“It’s so weird to be back here!” exclaimed cartoonist Alison Bechdel (OC ’81) to the nearly 100 Obies during her cartoon slide-show in the new Science Center last Thursday. The artist spoke candidly for nearly two hours about her work as well as politics and social trends, while leafing through over 50 slides from her comic strip “Dykes To Watch Out For.” Her return to Oberlin was organized with the help of sophomore Rebecca Tinkelman, the Women’s Resource Center, the Dean of Students, and other college organizations.
While Bechdel calls herself a gay artist and her characters reflect the focus in her work on gay and lesbian issues, she is also undeniably part of mainstream cartooning. Over the course of two decades Bechdel has published nine collections, one anthology and received many awards for her work. “Dykes To Watch Out For” has been in continuous publication since the early ’80s.
“I think I try and squeeze more content into a strip than it can reasonably hold,” Bechdel said, chuckling. “It’s some kind of grandiose aspiration disorder.”

Bechdel added that her comics have followers beyond the gay community because of the humanistic emphasis in her work that allows it to transcend sexual barriers. Her characters have everyday problems such as finding jobs, raising children, discovering love or simply coping with life in suburban America. Because her creations live in the present day, Bechdel, like all American artists, has recently been adjusting her work to respond to Sept. 11 and its results.

“It’s been an interesting time. I was pretty stumped with how to proceed,” Bechdel admitted while flipping through a series of post-Sept. 11 slides. While she tries to balance both sides of the argument, her views on the current situation are clearly evident. In one frame, the text reads “How can dissent be un-American?” while in another, “[Patriotism] also makes people stupid. Chanting ‘USA, USA!’ doesn’t exactly give people an intricate understanding of politics.” Yet in the end Bechdel’s cartoons are never antagonistic because her humor often overwhelms the political issues discussed in her work.
Bechdel is wary of disassociating her comics from lesbianism, however.
“When I came out [at Oberlin] in 1980, either you were straight or gay, or maybe you were bi, but that just meant you were afraid to admit you were gay,” Bechdel said. “I desperately wanted my humanity to be confirmed.” Bechdel explained that in the 80s, lesbianism was invincible, that is, it had no impact on mainstream culture. Her cartoons, she believed, helped her break out of that invincibility.
“Dykes to Watch Out For” centers around the lives of three lesbian couples and close friends. Mo, a worker at a struggling feminist bookstore, and Sidney, a university professor, both share a house, a bed and an outrageous infatuation with Martha Stewart. Clarice and Toni have one son and recently moved from the queer inner-city circuit to the straight-edged suburbs. Sparrow, Lois and Ginger represent the diversity within the lesbian community through their starkly different personalities, while Ginger has added a new element to their lives by bringing her male companion, Stewart, to live with them.

Bechdel spends a great deal of time making sure her cartoons are visually realistic and not iconic like Garfield. Her style has evolved dramatically over the last 20 years, and she admits to being inspired by blockbuster strips like “For Better or For Worse” and the political strip “Doonsbury.”
“I try to draw the readers into the cartoon,” Bechdel said. “I go to ridiculous lengths to incorporate realism into my work. It’s a way of being in the cartoon’s world.”
Her drawing technique is extremely precise: all frames in her cartoons go through a rigorous five-step drawing process, which includes copying and recopying on three sheets of tracing paper. Words are always placed on the page before illustration since text dictates the available space. Bechdel rarely has room for ambient scenery, which she laments greatly. What background settings she does use, though, are based on places that she is intimately familiar with, such as her home in Minneapolis.

“Facial expressions are a whole universe of their own,” Bechdel said, pointing out that since her comic takes place in present time her characters have to age like real people. Two decades ago these characters were born as adults and many now have lines under their eyes and other subtle changes in their appearance, most notably different hairstyles. Bechdel says as she has grown older she has found it difficult to keep the strip’s content and look fresh.

“Sometimes I don’t know how new my ideas are anymore,” Bechdel said, though her most impressive triumph, her first anthology, came out just recently and her cartoons are still selling well. Her strip has been running over ten times longer than the average television series.
Bechdel stayed at Baldwin House during her visit to Oberlin, her first time back to the College since graduating in 1981.

See page 15 for a comic from “Dykes to Watch Out For.”