Alison Bechdel, _Spent_

GRAPHIC AUTO-FICTION, I guess we could say. Alison Bechdel enjoyed breakout success with a graphic memoir, Fun Home, about growing up in a family mortuary business with a closeted dad, a thwarted mom, and two brothers; the book became the source for a successful Broadway musical. The Alison Bechdel of Spent enjoys breakout success with a graphic memoir, Death and Taxidermy, about growing up in a family taxidermy business with a sister; the book becomes the source for a successful television series. Both the actual Bechdel and the Bechdel of Spent have a partner named Holly and live in Vermont; I do not know whether the actual Holly also raises goats. In short, Spent takes place in an alternate universe just a hair to one side of our own.

The political economy of this alternate universe works just like our own. Holly and her goats and Alison and her books have to navigate the same terrain of labor, commodification, exchange, and (unfortunately) exploitation that we do. The chapter titles of Spent are all taken from the chapter titles of Volume I of Marx's Capital: "The Process of Production of Capital," "The Process of Exchange," and so on. I wasn't sure how well this conceit worked, to be honest, but it does emphasize that artists, even though their work is highly specialized, idiosyncratic, and personal, are still workers, just like the rest of us, subject to the same economic forces as the rest of us, even when they are as successful as Bechdel.

The real treat of Spent's alternate universe is that it includes several characters from Bechdel's beloved and much-missed comic, Dykes to Watch Out For: Stuart, Sparrow, Louis, Ginger, and (briefly) Samia. (Not Mo, however--perhaps Mo and Alison being in the same universe would create a cosmic collapse.) They are older--Stuart and Sparrow have a college-age kid--but still they are a wise, funny, and affectionate portrait of the way at least some of us live now. New character Naomi is a welcome addition, and Alison's MAGA-fied Christian sister reveals some surprising dimensions by book's end.