,

Out in the Mountains

    

AlisonBechdel I

has been drawing cartoons all
her life. “Dykes to Watch Out
For” began as drawings of
“little wild lesbians” in the
margins of her letters to a
friend. It was first published in
1983 in WomanNews, a femi-
nist newspaper in New York
City.

Bechdel has been a “full-
time professional lesbian” for
about five years, working at
gay and lesbian newspapers
and syndicating “DTWOF”
on her own. Mo, Harriet and
her other characters have be-
come beloved figures in the
lesbian community and can be
found in books, calendars,
mugs and T-shirts, as well as
in 35-40 gay/lesbian and pro-
gressive newspapers in the
U.S. and Canada.

Although I know of course I
am creating it and I’m making
these decisions. I’m doing it,
but it’s almost like it’s beyond
my control in a way, that it’s a
process not so much of writing
as of discovering.

OITM: Is Mo some kind
of alter ego? Or are they all
alter egos?

Alison: They all are.
They’re all aspects of
myself...like Lois is perhaps
one percent my personality,
whereas M0 is more like 30
percent.

OITM: When Mo’s po-
litical, or when she gets into
these really high anxiety
states?

Alison: I’m a very anxi-
ety-prone person. I’m very
guilt-ridden. But I don’t think
I’m quite as impotent as Mo.
She never quite seems to get
anywhere.

Last August Bechdel de-
cided she could finally afford
to make the big leap and left her newspaper
job in Minneapolis to become a full-time
lesbian cartoonist. That decision enabled
her to move to Vermont in January to be
with her lover. In April Alison Bechdel
talked with 0ITM’s Sage Russell.

OITM: I think “Dykes to Watch Out
For” is just amazing. If someone wants to
know about a certain kind of lesbian life in
the U.S. in the l980’s, all they have to do is
read “Dykes to Watch Out For.”

Alison: Well, that’s interesting, be-
cause Ireally think of myself as an archivist
in a way. I really want to capture all these
details. I just want to preserve it or mirror it.

OITM: It amazes me that you’ve got
Mo and Harriet and Lois and Clarice and
Toni and all the others inside of you.
What's your relationship to them?

Alison: Well, in a way they’re not
really inside me. This might sound really
flaky, but people ask me: are you really
involved with your characters, do you have
dreams about your characters, do you have
conversations with your characters? And I
really don’t. It’s as if they exist off in this
little lesbian land, in this comic strip land,
and my job is to kind of just tune in every
week when I sit down to write.

It’s almost like I don’t really create it.

OITM: Do you ever find
A yourself worrying about run-
ning out of inspiration?

Alison: In a way I do. It’s a constant
fear. And then in another way, no, I always
seem to come up with something. I was
having a low self-esteem day a while ago,
and I had to say to myself, ‘Look, you’ve
been turning this thing out every two weeks
like clockwork.’ I haven’t missed a dead-
line in years and years. So there’s a way that
I have a certain faith that something will
come up.

It’s kind of about self-esteem. I do the
strip so I know that I’m good, that I can and
I’m able and have people like it. It’s really
important to me. And I wonder if I weren’t

 

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