Alison Bechdel brings the 'Fun Home'

When Alison Bechdel pre-scouted her panel location Thursday, she said she got a little worried. She thought she would be booked to speak in a room with 40 to 50 seats -- tops. However, prescient Comic-Con programmers knew Bechdel and her debut graphic novel / personal memoir, "Fun Home: A Family Tragicomic," would attract more attendees than that.

So when Bechdel showed up 10 minutes before her first-ever Comic-Con presentation, she stopped and marveled a little over the serpentine line that stretched down the long corridor. Inside, standing at a podium in front of her Southern California fans, Bechdel said she got into comics 25 years ago namely because they were "low brow" and "low pressure."

"I didn't want to get too closely critiqued," she said.

She was also looking for representations of people who looked like her. "Women who are human beings, not just sexual fantasies," she said. "I wanted to make lesbians visible because I thought if people saw us, they would like us. We're regular people. We're human beings."

She said that if she had known before she started writing "Fun Home" that it would be embraced by such a large audience, she never would have started writing it. "I would have been too freaked out," she laughed.

Her next book is also a full-length memoir, this time focussed on her relationship history. "It's going to be very difficult to be as honest as I would like to be," she said.

Bechdel also won an Eisner Awards on Saturday night.

-- Sheigh Crabtree

Comments

[Isabella Clark]

Is someone going to do a longer interview with her for the Times? She is so genuine and smart.

[Dotty]

No one seems to be mentioning her series "Dykes to Watch Out For." There are four books in the series and they are pretty good. I have to admit, I am a little wary of the idea of a "relationship memoir." Eee gads. Danger. Danger

[Dotty]

...correction, there are over twenty "Dykes to Watch Out For" (DTWOF) published! My local store had only four. When I checked Amazon, almost two dozen popped up. They're really, really funny.