Invasion of the Dykes to Watch Out
For by Alison Bechdel
If You Like Dtwof, You Need This Book
Book 11 in the Dykes to Watch Out For series finds Alison Bechdels
beloved cast of characters discovering that nothing but change is constant
in our multihued terror alert system world. Mo is working her way through
library school by shelving bestsellers at Bounders Books and Muzak,
Sparrow and Stuart face parenthood with a mixture of ambivalence and
zeal, Clarice and Toni clash over the gay marriage debate while their 10-
year-old son Raffi jacks cars and slaps hos on his best friends computer,
Sydneys mammogram yields very bad news, Gingers love life is finally
looking up, and is a Hello Kitty thong really the best gift Lois can give 13-
year-old Jonas when s/he becomes Janis? Alison Bechdel is legendary for
her ability to examine global politics through the prism of dinner
conversations, and this book is no exception. Sydneys doctor insists in
likening her malignant cells to terrorists, Stuarts home improvement project
develops disturbing parallels to Operation Iraqi Freedom, and Gingers best
student turns out to be her most conservative, resulting in an ideology-
busting clash of red- and blue-state values.
Alison Bechdel has been writing and illustrating Dykes to Watch Out For
since 1982. Her books have won multiple awards, and she was most
recently a finalist for the Ferro-Grumley Award and two Eisner awards. She
lives in Vermont and is working on a graphic memoir about her queer
father.

Personal Review: Invasion of the Dykes to Watch Out For by
Alison Bechdel
Alison Bechdel has really outdone herself in this latest collection of
DTWOF. The clear (but not in-your-face) theme in this one is the chronic
anxiety that underlies everyday life, but an anxiety Bechdel thinks has
been manipulated and artificially enhanced by the current "war on terror"
culture in which we live. Enemies abroad and domestic, heightened
security alerts, on-going vigilance against the homeland's enemies,
suspicion, paranoia, anger, aggressiveness, and on top of it all the
oppressiveness of war: these are internalized sources of anxiety that play
themselves out here in the on-going stories of the DTWOF regulars. The
trenchant humor is still present, but there's little light-heartedness, and
Bechdel makes all of her adult characters--even Stuart, easily one of the
most lovably unflappable of them all--look slightly haggard.
Some of the vignettes: Raffi, son of Clarice and Toni, is imbibing macho
norms of honor (aka violence) at school and on computer games; Ginger is
dealing with self-absorbed students indifferent to social injustice and
clueless about the war, but up in arms about class requirements; Sidney
comes down with breast cancer, and her oncologist, a walking
encyclopedia of martial slogans ("war on cancer"), progressively riles Mo,
who's already wigged-out about the state of the world; and relationships (I
won't give away which ones) are seriously threatened by loneliness and
desperation-inspired infidelities. Everyone feels the pressure. As Ginger
tells Mo at one point, "I'm managing. When my panic about Bush
provoking a nuclear terrorist attack gets too intense, I switch to my fear of
being rounded up and shipped to a gulag for intellectuals in Kentucky" (p.
119).
Still, there's hope. Sparrow and Stuart become parents--life renews itself--
and Ginger falls in love (with Samia, a voluptuous and uninhibited middle
eastern woman, of all people!). And then there's Cynthia, a red-white-and-
blue student of Ginger's who's discovering that the world isn't as simple as
she once thought.
Bechdel is angry in this volume, and she pulls no punches (not that she
ever has). Perhaps the single best panel is #409, "We interrupt our
regularly scheduled comic strip for this important message" (the panel title
itself gestures as the panicky headlines loved by the media)in which the
characters speak to readers directly about the anxiety that's the theme of
the book.
An excellent, excellent piece of work.
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