- Welcome to Forum.

I'm Mina Kim.

If you're familiar with Alison Bechdel's honest, true to life memoirs like "Fun Home" about her dad.

And "Are You My Mother?"

or her groundbreaking comic strip "Dykes to Watch Out For," Bechdel's new work called Spent will take you on a very different ride for one, it's fiction, auto fiction, specifically where the main character's name is Alison Bechdel.

But she's a pygmy goat farmer with a book banning MAGA sister.

She's famous for a memoir about her taxi Dermis dad, and she's grappling with her wealth and fame.

Well, that last one might actually be true.

Alison Bechdel, welcome to Forum.

- Hi Mina.

Thank you so much for having me.

- It's great to have you.

So your book "Spent," it ended up being auto fiction, but I understand that it was originally intended to be a memoir.

- Yes.

It was just gonna be another straightforward memoir, like my one about my dad, one about my mom and my one about the secret to superhuman strength, whatever that book was about.

But when I sat down it, it was gonna be a memoir about money, specifically about my relationship to money.

What, what, you know, the fact that we live in this capitalist system that is speeding over a cliff.

Like I wanted to address that somehow.

But when I began the work, I realized I didn't wanna do the kind of research that would involve, you know, I would have to, I assumed I would have to read some Marx, that looked really daunting.

I'm not really interested in economics, so it didn't seem like that was gonna work.

But fortunately, I immediately got a new better idea.

I would write a book about a cartoonist named Alison Bechdel, who was trying to write a memoir about money, and then it all just kind of sprang to life for me.

- What was it like to write it that way?

To write fiction?

- You know, it's funny because over the years as I've done all these memoirs, people have asked me, oh, do you ever think you'll write fiction?

And I would just, my mind would go blank.

It was like fiction.

What's that?

Like?

I couldn't even conceive of making stuff up.

I would, it was so embedded in my own life and the, and the project of, you know, mining my actual life for narratives.

And it would, sometimes people would say, oh, you, what about your comic strip?

That was fiction.

And I would be like, oh.

Oh, right.

Because that didn't really even feel like fiction to me.

I felt like I wasn't so much making that up as sort of like pulling it out of the zeitgeist, you know?

- Yeah.

- But somehow I just, I guess I was burned out on the memoir track and trying so hard to be really, you know, brutally honest about myself.

That was exhausting.

And it just seemed fun to make some stuff up.

- Yeah.

I think you called it feeling like you're in a bit of a vulnerability hangover and that you wanted to kind of cover your tracks.

What did you mean?

- Well, I, yeah, I didn't consciously do it for this reason, but one of the benefits of making, of writing this auto fictional story is now nobody knows whether anything I said is is true or not.

Maybe, maybe "Fun Home" was all made up.

I I, - I don't know that it'll obscure them.

Yeah.

Maybe not, but, but is it because you experienced some degree of discomfort or any repercussions for being so honest about your life before?

- Honestly, only positive ones.

You know, people really seem to value memoirs that tell painful truths and, and I, but yeah, I have revealed a lot of very intimate information and I try not to think about it.

I try to sort of, I sort of am able to dissociate from that.

Like when I'm standing in front of an audience and addressing them, I don't think about the fact that I've shown them all these, like, incredibly intimate and embarrassing moments for my life.

'cause I would have to go off the stage.

I couldn't do it.

So, yeah, I, it it's just kind of fun to cast it all into doubt.

- So then let's talk about your book and how you cast certain things into doubt.

First of all, what was the inspiration for the Alison Bechdel in the book?

Having a pygmy goat sanctuary?

- I, well, my grandfather was a goat herd as a boy, and I always found that very charming and touching.

And my partner Holly, was also a goat herd as a kid.

And goats are really cute.

I don't know, I don't have a goat.

I, I, I like goats at arm's length.

They're fun to watch for a short period of time.

But that was basically it.

But, but then also I met a, a young farmer who told me that they had always had a fantasy of having a goat farm, and they would name all the goats after my "Dykes to Watch Out For" characters.

And that sort of sparked something, I guess, like I didn't, it just was working away in the back of my head.

And I think that was part of what, what happened with this whole goat thing.

- And Alison in the book is famous for writing a memoir about her dad, though, rather than a funeral director.

The dad is a, a taxidermist and there's a major TV series about it, right?

- Yes.

Yes.

Instead of her memoir being turned into a Broadway musical, like happened to me, Alison Bechdel in the book, her, her memoir gets turned into a prestige TV series on Shmamazon.

