The Essential Dykes to Watch Out for

I first saw a DTWOF comic in one of the campus newspapers of my hometown growing up. In the years of DTWOF comic strips that followed, I'd occasionally catch one posted online, or in another newspaper, or a few strips in a collection at someone's house. But the comics are intensely serialized (not making much sense as a standalone), the whole archive was never available online and only 527 comics were ever published in the 21 years of the strip, so it always seemed like I was catching a glimpse of an elusive whole. This collection is near-complete and the storyline finally manages to be cohesive. Don't get me wrong: this still reads like a serial, and threads drop and there are one-off jokes, but it reads a lot better as a collection.

Perhaps what I found the most interesting from a modern perspective was actually the politics. It was fascinating to realize that the things that the characters said about Bush (HW) and Clinton (Bill) strongly resemble the things that I've said about Bush (W) and Clinton (Hillary) and Trump and Obama, too, for that matter. And indeed, the protest wing of leftwing politics versus the run-for-office-wing versus the tear-your-hair-out-publicly wing have apparently always had the tension that is so apparent now.

As I said to my girlfriend, “I was expecting to read some fun lesbian comics but here I am getting life lessons and models of being and confirmation that the world has always been this ridiculous and people live in it anyway. Like it's both strange and comforting to see them all stressing over Bush and related political events because at least other people have felt the apocalypse is nigh for many decades.” Basically this book is what The L Word should have been, particularly as it incorporates politics directly and materially into the lives of the characters. I particularly enjoyed the long running motif of contrasting Mo's hysteria about global catastrophes and oppression with the material life of grassroots organizers and working class folks around her – essentially, we can theorize and catastrophize all we want, but doing so won't change things, because only working in community with others for material good changes things. The cast is broad, diverse, fully realized with plenty of depth (even in characters who are less frequent or introduced later)... and full of queers, and mostly queer women, all of which I love.

I do feel that the comics were better in the beginning. Toward the end, many of the characters got complacent and it sometimes felt like Bechtel did too. I felt this particularly with the introduction of of Cynthia, the Republican college student taught by Ginger. The characters, who cut their teeth as radical feminists, battle wits with her but rarely challenge her materially; it is surprising to me to see Cynthia and Ginger interact without any real interrogation of the racism of Republican policies (the xenophobia and classism, yes, does get engaged; but still). My other complaints are that some of the characters' transphobia, while checked and picked apart by others (usually Lois), does not often have material critiques or consequences; and that Sydney is a terrible person and Mo is kind of also a terrible person for being with her. (Which... is maybe the point. But seriously how are you supposed to root for Sydney who does terrible shit routinely and never actually apologizes or changes??)

Despite these gripes, I have a feeling I will return to this book whenever I want to be around queer women who are unapologetically political and who muddle on even when the world around them seems bleak.