
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Dykes to Watch Out For #131 (1992)  As a trans woman I'm rather more grateful for plastic surgeons than Mo & Co. but I guess I can't argue back on principle. Also, I was not thinking about birth control methods very much in 1992 because I was six but hot baths and tighty whities are not a replacement for condoms, although a regular regimen of precisely measured hot baths and testicle-compressing briefs (that raise the internal heat of the testes via body heat) can have an impact on sperm production and motility. Goons-- please have sex responsibly, and yes, I did tab out of my research for this footnote when my wife walked into the room. Re: Mike Tyson, the boxer was arrested in July 1991 for raping an 18 year old in Indianapolis. The trial took place from 1/26 to 2/10 1992 if we want a fairly narrow clue as to when this strip was produced. Tyson was found guilty and sentenced to six years in prison, although he wound up serving just about three years. Q: Can you guess who his lawyer was?? Can you guess???? Here's a hint: he filed an appeal insisting that the rape victim's prior sexual encounters should be allowed to be used in court as proof against her character. Can you guess??????? A: Alan Dershowitz Batman 11/11/1989 
How Wonderful! fucked around with this message at 19:03 on Apr 20, 2021 |
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Apr 20, 2021 19:00
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Dykes to Watch Out For #132 (1992) Batman (11/12/1989) The site I'm grabbing scans of these from splits up Sundays in a kind of strange way so please bear with it.  \    
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Apr 21, 2021 17:05
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Dykes to Watch Out For #134 (1992) Joe Camel was an anthropomorphic camel-man debuted in 1987 as the mascot for Camel cigarettes.  He was ubiquitous for awhile and was broadly seen as a sneaky attempt to sell cigarettes to kids or at least subconsciously inculcate a brand affinity with kids. A 1991 study found that among six year olds Joe Camel was about as recognizable as Mickey Mouse, and that illegal cigarette sales to minors had seen a spike in Camel brand cigarettes specifically, as Sparrow's newspaper points out. In 1991 an attorney brought a suit against the company, citing these numbers as well as the astronomical increase in Camels bought by teenagers, leading to a legal back and forth over whether or not the camel mascot was "for" kids or not-- despite internal memos dating back to the 70s about the importance of building brand awareness in kids early.  By 1997 Joe was put out to pasture after pressure from Congress, the continuing legal battle, and just general public censure. He is survived by his only son, a regular camel who does not rock out or drive a car.  Batman (11/14/1989)  Batman is being real fickle about whether he wants to change the channel or not.
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Apr 22, 2021 14:38
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Dykes to Watch Out For #134 (1992)  "N.O.T.A. Leads in Polls" refers, I presume, to the 1992 Democratic primary, which was rocky and contentious before Bill Clinton's comeback clinching his June 9th nomination. Basic Instinct was a 1992 Verhoeven thriller of the somewhat smutty variety, starring Michael Douglas and Sharon Stone as the femme fatale Catherine (hence the "Catherine Did It" shirt). In the film Stone is both a bisexual woman and a murder maniac, underscoring, many thought, negative stereotypes prevalent in film of lesbians and bi women as sinister, emotionless, and unstable, leading to a spate of protests as depicted in the strip here. Sparrow's favorite episode of Star Trek is apparently Season 1, Episode 25, "This Side of Paradise," in which Spock indeed falls in love because of spores. It aired in March, 1967. I've never seen the original Star Trek so I don't know if this is an esoteric joke or if it's just a cute little character beat as they're hustling Sparrow out of the house. Batman (11/15/1989) 
How Wonderful! fucked around with this message at 21:41 on Apr 23, 2021 |
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Apr 23, 2021 21:31
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Here's a recipe for war cake from an anonymous 1940s cookbook/diary-- "No butter, no eggs, no milk, delicious!": quote:Recipe for “War Cake”
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Apr 24, 2021 05:41
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Kavak posted:How would you have access to that but lack butter, eggs, and milk? Was it more an issue of amounts? Good question, I'd be interested to know the answer. It looks from 1942 onwards the sugar ration in the US was 0.5 lb per week per person, which was about half the normal consumption. So depending on how many people were in your household war cake might use up a good chunk of your weekly sugar. Edit: ok so here's some more info. I was looking at WWII-era rations, but war cake actually dates back to WWI, with variations that used cheaper sources of sugar like syrup, molasses or raisins in place of dry sugar. It had a resurgence during the Great Depression as "depression cake" as butter, dairy, and eggs were sort of luxury items for many families who could I guess still splurge on sugar. A related dessert in WWII was wacky cake which kind of operated on similar principles, using ingredients that most families could find and afford on ration budgets like cocoa powder and baking soda, while cutting out expensive or scarce stuff like dairy. Edit 2: Some tips on cutting back on sugar from 1918's War Economy in Food issued by the United Stated Food Administration:  which you can read here for an alternate war cake recipe and much more! How Wonderful! fucked around with this message at 06:25 on Apr 24, 2021 |