- So it's really just sort of one step removed from, from your real life in some ways.

- Yeah.

Just enough to be able to, I don't know, have some fun with it.

- And there's this page where the Alison in the book is trying to write a book on quote, the role of money in her life from her middle childhood to her bohemian youth on the margins of society.

To her breathtaking success.

It would be a lens into the overconsumption inequality, endless growth and media consolidation of late stage capitalism.

- A very big premise.

Yeah.

- But one for very dark times.

Right.

So, so talk about when the book is taking place.

- The book begins in 2022, still in the thick of COVID.

People are still sort of testing and quarantining.

And it ends in spring of 2024 before we, the presidential election stuff got really going.

So I didn't know what was gonna happen.

I had to sort of keep the book open-ended because of that.

And it's tracking just as my, my comic strip "Dykes to Watch Out For," used to do with the news as it's unfolding.

Like we hear about, you know, different stuff in the news throughout to kind of ground it in the, in that present date timeline, all these little signs of a crumbling democracy - Yeah.

- On the radio or in the newspaper.

- And you can really sense that this character is feeling really overwhelmed with what the world has become.

And this is, as you say, spring of 2024.

So it's pre-election, but very accurate to the actual events of that.

- Yes.

Yeah.

It's pretty tightly keyed in.

- And so are you yourself grappling with where the world is right now and how to do something that, or I guess initially when you're doing this book, trying to do something that felt as responsive to the size of the problem as what the world is facing?

'cause the, you know, you're trying to address at least the character is over consumption, inequality, media consolidation, as well as all the other things about people's relationship with money.

- Well, well, part of the arc of this story is Alison Bechdel's belief that she can solve these things, which is ridiculous.

You know, she has to, I mean, but first of all, she also feels responsible for these things that she has somehow caused them with her own like success.

But she will learn over the course of the book that she is one of many people who are working to change things.

She, there's no way she can do it all alone.

She just has to pitch in with her friends.

- What sort of after effects of success did you wanna explore with this?

So, initially when you said you decided to turn this from a memoir into auto fiction, one of the things was just all the research that made you not want to do another sort of true to life memoir.

But was it also just that to go where the examination of the role of money in your life would take you, you weren't sure you were ready for, - You know?

Yeah, I realized that we have this taboo about talking about money for a good reason.

And I just, you know, I thought I was gonna be able to do it to really, that was part of my idea, just speak honestly about money because no one does it.

But I couldn't quite face it.

So that too was why I took this turn toward fiction.

I mean, it's all basically a picture of my real life, but I just didn't get into the specifics really.

- Yeah, I mean, there are sort of the ones that you expect where sometimes your friends joke about, oh, you know, why don't you fly on your private jet, for example.

- Right.

- But there's something very interesting where you portray Alison's discomfort with the fact that she makes so much more money than her fictitious sister who is an elementary school teacher.

Yeah.

What were you wanting to convey with that?

- Well, I I also feel like, I mean, I, I do make more money than people who do really important work, which is so kind of distressing to me.

I make more money than teachers do, than firefighters do, than farmers do.

Like, those people are doing vital work, why don't they get more money?

It's crazy.

- And, and then, is that also what you were saying about how Alison is blaming herself for the issues?

Because it's this sense of like, how is it that me quote unquote lesbian cartoonist Yeah.

Yes.

Which is what you call yourself in an interview is making more money than an elementary school teacher.

Like, somehow people feel like things have gone too far in another direction or something.

- Yes.

Well, I think that's certainly the narrative that they're pushing, like all these, all these marginal people are taking over, which is of course ridiculous.

- And you're finding yourself sort of, it is sort of affecting you.

- Yeah.

Well, I mean, in a way, the book is about trying to create anything in this moment.

You know, I struggled for a long time to feel like I could even concentrate, you know, certainly during Trump's first administration.

But even, you know, it's just crazy times.

Does it, should I be doing something more practical or useful than, than sitting here trying to write a book?

Like, what's that gonna do?

- I mean, my listeners we're talking with Alison Bechdel about her new book "Spent," it's a departure from her true to Life memoirs as a work of auto fiction, and it grapples with the effects of wealth and fame and art and politics and the changes she feels like are happening.

Listeners, what do you wanna ask or tell Alison Bechdel, what impact has her work had on you?

Have you experienced a change in wealth status that you're struggling with?

Or how do you stay motivated to make art?

