{"id":3043,"date":"2006-12-20T13:38:05","date_gmt":"2006-12-20T20:38:05","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.amptoons.com\/blog\/archives\/2006\/12\/20\/bechdels-fun-home-is-time-magazines-book-of-the-year\/"},"modified":"2006-12-20T13:38:05","modified_gmt":"2006-12-20T20:38:05","slug":"bechdels-fun-home-is-time-magazines-book-of-the-year","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/?p=3043","title":{"rendered":"Bechdel's "Fun Home" Is Time Magazine's Book Of The Year"},"content":{"rendered":"

The top spot on Time Magazine’s<\/em> “books of the year” list<\/a>:<\/p>\n

ALISON BECHDEL, FUN HOME
\nThe unlikeliest literary success of 2006 is a stunning memoir about a girl growing up in a small town with her cryptic, perfectionist dad and slowly realizing that a) she is gay and b) he is too. Oh, and it’s a comic book: Bechdel’s breathtakingly smart commentary duets with eloquent line drawings. Forget genre and sexual orientation: this is a masterpiece about two people who live in the same house but different worlds, and their mysterious debts to each other.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

I’m thrilled that Fun Home<\/em> has been a huge success; not only is it a great book, but Alison Bechdel has been an obscure <\/em>great cartoonist for too many years. I highly, highly recommend buying this book<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\"Two<\/p>\n

Above: a couple of panels from Fun Home<\/em>. Picking out a sample of art from Fun Home<\/em> isn’t easy, because Bechdel isn’t a show-offy cartoonist; she’s all about communicating the story and the moment, and usually she does it in the least obtrusive way possible. I love the two-panel sequence above for how well it communicates the emotional undercurrents; the body language and expressions of two people trying not <\/em>to have any reaction to what they’re saying are perfect.<\/p>\n

In 1999, when The Comics Journal<\/em> put out a list of the “Top 100 English-Language Comics of the 20th Century<\/a>,” based on voting by a group of critics, I argued on their message boards that two cartoonists whose works belonged on the list were missing. One was Dave Sim<\/a>, whose omission was objected to by many, and who was left off the list because voters were split among several different works.<\/p>\n

The other was Alison Bechdel, and as far as I know I was the only person to object to her omission. With Fun House<\/em>, it has hopefully become more obvious to people that Bechdel is a major comics creator.<\/p>\n

One reason Bechdel wasn’t on the top 100 list, in my opinion, is sexism. Not sexism as in “the Comics Journal critics hate women.” Rather, I think the critical culture in comics tends to dismiss female-dominated genres as fluff, while male-dominated genres — even extremely fluffy ones, like adventure comic strip and superhero comics — are taken more seriously (and were well-represented on the top 100 list). Before Fun Home<\/em>, Bechdel’s major work was a soap opera comic strip; the fact that it was soap opera meant that few critics read it seriously (or at all). ((There are a few comic strips with soap elements on the top 100 list – Little Orphan Annie<\/em>, Thimble Theatre<\/em> (aka Popeye) and Lil’ Abner<\/em>. All three are certified classics with male creators and a lot of “adventure” elements.))<\/p>\n

I’ve spent today rereading the short stories that Bechdel publishes at the end of each “Dykes To Watch Out For<\/a>” collection. Pre-Fun Home<\/em>, these short stories were where Bechdel experimented with long-form comics, and she did a lot of great work with characterization, pacing, and tying together multiple narratives. I hope Bechdel is considering publishing a collection of her “Dykes” short stories; they stand on their own quite well, and publishing them as a group could help make more visible some of Bechdel’s best and least-read works.<\/p>\n

Curtsy: Quirkybird<\/a>.<\/p>\n

[Crossposted at Creative Destruction<\/a>. If your comments aren\u2019t being approved here, try there.]<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The top spot on Time Magazine’s “books of the year” list: ALISON BECHDEL, FUN HOME The unlikeliest literary success of 2006 is a stunning memoir about a girl growing up in a small town with her cryptic, perfectionist dad and … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[17],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3043","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-cartooning-comics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3043","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3043"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3043\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3043"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3043"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3043"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}