Comments on: Bechdel’s “Fun Home” Is Time Magazine’s Book Of The Year

By: Alas, a blog » Blog Archive » Anti-Porn Activists (Probably The Christian Kind) Protest Alison Bechdel’s “Fun Home”

Tue, 01 Apr 2008 08:18:39 +0000

[…] Fun Home is, for those of you who haven’t read it, one of the best American comics of the last decade. I posted about Fun Home previously here. […]

By: Stephen Frug

Stephen Frug — Thu, 28 Dec 2006 15:43:38 +0000

Following up on Bean’s reply…

If you’re going to start reading DTWOF — and you really should, it’s just wonderful — I would suggest not starting with the first book, which are her pre-”soap opera” cartoons. The Soap Opera proper begins halfway through the second book (More DTWOF) — but the early stories & drawings are *very* simple, not at all as complex as they would become (or are in Fun Home). If you want to start from near the beginning anyway, I’d suggest beginning with New, Improved DTWOF, since the few soap-opera strips in More DTWOF are easily caught up on (a relationship begins, and that’s about it). If you think that simple drawing/stories might turn you off, skip a few books — she includes a summary at the beginning of each so you can catch up.

There is a brief short story in More DTWOF, and a non-soap opera story in book for, DTWOF: The Sequel, but the first longer DTWOF story is in the fifth book, Spawn of DTWOF. Might be a good place to start.

By: little light

little light — Thu, 28 Dec 2006 03:48:56 +0000

I just finished “Fun Home.” It utterly blew me away. It was incredible.
I am pretty much recommending it to everyone I know, in that breathless tone I get about things that knock me over and leave me feeling like a different person afterward.
Seriously. Other people might not identify as much as I did, but it’s an amazing work, and an amazingly human project.
Get ahold of it if you can.

By: William Burns

William Burns — Sat, 23 Dec 2006 14:04:57 +0000

What we really need, and what I hope we get, is a reprinting of all of the Dykes strips and related material in a hardcover edition with good paper. While I agree that sexism greatly influenced Bechdel’s omission there was also the fact that her stuff wasn’t that easy to find–it ran in alternative papers, and the collections have tended to go in and out of print erratically.

By: BadTux

BadTux — Sat, 23 Dec 2006 06:16:06 +0000

I went out and bought a copy based on this review. All I have to say is… wow. Just wow. Doesn’t matter whether you’re gay or straight, male or female, an admirer of graphic novels or a hater of them. This is one fine work of art.

-BT

By: Sara no H.

Sara no H. — Fri, 22 Dec 2006 19:25:59 +0000

She’s got something called Unnatural Dykes to Watch Out For (and a sequel) — think that’s the same thing?

By: anacas

anacas — Fri, 22 Dec 2006 04:59:34 +0000

Wow! My copy’s in the mail, and I am only getting more massively excited for it by the day (bonus points for my fairly queer-phobic mom getting it for me for Chanukah… sign of acceptance, or sign of not having read the press very carefully? Time will tell). DTWOF is incredibly well done, and Fun Home must be quite something to get people who ignored Dykes to take notice like this.

By: Frowner

Frowner — Thu, 21 Dec 2006 14:11:35 +0000

Fun Home deserves all its accolades. Alison Bechdel is, to my mind, one of the very finest comix artists working now, and DTWOF is the best comic strip in the entire world (er, according to me). I do think it’s amusing that Time has to include the “forget genre and sexual orientation” line, which should translate as “don’t worry about marginal genres or people; this thing is a real work of art which we can appropriate without having any concern for or being polluted by marginal genres or people.”

None the less, it’s a good thing politically that this novel is getting so much press.

By: Pandagon

Pandagon — Thu, 01 Jan 1970 00:00:00 +0000

is probably in the totality of the rest of contemporary media. Yes, that’s hyperbole, but not by a lot. I have always appreciated her character Mo, who made me feel a little less bizarre for being an obsessive ranter who just happens to be female. Read Amp’s post on how Bechdel has been chronically underappreciated for a long time, for sexist reasons in large part.