We're talking this hour with Alison Bechdel, a graphic novelist and cartoonist.

And her new book is called Spent, which is actually a work of auto fiction.

Her previous books include The Secret to Superhuman Strength and "Fun Home", which was adapted into a musical.

"Are You My Mother?"

Her comic strip, her comic strip "Dykes to Watch Out For".

So listeners, what impact does Alison Bechdel's work had on you?

What do you wanna ask or tell Alison about it?

Is there a Bechdel cartoon that has stayed with you?

Why?

We're also talking about some of the themes and "Spent," have you experienced a change in wealth or status that you've struggled with?

And how do you stay motivated to make art in a world on fire?

You could call us at (866) 733-6786.

You can post on our social channels.

We're on Blue Sky, Facebook, Instagram, or Threads at KQED forum, and you can email forum@kqed.org.

One of the things I was wondering is if, if wealth and fame made you a little more isolated or a little more protective, because it feels like that's kind of where the character Alison is at the - Start.

Yeah, totally.

Totally.

Yeah.

She's sort of isolated in her little Amazon Prime cocoon.

And that's, I guess that's one other thing about capitalism I wanted to explore is the way that you just kind of get slowly and steadily bought in.

If you, if you are lucky enough to get bought in at all, you start getting these rewards, you get, you get money and it makes you, it changes you, it immediately changes you and makes you have something that you don't wanna lose.

And that was fun to contrast the older people in the book with the younger people, because the younger people, of course, don't have anything to lose yet.

They, they don't have anything.

So they're willing to take more risks in a way that Alison certainly has not, although she's moving in that direction.

- Yeah.

The other thing, when we were talking just before the break, about how you, a cartoonist who first came to prominence doing a comic called "Dykes to Watch Out For" at a time when, you know, lesbians were very much outsiders, right?

Yeah.

And your sister is very much part of the system in the sense of she has a very conventional job as an elementary school teacher.

And now all of a sudden, that sort of outsider status has given you tremendous, tremendous opportunities.

Yeah.

It felt like that was something you wanted to explore as well.

Do you feel like you have sort of moved from the margins as a result of the kind of, I don't know, I guess rewards the capitalism provides?

- I, I do.

And it's strange because I, I formed my identity as an outsider.

And so that has really, you know, as a young person, I, you couldn't do something more on the margins than a being a lesbian and b being a a cartoonist.

Those were both like really fringy pursuits.

- Yeah.

It came out in the eighties, "Dykes to Watch Out For."

- Yeah.

So it's been a funny trajectory to see all of that change and to, you know, I, I sometimes feel like I wouldn't, I, what, what would appeal to me about the world of comics was that no one looked at it like it was, it was just under the radar.

It was lowbrow.

It didn't get critiqued the way fine art or literary writing does.

And it was kind of like, oh, I can do this.

'cause no one's watching.

But now of course, everybody's watching, so it's all different.

- You've got some calls coming in.

Let me go to Kelly and Marin.

Hi Kelly.

You're on.

- Hi.

I was calling in because I actually just saw "Spent" a signed copy at Green Apple Books yesterday and bought it.

So, yay.

I'm very excited to read it.

And also just to say how much I loved "Dykes to Watch Out For."

I used to volunteer with Off Our Backs in Washington DC and Oh wow.

Getting to see the, the new strips was always such a highlight.

So this is a thrill to be able to talk with you.

- Thank you so much.

Suzanne writes, I love Alison and, and have followed her since "Dykes to Watch Out For" which I read in The Bay Times.

I'm a closet writer slash cartoonist having drawn cartoons for friends for years.

I'd like to draw longer format graphic novels, but the idea of drawing such a long story is daunting.

Can you comment on the timeframe it takes for a graphic novel and any advice or inspiration?

Wow, that's really interesting because these have been very different timeframes with regards to the work that you've done over the course of your - Career.

Yeah, that's, that's interesting.

Well, it helped for me to have all those years of writing short form comics, writing these week biweekly episodes that had to fit in 10 little panels that sort of, I built up my chops enough to be able to do longer work.

But even so, it was, yeah, it was quite daunting.

You should be daunted if you're about to embark on a graphic novel or memoir or whatever, because it's a's a very demanding, it's very time intensive.

You have to write, not just write a book, but then you have to draw it like a, like a monk sitting at your little, you know, drawing board.

And to draw something well is very painstaking.

It takes forever.

It just takes an insane amount of time, I can't even tell you.

