http://tinyurl.com/kjjoqt

I've never reviewed a collection of comic strips before, and it's quite possible I never will again. But I feel it's my duty to proselytize this particular strip for two reasons: a) it reflects a lifestyle that too many people know next to nothing about and b) it is invigorating and eye-opening.

This comic is far from one-sided, and I believe that's one of its strengths. As a heterosexual myself with not as many gay friends as I might like, I'm sure I had one and only view of lesbian life before reading it. All assumed based on what I've read and what I've imagined. Well, thank you, Alison Bechdel if for nothing else than showing how extraordinarily multi-sided the lesbian culture is. Which should be absolutely no surprise to any right-thinking person but also proves how blindered we all live.

But there's more! Bechdel is trained as an academic, and she's also clearly a newshound, so on top of the culture you get a biting critique of our political world in the U.S. for the last twenty years. I dearly wish she had continued the comic if only to see what she would have written and drawn about Obama's election (her strip went on sabbatical in May last year).

I almost wish someone would make a film based on the strip. Although I'm having a tough time casting it in my head (who plays Mo? Sandra Bullock or Samantha Morton?), the characterizations are so rich and realized, it should be a snap for a screenwriter to put together a script. Why not give Bechdel a shot at it first, actually? ( )

This is a nearly-complete, but not entirely complete, compendium of the wonderful DTWOF strips. The omission of a few strips is less of a loss than that of the "bonus stories" that came at the end of each of the original collections. If you can find copies of the original books, I'd recommend buying them as well, or instead; some of the best parts of the story are in those additions, which aren't tied to the strip format. ( )

I've always loved DTWOF, though I kept up sporadically over the years. This compendium collects the better part of 20 years of strips. I was familiar with the first half of the book, but it just keeps getting better and better. I love these characters. Bechdel is so amazing. ( )

I cannot understand why no newspaper in Portland carries the excellent, long-running comic series "Dykes To Watch Out For." Portland contains plenty of people who would enjoy Alison Bechdel's work! We have taste! We've had alternative newspapers! We have lesbians! So what's the problem?

While we consider this question, we can curl up with The Essential Dykes To Watch Out For, an addictive compendium indeed. In one long sitting, one can now watch Bechdel's flawed-but-endearing characters navigate The Bush Years, The Clinton Years, and (ugh) The Even Worse Bush Years. You can get to know Mo (the kvetcher), Toni and Clarice (the longstanding couple), Lois (the ladykiller), Sparrow (the "bisexual lesbian"), her partner Stuart (the skirt-wearing stay-at-home dad)...it's a large gang, a community well worth getting to know. Like a TV show, a long-running comic strip has the advantage of allowing characters to grow and change over time in convincing, moving ways. Couples split, children are born, careers are changed, lesbians take boyfiends, conservative dykes sign up with the CIA -- but they all form a community that's flexible, strong and enviable.

Speaking of growth and change, Essential Dykes (ask for it by that name at the bookstore!) allows the reader to watch Bechdel grow as a writer and an artist. Amazingly, her strengths were there from the beginning -- characterization, compassion, compression -- and over the past 25 years, she has only refined them. Skip The L Word -- or at least just find the naughty bits on YouTube -- and read this book instead.

This is a generous selection, but not a complete edition, of Alison Bechdel's "Dykes to Watch Out For" comic strip. It follows the lives of a core cast of characters living in a midwestern US city - mostly, but not all, lesbians; mostly, but not all, women - from 1987 to 2008. Along the way, they age, fall in and out of love, have sex, have affairs, raise children, marry, divorce, move house, protest, kvetch, argue, discuss, discourse, and do silly things - all against the backdrop of US and world politics during that time.

I have always liked novels of character that weave in the social and political environment within which the characters interact, and, taken as a whole, "Essential Dykes to Watch Out For" is a graphic novel of character. Plus, it's well-drawn (especially after the first few years), funny, pointed, and poignant. The humour curdles in the strips drawn during 2000-2008 - neither the characters nor their author have much love for the Bush administration. This collection ends shortly before the 2008 US election. The strip is on hiatus at the moment, but if Alison Bechdel starts it up again, it will be interesting to see whether the tone lightens again. ( )