Another month of all comics. There will be novels again next month, though.
- More Dykes To Watch Out For by Alison Bechdel
- New, Improved! Dykes To Watch Out For by Alison Bechdel
- Dykes To Watch Out For The Sequel by Alison Bechdel
- Spawn Of Dykes To Watch Out For by Alison Bechdel
- Unnatural Dykes To Watch Out For by Alison Bechdel
- Hot, Throbbing Dykes To Watch Out For by Alison Bechdel
- Split-Level Dykes To Watch Out For by Alison Bechdel
- Post-Dykes To Watch Out For by Alison Bechdel
- Dykes And Sundry Other Carbon-Based Life-Forms To Watch Out For by Alison Bechdel
- Invasion Of The Dykes To Watch Out For by Alison Bechdel
- The Essential Dykes To Watch Out For by Alison Bechdel – This was a full reread of Alison Bechdel’s Dykes To Watch Out For comic strip, with the exception of the non-narrative material that makes up the very first volume. Starting halfway through volume 2, the strip becomes a continuing soap opera about a group of politically aware lesbian friends that continues for over twenty years. And it isn’t temporally static, like most long-running comic strips; time passes in Dykes To Watch Out For at its actual rate. Characters age and face new challenges, children grow, pets die. It’s an astonishing document, capturing in amber two and a half decades of leftwing political trends and cultural concerns, all deftly humanized. The final book in this group, The Essential Dykes To Watch Out For, contains about 75% of the material in the individual collections, plus all the strips published after Invasion Of The Dykes To Watch Out For was collected and an introduction in which Bechdel draws herself musing on the notion of essentialism. If you’ve never read these strips, that’s probably the easiest way to do it.
- Saga, vol. 5 by Brian K. Vaughn and Fiona Staples – I’m still fully enjoying and invested in the lush SF depths of Saga, though I’d be lying if I said I felt as “Ohmigod this is great!” enthusiastic about it as I did at the start. The series has settled into its rhythms, no longer shocking me with every page turn, but just humming along with perfect confidence. That’s no bad thing. I look forward to the next volume.