her work. The experience of being a les-
bian in the world is the raw material for
her strip.

Having brought the audience up to the
present, Bechdel then began to focus on
Dykes to Watch Out For. One of the things
that pleases her most about cartooning is
combining words and pictures. This
should surprise no one familiar with her
highly literate strip. Bechdel’s highly de-
veloped political consciousness and quirky
sense of humor animate the strip. “I al-
temate between worrying that my strips
are too trivial and don’t have enough re-
deeming political content, and the rest of
the time I can’t believe how much leftist
dogma I’m always spouting. But the won-
derful characteristic of the lesbian com-
munity is that the personal is political. Of-
ten you can be romantic and socially
responsible at the same time.”

A case in point is the first time Mo and
Harriet made love, a lengthy sequence that
ends her second book. “That was kind of
scary for me to do. I really wanted to draw
them making love, but on some level I had
this homophobic kind of resistance to it.
Even now when I look at these drawings, I
kind of flinch. But I figured it would be
good therapy, so I went ahead and did it.”

Shehadfiiendsposeforher,callinguponher

frgme drawing training to make pencil sketch-
es, which she then translated into cartoom.

/ \
Forconfidenfial

AIDS
Information

 

(3aH
1-800-882-AIDS

 

L 2

“I think it’s really important to make our
sexuality visible. Lesbian sex is such a ta-
boo thing in this culture. Either it’s not
mentioned or it’s pomographied. So I just
like to show it in a matter of fact kind of
way, as part of life."

For readers who want to know what’s in
store for their favorite cartoon characters,
Bechdel dropped a few hints, and the news
doesn’t look good. Ginger, one of Bech-
del’s favorites because she’s “the only real-
ly stable character in the whole strip” is in
the midst of a long—distance relationship.
“I’m looking forward to exploring this
long-distance thing that she’s got going
with Malika. I just hope she doesn’t get
hurt” Mo and Harriet have been having
problems lately, and Bechdel thinks they’re
heading for a break-up. “There's a lot of
pressure on me not to have them break up.
I want to show people having healthy re-
lationships. But people do break up and
I’m kind of fascinated by break-ups. Part
of me is really looking forward to writing
about it in excruciating detail. I’m sure it
will be cathartic.”

Bechdel then described the steps involved in
actually drawing the strip (she starts with the
words and then does the pictures), and con-
cluded with a deeply-felt statement of the
values that underlie and unify her work and
her life (see accompanying story). V

 

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