Alison Bechdel’s Queer Archives: Graphic Medicine 2023

I’m looking forward to presenting my paper “‘Let’s try and retrace our steps, shall we?’ Invitations and Encounters in Alison Bechdel’s Queer Archives” at the Graphic Medicine Conference in Toronto in July. Can’t wait to see old and new Graphic Medicine friends! Here’s the abstract for my presentation, which is on Friday, July 14 at 10:30. The full conference program is available here.

Alison Bechdel’s “Cartoonist’s Introduction” to The Essential Dykes to Watch Out For opens with a self-portrait of the cartoonist at her desk drawing. Bechdel looks up and says, “Good God,” perhaps to the cat who is lounging in a box on the drafting table. In the next tier, Bechdel “flitflitflits” through her weekly planner, searching for something, and then she clutches her horrified face, exclaiming in disbelief to her readers, “I FORGOT TO GET A JOB.” In the bottom tier, Bechdel anxiously admits, “I’ve been drawing this comic strip for my entire adult life!” and wonders, “How did that happen?” In the last panel on the page, Bechdel taps a security code as she opens a door labeled “Archives” and says, “Let’s try and retrace our steps, shall we?” (Fig. 1) We are then given a tour of Bechdel’s archives (Fig. 2) as she tries to understand how it happened that she became a cartoonist who sought to capture queer life in all its complexities.

Fig. 1: Detail from Alison Bechdel’s The Essential Dykes to Watch Out For (New York: Houghton Mifflin, 2008), vii.

Fig. 2: Detail from Alison Bechdel’s The Essential Dykes to Watch Out For (New York: Houghton Mifflin, 2008), viii.

I am fascinated by this image of Bechdel’s archives as well as by the invitation to enter the archives—that is, both her comics as an archive of queer life and her comics in the archives (through archival research on her papers at Smith College). What does this invitation and encounter have to do with graphic medicine, you ask? For one, the content of Bechdel’s work covers many topics for graphic medicine: OCD, AIDS, breast cancer, disability, and fitness cultures—all are taken up and archived in Bechdel’s work. Even more so, Bechdel demonstrates both drawing and archiving as forms of care and, together, as a kind of graphic medicine. Thus, my presentation is also an invitation to the Graphic Medicine community to consider its own practices of documenting through drawing, archiving, and drawing archiving.