So you have to kind of accept that.

And I've spent years on, on these books.

I mean, this book "Spent," somehow, I was able to bang out in about three years, but my other projects took closer to six, seven, even eight years - Probably.

Partly because you weren't so worried about being super accurate and studied in the topic that you were covering.

Like you were gonna read Marx to be able to write your memoir about your relationship - With money.

Yeah, I just look, I just lowered my standards.

- Not lowered your standards, but I guess there's a certain freedom in being able to make things up.

- Yes, yes.

Who knew?

All those fiction writers were having so much fun.

- I know.

So does that mean that there's more fiction coming your way or the thing that people say about fiction all the time, which is that you can get to deeper truths in fiction than sometimes you can in, in memoir.

Do you think that's true?

- You know, my writer friends would always say that when, when I was deep in my I identity as a memoirist.

And I would think, no, you can't, you, you really need to work with the actual truth you make, you can, anyone can make something up.

I think this all goes back for me, perhaps to my mother wishing that I had written "Fun Home" as fiction to disguise the family and protect her.

And even when I would say to her mom, no one would, everyone would think it was true anyhow.

Even if I called it fiction.

'cause that's what we do when we read fiction.

We always like imagine this is somehow a version of the truth at least.

So that, that just always interested me, like, would it have made a difference if I'd written it as fiction?

I couldn't write it as fiction.

The whole point of that book was that it really happened.

- Yeah.

We're getting a lot of comments about "Dykes to Watch Out For".

Talk about bringing those characters back in "Spent."

What was that like for you?

Oh, man.

And why you wanted to, - It was so fun to ha be with those people again.

I had gotten kind of burned out on them all after 25 years of writing the comic strip.

I was happy to move on to other things, but when times get tough, it was really reassuring to realize that they're still there.

I still have access to these people and they're still doing the stuff they've always done.

They're still doing all their various kinds of activism and community-based work.

They're, they're still living in their group household even though they're in their sixties.

And I was just so happy to be with these devoted, dedicated, progressive people.

- Yeah.

There's Lois and Sparrow and Stewart and Ginger.

You've talked about kind of needing to bring them back.

What did you need?

- Well, when I was writing my comic strip, I would use the characters that to process what was going on in the world.

Like eventually current events became a real strong theme in the strip.

It would al it was almost like half soap opera about these characters and half op-ed cartoon where people are discussing what's going on in the world and in the news.

So I would use them as a tool to understand for myself what was happening in the world.

'cause I, I, I'm not like a news person.

I don't, I can't really follow the news unless I make a story out of it.

So that's what I used them for.

And so they came in very handy now when things are even more chaotic and crazy - And the fact that they didn't really change that was important.

Right.

That kind of describe what some of the characters are doing now and, and how they've sort of followed along that trajectory into their, what, mid sixties now?

I guess - They'd be.

Yeah.

Yeah.

They're all like on the verge of retirement.

Sparrow works for Planned Parenthood.

Ginger's still at the university in the trenches, you know, fighting off the administration that wants to cut all the departments except the business classes.

Lois, who used to work in the women's bookstore now runs the, the queer youth organization in town.

And Stewart, who was the stay at home parent of, of Stewart and Sparrow's Child JR.

Does all kinds of like random activism.

He's doing like Ukrainian relief efforts and get out the vote letter writing drives, and he hosts Shabbat every week for all the characters to come together and like chill out.

- So was it that you were burnt out on them in 2008 when you stopped?

Or was there a part of you that didn't really need them as much at that point because it felt like maybe progress was being - Made?

Yeah, it did.

How naive I was.

I thought, oh, well, yeah, there's not the same urgent need for this representation that there was when I started out and I could maybe now take a break.

'cause everything looked like it was gonna be just fine.

Little did I know, but fortunately they were still, I still had access to them when I needed them.

- Yeah.

So it doesn't necessarily represent something negative to you that you need them again, or, - Well, I don't know.

Yeah, it's, it's, it's tough times, but the, there's this weird upside to it.

I'm, I'm trying very hard to stay in touch with whatever optimism I can reach.

And there's something about going back to that kind of communal life that I had when I was younger that, that these characters live on a daily basis.

Like that's very promising.

Like it's the opposite of this atomized way that we've all been living with all the, you know, we we're cut off from each other in so many ways in terms of technology, in terms of wealth inequality, all of these things are just pushing us apart and we need to come in the opposite direction.

- Right.

