Lesbians Get Graphic

The rise of the graphic narrative is, to some degree, a recognition of its complexities. The form requires an intricate collaboration between storytelling and drawing, language and imagery, and it has received recognition for its cultural and literary contributions. Art Spiegelman's graphic novel about his father's experience in the Holocaust, Maus: A Survivor's Tale, won the Pulitzer Prize in 1992.

Some may believe that the recent popularity of the graphic novel is the result of declining attention spans in a media-saturated world, but Bechdel does not agree. "It's easy to joke and say that part of the reason visual storytelling is such a trendy thing is that people are becoming less and less literate," she said. "That might be true in a very strict sense, but the way people process information is constantly evolving, and comics is a language whose expressive potential has only begun to be tapped."

As for the future, Kim will only reveal that her next project will be "much lighter and entertaining" with "lots of cute lesbians."

Schrag, who was the subject of the 2004 NewFest Audience Award-winning documentary Confession: A Film About Ariel Schrag, has been promoted from staff writer to story editor on Showtime's The L Word and recently wrote the screen adaptation for her comic Potential. The script is in development with Killer Films (Boys Don't Cry, One Hour Photo, Far From Heaven) and will be directed by Rose Troche (Go Fish, The Safety of Objects). "We're currently casting," said Schrag, who will also work on the animation segments of the movie.

Though Bechdel took a different direction with Fun Home, she is sticking to familiar terrain in Dykes to Watch Our For. "I'm harping on the same old theme I've always harped on," she said, "the cognitive dissonance of trying to hang onto a shred of radicalism in an increasingly complacent, assimilated, commodified, corporate world."

She admitted that readers have noticed some changes in the strip. "People have pointed out to me that I don't have as much sex in my cartoon as I used to," she said. "I'm not sure if that's more a function of middle age or the anaphrodisiac effect of the Bush administration." Bechdel also recently sold her book Love Life: A Case Study, a graphic memoir about her love life set against her complicated upbringing and childhood, to Houghton Mifflin.

Kim admits that when she first began writing there were very few lesbian cartoonists to serve as mentors. Her influences were varied, from Neil Gaiman and Kiriko Nananan (who, though not a lesbian, has written several stories about women in love) to Gertrude Stein and other left-bank writers such as Sylvia Beach and Djuna Barnes.

Schrag began cartooning when she was young and did not necessarily identify as lesbian. However, she said, "my greatest inspiration was Lynn Johnston, creator of the strip series For Better or For Worse. In the mid-'90s she did a thread about one of her longtime characters, Lawrence, coming out as gay. I remember feeling really involved in that story line." When Schrag grew up and realized she was gay, most of the writers she admired were still straight, such as Ariel Bordeaux, Joe Matt and Adrian Tomine.

As the graphic narrative continues to evolve in form, content and even readership, it will be interesting to watch how these artists manage to influence future generations with their own work — as, undoubtedly, they will.