I’ve enjoyed the previous comics I’ve read by Liz Prince, such as Alone Forever. Those were collections of strips, though, short moments of humor or observation punctuated with a certain cynicism. Tomboy: A Graphic Memoir is her first long-form work, in the popular autobiographical comic genre. And it’s fascinating, mainly due to her honesty about her gender struggles. As a four-year-old, Liz refused to wear dresses, preferring baseball caps and sneakers. Her parents were generally accepting; it was schoolmates that […]

With the popularity of Alison Bechdel’s Fun Home, many readers wanted to see more work by her. Her earlier series, Dykes to Watch Out For (DTWOF), is good reading, but hard to catch up on, with 11 books released over two decades, some of which are out of print. Thus, this omnibus edition. In addition to 330 of the previously published strips (out of 457, or about 3/4 of them), The Essential Dykes to Watch Out For contains an additional […]

As she did in her previous book, Gemma Bovery, Posy Simmonds here sets the plot of a classic novel in the modern day. This time, it’s Far From the Madding Crowd (another one I haven’t read). Glen Larson, an American professor (although he doesn’t really sound like one), has come to Stonefield, a country retreat for writers. He’s aspiring to create a novel. Beth runs the place while her husband Nicholas works on his latest mystery. She’s a wonderful, helpful […]

Alison Bechdel has been writing and drawing the lesbian soap opera Dykes to Watch Out For for decades. Her comic strip characters are true to life, with one in particular resembling her and her attitudes closely. In her new book, Fun Home: A Family Tragicomic, she sets aside the fictionalization to present a memoir of her childhood. The book revolves around her relationship with her father. As she describes him, he was an obsessive redecorater, consumed with the 18-year historical […]