These characters in "Spent," they all live together in a communal household.

They're part of like a university longitudinal study.

- I know.

Like, I don't, I mean, when I was younger I lived in a group house and I loved it, but then it was like, oh man, let me outta here.

But now it's like, huh.

There's something very appealing about it.

- We're talking with Alison Bechdel about her new book spent, which grapples with the effects of wealth and fame on her relationships and her art and even her politics.

There's some of that that sort of creeps in there too, or a questioning of that in that time.

And you can join the conversation listeners at 8 6 6 7 3 3 6 7 8 6 at the email address forum@kqd.org.

Or you can post on our social channels at KQED forum.

Anything you wanna ask or tell Alison Bechdel or if her work had an impact on you, what kind of impact is that?

Or questions about being a cartoonist or about making art in a world that feels like it's in flames, essentially, the last time we had you on Alison, it was to talk about "The Secret to Superhuman Strength."

And one of the things that I found really comforting in reading that book, which was really about your journey, I think, of self-improvement - Yeah.

- Internally and externally, and figuring out if you could do that through physical exertion and so on.

One of the things that I found really comforting about that was this, almost like this conclusion that this book is drawing about how life is very circular or it's like this constant process of sort of trying to retrieve things that were so meaningful in previous times while still moving forward.

And I've often used that as a way to think about the times that we are in now where it constantly feels like, you know, you make progress and then there's maybe a backlash and a regression of that progress.

But I think I've comforted myself in thinking that that sort of circular or elliptical motion is sort of always moving upward.

Yeah.

That's a very full, yeah.

What are you, what are you thinking?

- Well, I mean, I, I wanna say two things.

First of all, I'll say something that doesn't directly respond to that, but in "The Secret to Superhuman Strength," yes, I'm writing about my own, circling around these issues, these problems that I have that keep recurring in my life and I keep thinking I'm resolving them.

But no, they come around again.

But on a higher level, as you say, like it's an upward spiral that you're going around.

You never quite fix everything.

'cause you, there's something remaining on the next rotation that you have to deal with.

- Right.

- Which, which I tried to do as accurately as I could, but makes for not very interesting storytelling because, you know, you want a story to go somewhere.

You want people to change and become something new and different, but change takes forever.

Change is really difficult.

And of course, I'm talking in this case about personal growth Yes.

And change.

Like, it's a lifelong process.

You don't, you know, you can go by these books that tell you there's five steps to this or that, but it takes forever.

True lasting change takes a long time.

But it's funny that you're now casting this as a political pattern too.

- Right.

- And yeah, I've, I've always understood the, you know, progress and backlash model, but man, lately I just, yeah, I've been feeling very kind of, it, you know, I, I really allowed myself to believe in this upward movement or this, this moral arc of the universe bending toward justice, you know, and who it, it doesn't, it doesn't, we can choose to believe that.

And I think we have to, but I thought it was really happening.

- Yeah.

And so reading spent and comparing those sort of experiences and interpretations, one of the things that made me think about is maybe I've been really too preoccupied with this idea that it is moving upward though ultimately.

And the fact that it feels like what the character of Alison Bechdel gets to in Spent is that what, what really sort of matters is the people around you and how you engage with what is around you, within your realm.

- Yeah.

Yeah.

Like politics and ideology can get so abstract and in, in really turbulent times.

It's, it's important to just be with your people and support each other and do what needs to be done.

Which is also I think what ha needs to happen on a, on a larger level too, but it's also immediate and pressing to engage in mutual aid with the people around you.

- Yeah.

And in some ways, sort of the change that you can affect to some degree is like a, a ripple.

There's no like upward or downward movement, but it's like a ripple among the people that you I like that interact with.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

It's, it's, yeah.

So it's been really interesting to think about how those things, how those things have kind of come together within these two books, even though they're so incredibly different to some degree.

Yeah, totally.

One quick thing I wanted to ask you about before we get into the next break is that I understand that this is also an audio book, this graphic novel's an audio book.

- Yeah.

How were you?

It it will be, it's not out yet, but it's, it's coming out soon.

- And so how are you able to do that, given the fact that so much is within the image itself?

- It's, it's been a real learning curve.

I, we thought it was just gonna work to have actors read the lines in the book, but no, that, that's not true at all because there's so much visual humor and information in these drawings that you need to somehow get into verbal form or, or sound effects.

As I started to learn about, it was like writing a, it was writing a radio play, basically, which is a whole different kind of skill than my normal skillset.