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Apr 24, 2021 06:09
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Dykes to Watch Out For #135 (1992) Spoilers for nudity  Batman (11/16/1989) 
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Apr 24, 2021 18:04
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Dykes to Watch Out For #136 (1992) Spoiler for nudity:  By the 1990s the VHS format had firmly won the war between early home video technologies. I can't find any easy-to-hand statistics about VHS ownership over time so I don't know how behind the curve Harriet is here-- but it had been commercially available for a pretty long time by 1992. Malika's camcorder, which as we'll see soon records onto normal VHS tapes, is a little more cutting edge, since that format was introduced commercially in 1987. These are the most boring notes possible for a comic about a sex-tape. One thing I love about this arc is that while Bechdel has, I think, made Mo endearing to the readers in a lot of ways, it's hard to fault Harriet either. Batman (11/16/1989)  Batman and Alfred remain at an impasse about whether or not to turn off the TV. Edit: Does Catwoman kill people? In 1989 it's hard to say. After a huge line-wide crossover, DC Comics rebooted their continuity in 1986, streamlining some characters' histories, changing others, and completely erasing some-- setting up the "post-crisis" versions of the setting which remained in place through the late 80s, 90s, and part of the aughts. While the post-crisis Catwoman was definitely a grittier character with a darker origin, she didn't really kill very much-- in a 1988 miniseries she accidentally had a pimp fall to his death but felt torn by guilt about it. In the 1970s she did kill now and again but these were relegated by the fussy minds at DC to an alternate continuity since it fit neither her "main" continuity's behaviors nor the behavior of her primary alternate reality counterpart, which was married to Bruce Wayne. Obviously this story is just beginning, so who knows if she really killed these guys, and this is taking place in its own weird continuity anyway. But setting this plot off with the suggestion that Catwoman is on a killing spree definitely might have struck comics fans as odd and an intriguing crumb.
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Apr 25, 2021 16:51
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Dykes to Watch Out For #137 (1992)  Rodney King was brutally beaten by cops on March 3, 1991 following a car chase. A passerby, George Holiday, caught the beating on video, leading to a widely publicized backlash to the sight of white cops beating a restrained and prone black man (King sustained 11 skull fractures, a broken ankle, broken teeth, kidney failure, a fractured facial bone, and more). Four cops were brought to trial for assault and excessive force, and all four were acquitted on April 29, 1992. Within hours LA responded with widespread unrest and agitation, as the ubiquitous video ignited long-simmering racial tensions and resentment towards the racist LAPD, including. Rioting had largely wound down by May 3rd, but federal troops sent into the city remained until the 9th, and the National Guard was not completely withdrawn until the 27th. Ultimately 63 people were killed and over 6,300 arrested over the five day period. The George H.W. Bush speech Mo is referring to took place on May 6th, after he flew to LA. As much as GHW Bush sucked, from what I can tell Mo or Bechdel are a little confused about the order of events. The infamous "liberal programs of the 60s and 70s" soundbite was delivered by his press secretary, Marlin Fitzwater, earlier in the week, and was immediately recognized as a dire misstep, so by his visit on the 6th Bush was already trying to backpedal the sentiment of laying blame on "Great Society" reforms. Indeed, his White House's response to the crisis was thoroughly lambasted in the media as wishy washy, callous, weak, and extremely alienating to non-white voters. A recent book by Kai Linke, Good White Queers? Racism and Whiteness in Queer American Comics singles out this strip in particular for what Linke sees as Bechdel's racial quietude-- her insistence on producing a comic about queerness in which race often pops up, rather than engaging meaningfully and materially with race (Linke, 157). I have not finished Linke's book so I can't entirely weigh in on their argument but I think there is a kernel of truth to it-- in this strip, Rodney King's brutalization is grist for a comic about Mo's neuroses, and an open-ended and still seething sociopolitical and racial issue is winnowed into a pointed punchline about one white lady's emotional difficulties. Still-- even acknowledging contemporary injustices with authentic rage and confusion and grief is way more than most comics do, and Bechdel is certainly a million miles away from whatever Batiuk's thing is. What's more, I think Bechdel is increasingly... hm... honest about this, as her characters age and grow into something like middle-aged security and domesticity in the early 21st century. So I think it's a complicated formal issue and I recommend (again, with the caveat that I am not done with it) Linke's book for more on a prevalent and sensitive issue in queer comics. Anyway speaking of urban violence, na na na na na etc.: Batman (11/17/1989) 
How Wonderful! fucked around with this message at 15:13 on Apr 26, 2021 |
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Apr 26, 2021 15:10
