Gabriella Tutino/The Mirror
For graphic novelist Alison Bechdel, the combination of art and words on paper is the easiest form of self-expression and storytelling.
Bechdel, known for her autobiographical graphic novel Fun Home and the webcomic Dykes to Watch Out For (DTWOF), gave a presentation last Thursday in the DSB dining room about her creative process and why she became a cartoonist.
“Writing and drawing together, telling stories together is…its own form that you can be very good at,” Bechdel said.
Bechdel explained that she was influenced by Charles Addams comics growing up and kept a journal since she was ten years old, filling it with words and drawings.
Her family life greatly influenced her reason for drawing comics. Bechdel explained that she grew up in a “house of secrets, where appearances were important,” and so she was always looking for a truth; the truth about her family and the truth about herself.
“If language was unreliable and appearance was deceiving then maybe by triangulating [the two], by using both methods, you could get closer to the truth,” Bechdel said.
Bechdel figured out she was a lesbian in college and started drawing the webcomic Dykes to Watch Out.
“The strip became a way for me to normalize my own difference,” Bechdel said.
The webcomic started out as a single picture with a punch line, and then evolved into a storyline with recurring characters. She described the webcomic as a hybrid of a soap opera and a cartoon editorial. By trying to bring current events and personal issues into her comic, Bechdel said she was trying to understand things that were happening in the world around her.
“One of my preoccupations in DTWOF was the tension between being an outsider and being a citizen,” Bechdel said. “I always liked being an outsider, [it] always gave me a perspective on the world I wouldn’t have if I was normal.”
Eventually Bechdel’s career took a turn for the more personal, and she turned to autobiography and memoir. Her best-selling graphic novel, Fun Home focuses on the relationship she had with her father, a closet gay.
Bechdel read the fourth chapter of her book, while projecting the images via slideshow. The specific chapter focused on the issue of gender and how both Bechdel and her father struggled with gender images.
She closed the talk saying that she was working on another graphic novel, this time focusing on her relationship with her mother.
“It was inspiring and eye opening,” said Anna Wolk ’13. “The concept of words and pictures can work together to reveal the truth while words and pictures separately can harbor secrets and doubt.”
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