But it was fun.

- We're talking about the new book spent by Alison Bechdel, which is gonna be an audio book with sound effects.

It's a, it's a graphic autos fiction novel.

We're talking this hour with Alison Bechdel about her new book spent, it's a work of auto fiction, the grapples with the effects of wealth and fame on her relationships and her art.

You may know Alison Bechdel from "Dykes to Watch Out For," "Fun Home," which was adapted into a musical and "Are You My Mother," both graphic memoirs, her previous book includes "The Secret to Super Human Strength."

Listeners, what do you wanna ask or tell Alison Bechdel.

And let me go to Victor in San Francisco.

Hi, Victor.

You're on.

- Hi there, you guys, I was gonna ask a technical question about, I'm, I'm really lazy and I wanted to do a cartoon and I was wondering if you have any tools like AI generative, where you can teach it five or six different poses and then have it draw the whole script for you or the whole series.

But as I was listening to you, I am so blown away by your brain and for your, I it takes a lot of time to develop a voice as a writer and as a cartoonist.

I was a cartoonist in high school 30 years ago, and it's taken me 30 years to accept my reality as a cartoonist.

And so you found your voice as a cartoonist and as a writer, a radio play.

And then there's a certain objectivity that keeps that voice moving forward and gives it its credibility.

So how do you combine it all?

I mean, just writing alone and then drawing alone, drawing cartoons, and then how, how do you do, what kind of discipline does it take to be so awesome?

- Thanks, Victor.

It takes a lot of discipline.

You know, as I said earlier, cartooning is incredibly labor intensive.

It's, it's a, I mean, you could, I'm sure you could find some AI tool that would collect those poses as you, as you said, or, you know, it's an, it's also a longstanding tradition among some cartoonists to just use clip art and, and add captions to it.

That can be amusing and fun.

But for me, the part of the, the whole point I do it is 'cause the drawing is, is interesting.

And so much of the storytelling for me happens in the character's gestures and expressions.

And you can really show their, their relationships and I don't know, I just, I just love the drawing, so I wouldn't want to cut that out.

That being said, I did make a, a sort of crossed over to the dark side in the middle of this book and began drawing digitally.

I, I've never done that before.

I always just drew, you know, with a pen and ink on paper, like people have done for millennia.

But that's a much slower process I learned than drawing on a tablet.

So I was falling behind in my deadline and I just did it.

I just started drawing on a tablet.

- And how did that feel?

Does, is it something that you think you'll continue to do now?

- I really liked it.

It was so much easier.

My God, I miss, I do miss the ink on paper feeling I just couldn't get that same kind of intimate connection with the tablet.

But there was something very freeing about it.

You could, I could try stuff and not worry if it wasn't gonna work.

'cause I would just start over.

I don't like not having a product, like there's no finished piece of paper with that drawing on it, which is very sad.

But in terms of just getting the work done, it was kind of amazing.

- Yeah.

And, and, and then you do have the book itself, but the actual paper along the way, we have another question from the listener who wants to know when you're making a comic, how do formal choices like shading and gradation, panel framing and composition line weight and negative space help you both express and process the emotions you're exploring?

This is from Jesse.

- I honestly am not a really great drawer.

I'm not a great cartoonist.

I wish I thought of all those things as I was working, but I don't, I'm just trying to like, get information on the page.

I, I suppose in some sense, I'm, I'm, I'm unconsciously making all kinds of, you know, storytelling choices in the, in the line I make or the way I shade something.

Although this, this book is, it's full color in a way that I've never worked before.

My partner Holly colored it in Photoshop.

I do these, the black and white line art and hand it over to her.

And that meant no shading of any kind.

It's all kind of flat colors.

Oh no, that's not true.

Then I had another person, wonderful guy named John Chad, who put a layer of shading of shadow on everything on top of the color.

So I wasn't actually making those decisions and that was kind of fun.

Just turn it over to these other people to do all the coloring.

- Yeah.

But you're happy with the, the product?

- I am, I am, I I I love the work of Hergé who did the Tintin comics.

I mean, it's a little problematic in many ways, but I love, I love those immersive full color stories that he would tell.

I loved getting lost in those when I was younger and I wanted to, I always had this fantasy of like, could I do that?

Could I tell a story that was, you know, created this virtual world in that same way?

And so that was my goal and I think, I think I did it.

- "The Secret to Superhuman Strength" was watercolor, - Right?

Yes.