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When you're a little kid you have crushes on all sorts of people, that when you look back with the clarity of adulthood you think "what, why?" I think it's just part of figuring out who you are, what kinds of people you're drawn to, what you envy, what you value. At that age it's obviously not so much a sexual thing so much as it is, I think, an issue of projection and secretly extrapolating about the kind of person you hope to become some day. I remember having a crush on a kid in 2nd grade specifically because she told me that her family ate spaghetti twice a week-- and I wanted to eat spaghetti twice a week too, which manifested in a desire to be around her, to be part of her life, and to continue having post-CCD Dairy Queen hang-outs with her. I had a crush on another kid because he had a SEGA Genesis and his dad owned vending machines, and yet another kid because he ran up and down stairs on all fours like Spider-Man and I liked that he was just out there living his truth. I had a crush on a GameStop employee because he told me "good choice" when I went in to buy Ocarina of Time and gave me the freebie Zelda baseball cap even though I didn't pre-order. I had a crush on Mr. Clean because I didn't like seeing dirty counters or smudges on the oven range. I had a crush on Aladdin and Scottie Pippin because they could jump really high and some doofus on ER because I heard enough adult women call him handsome that I became convinced I was missing out. I had a crush on my second grade teacher because I saw her bra strap when she bent down to chew out this other kid in my class which I'm sure gave me all sorts of weird complexes. I had a crush on the new girl in 4th grade because I'd never seen tartan wool before and when I asked if I could feel what the hem of her skirt felt like she said yeah and it felt really comfortable. A kid had a crush on me and sang me Andrew Lloyd Weber songs every day, we held hands in the back of the room during 4th grade math and I felt bad for him for how sweaty his palms got, and for two consecutive Valentine's days he gave me these beautiful glass candle-holders in the shape of birds, I have no idea where he got them and when he grew up he became a priest. I had a crush on a kid in 7th grade bc he showed off a powerful karate move by kicking me in the stomach and then unexpectedly spooned me and apologized very very tenderly when I fell over in pain, and in 10th grade I was totally in love with a girl because we both thought this alligator we saw on a field trip was profoundly sad, and independently wrote maudlin Xanga posts about it, we dated for two years and still occasionally exchange friendly letters-- we both became teachers. Totally a different form of affection and attachment than an adult model of attraction, totally a completely bizarre and idiosyncratic process pieced together by still-forming brains shooting out feelers wildly in all directions in the midst of an overwhelmingly big world. Kid crushes are the weirdest poo poo on earth! And it should go without saying that when I grew up and was an adult I never dated Mr. Clean or anybody who looked like him, I didn't roam around looking for guys who looked like Aladdin or people wearing kilts, it was all just the untrammeled and embarrassing maelstrom of identity formation. So I think in a comic in which unicorns are real, and can hang out, and have both magical powers and wisdom and no clear semblance of adult responsibilities or adult disciplinary fiat, it makes an ok amount of sense for a human kid to have that weird magnetic pull towards one. How Wonderful! fucked around with this message at 17:19 on Apr 26, 2021 |
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Apr 26, 2021 16:56
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It's not the main unicorn, it's a different unicorn that I don't recognize because I only look at Phoebe occasionally (I think it's a nice comic, I just can't keep up with everything itt).
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Apr 26, 2021 17:16
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Dykes to Watch Out For #138 (1992) The headline is about Dan Quayle's controversial remarks about the sitcom Murphy Brown, which had the main character become a single mom in 1992. During a May 19, 1992 speech Quayle criticized the arc for diminishing the importance of fathers and somehow eroding family values. As you might imagine it was a dumb speech that many people disliked. An interesting contrast that has been kind of floating for awhile now comes to the foreground in this one. Harriet gets mad at Mo for her overbearing emphasis on personal lifestyle decisions, but Harriet is the one super busy with committees, organizing, and activism work. Mo really doesn't come out of the break-up looking great-- one of several points in DtWOF where Bechdel kind of seems to position Mo as a cautionary figure, whose rigidity and binaristic thinking is a big flaw (literally, later, when Mo is flummoxed and hostile towards bisexuality as a concept). Or, perhaps, somebody who's pessimism and despair prevents her from making positive and constructive change in her own world, something which would grate against the very very proactive and pragmatic Harriet. Not that going to endless committees necessarily gets a ton done all the time, but you know, at least she's getting out of the house. We sort of see this build up over the course of the strip, structurally-- Mo working at the shop or hanging out, while the supporting characters come and go from various events and actions, which imo becomes more pointed and poignant as they all march towards middle age together. Anyway I was quite a Mo in my twenties-- and even now sometimes my wife will look at me rambling about something and go "ok, Mo"-- and it is good to get out of that anxiety rut. In my opinion Harriet never stops being a fairly sympathetic character, even as she kind of fades into the background a bit. Anyway: surprise! Batman (11/18/1989) 
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Apr 27, 2021 18:52
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