Yeah.

And, and not exactly full color.

Like all spaces aren't necessarily colored because it was just so much work and we were still figuring.

And Holly also worked with that book with me and it was a crazy coloring process.

I can't even talk about it.

Yeah.

Everyone would fall asleep.

- But it's, it's interesting you're exploring color in this way and continuing to - See Yeah, with every book it, it gets a little technologically more complex.

- Does it still feel like the dark side then to you or no?

- Oh, probably, but that's part of this whole world we live in.

Like you, it just takes you over and you don't know it's happening.

So maybe I'll have a revolt at some point and get, go completely offline, live with a flip phone - As somebody does in your book Spent.

Yes.

Let me go to caller Larry in Belmont.

Hi Larry.

You're on.

- Hi Alison.

I'm so, so have so, so thoroughly enjoyed your conversation and talking about what you do and how you do it.

And I, I'm 81, have cancer, don't have a whole lot of years left.

And I live on social security and I spend as much as I can trying to make the world better by donating to political people who I think, or at least I hope can change What is happening today.

And since you talked early in, in the show about your feelings about having amassed and a certain amount of wealth and, and how that's affecting you, it's a pleasure, first of all to hear someone who has achieved that level who still has a conscience.

But now I'm curious, there are so many ways to, to try to make the world a better place.

What ways are you trying to use some of that wealth to make it a better place?

- Well, I too give money.

You know, there's a scene in in Spent where Alison is like making her annual charitable donations and it's just become this huge task because over the years there's more and more people who need money and she's just feeling like hopeless is this doing anything for anyone?

But she does it and she, and she doesn't give enough.

She's all, she had this goal as a young person to donate 10% of her income every year.

And she never quite does that much.

But she's working toward it.

And, and I, I am too.

But yeah, I always have felt bad over the years that I'm, I'm just, I'm not really out in the streets.

I'm not like a activist or an organizer.

I, I don't, I felt like I, I can't really claim that my comics are my political work, but, you know, I'm starting to just decide that that's okay.

This is, this is my contribution.

I'm, I'm, my hope is that I'm at least entertaining the people who are out there in the streets.

Like I'm giving it, creating an accurate picture of those people's lives that in a way that will, I don't know, hearten and amuse them.

- Is the title "Spent" in part a reflection of feeling pretty spent after kind of fighting the, the good fight, I guess in a way for so long?

- Yeah, it is.

Like, w we've all been doing this for so long and it's just getting worse.

It's exhausting.

And, and now I'm old, you know, I don't have the energy I once did.

- So was this also sort of a reflection on aging too for you?

- Yes.

Yeah.

Alison sometimes can't tell if things that are happening are because she's getting older or because like the world has changed.

It's often confusing.

But also I liked looking at these people in their sixties living their lives.

Like the, there's this, they're all still like, you know, doing stuff there.

There's a, the, the longstanding couple, Stewart and Sparrow get interested in this other woman and they, they form a throuple.

And it was so fun to talk about older people having sex lives and draw, you know, drawing their aging bodies was, felt really fun and important to do - What was driving the desire to have a MAGA sister?

- Oh, just to, to be able to talk about this, you know, this intra familial stress that so many of us have.

I mean, most people have a MAGA person somewhere in the, in their family, if not many.

And I wanted to write about how that's how they're staying connected in spite of that.

Like, it looks like they're not gonna be able to do it.

Alison's impatient.

Sheila doesn't respect Alison, but they somehow find some common ground.

- Yeah, they do find some common ground.

It's kind of shocking that Alison's sister, Sheila is so, is so maga to the point where she even advocates for the banning of Alison's book about her dad the taxidermist.

But of course, sorry, you wanted to say something - About that?

Well, it's funny because Sheila, the real reason Sheila doesn't like Alison's book is because Sheila got left out of it.

Alison left her sister out of this family memoir supposedly because to protect her privacy.

But really, I think Alison just thought it made a better story if she were the hero, you know?

- Yeah.

- And so that continues to wrinkle with Sheila.

- Well, I ask that because your, your book "Fun Home", for example, it's been banned in a lot of places.

- Oh yeah, yeah.

Totally.

Yeah.

That was it.

My little response to the book banning efforts, it's been really crazy.

I mean, it's, it's crazy to see all these books being banned books by queer people, books by people of color.

Like they're, they're, they wanna ban the people.

That's what's happening, you know?

But I, my my mind just kind of goes blank when I think about banning books because what can you say about it?

It's, it's evil.

- Let me remind listeners, you're listening to Forum, I mean a Kim, I I do though wanna ask if you can reflect on what gets lost when we ban books, but in particular when we ban books that depict queer lives.

- Yeah.

Well the interesting thing about gay people and books is that for so long, that was how we found ourselves.

How we learned who we were.

You know, it's, it's different.

Being queer is different from like being, if you're black, you're usually raised by other black people and you learn about your identity from your family.

But with gay people, that doesn't happen.

Even me, I live, my dad was gay, I was gay.

We, we had no idea.

We were living in the same house for 18 years and had no idea.

So I had to learn about who I was from books and in "Fun Home", I, there's a whole long story of me going to the, all the libraries, the town library, the college library, amassing these books to, to learn about who I was.

I mean now there's the internet, it's different a little bit, but still books have been this vital avenue to learning about our identity.

So it's all the more galling to see them trying to stamp them out.

- This listener writes, I worked as the cartoonist for my student newspaper, the Daily Californian for a couple of years.

There's nothing quite like distilling a whole idea into one punchy panel with a dash of humor.

What's the part you love most about working in comics and how do you see this delightfully weird medium staking its claim in the wider art world, which sets it apart from painting, sculpture, and other fine art forms?

- You know, when I started out, I was doing single panel comics where I did have to do that punchy one image with a, with a great concept, just all in one go.

'cause I thought that was easier than tell than a comic strip where you had to draw the same characters more than once and you know, have, have more writing.

But over time I found that it was actually much easier to tell stories than to tell those punchy one panel comic strips.

So I just kind of went off on this storytelling track and that's what I love about it.

Especially when I was doing my comic strip and I was telling these stories episodically over time and hearing back from my readers and having their feedback affect where the story went in the future.

It was this really fun kind of communal project.

- Yeah.

Actually we have a question about continuity from Tony Tory who writes, my question is about how to keep the characters looking like who they are framed to frame.

Have you ever struggled with this?

- Yes.

Yeah.

Yeah.

It's hard.

I, I realized at a certain point, you know what, they don't have to look exactly the same, just make them vaguely recognizable and that will be fine.

And after doing that for a little while, I got better at just drawing them again and again.

- And the fun part with the characters in spent is that you had to imagine what they would look like, you know, decades - Out.

Yeah, yeah.

Well I always, the comic strip always existed in real time, so the characters were aging all along.

- Right, right.

- Which was easy to show with kids 'cause they grow so quickly.

But the other characters too would just slowly get a little more haggard looking little gray.

But now, now in their sixties, they're full on getting old - And the most dramatic of course being the change in the one who is a kid in "Dykes to Watch Out For" and then their college student JR. - Now 19 in "Spent."

Yeah.

That was fun to imagine how that kid grew up.

Very much, very much following in their parents' footsteps, I must say.

Yeah.

- So - You're - Teaching at Yale now, right?

I am.

- Isn't that crazy?

Teaching comics at Yale.

- And so you must hear, or have you heard from students are, are they picking up "Fun Home"?

- Yeah, it's weird.

Like they, they've all read it, if not in high school and then in other college classes.

And they tell me stuff like how formative it was for them.

And it's, it's hard to know what to do with that often.

Why?

I don't know.

What do you, what do you, I mean you can't really take that on.

It's just, I'm just doing what I do.

History is happening.

It's not like I did this, but I know that we want people to, we want people to latch onto, people to look up to.

And I, I guess I, I still find it kind of uncomfortable taking on that role.

- Yeah.

- I'm just drawing over here in the corner.

Don't pay any attention.

- So then for people who have, I think, felt very familiar feelings to what the character that Alison Bechdel feels in the book, which is that it feels really overwhelming right now and they're really questioning the point or the value of the work that they do in this moment.

How have you come to some kind of conclusion about how to face that and work through that, through the process of this book spend?

I, - I kind of have, I mean, working on this book was fun.

There was something really fun about it.

Even though the subject matter is quite grim and the, you know, the direction of the country is quite grim.

I felt like I'm writing about these people connecting, I'm writing about connecting with nature.

There's a lot of like seasonal stuff in Vermont in my story.

Yeah.

And those are the things that, that sustain me and that we, we all really need and we just gotta, just gotta find joy.

'cause that will keep us strong for the struggle.

- Alison Bechdel, thank you for, for "Spent" and thank you for this conversation.

Thank you Mina.