For 25 years, Alison Bechdel published her comic strip, "Dykes to Watch Out," in various LGBTQ+ magazines. The strip featured a collection of friends who met, dated, broke up, worked, stressed, and grew older. Most of the major characters were lesbians, and most were politically active and left-leaning, providing a strong social commentary to the strip. But "DTWOF" also provided human interest stories. Relationships formed, grew, and grew apart. Each character is unique, stressing that the lesbian world is far from homogenous. The character Mo is opinionated, socially active, sexually frustrated, and looks suspiciously like the author.

"The Essential Dykes to Watch Out" collects most of these strips in a 400-page volume. By reading the series in this way, I was able to enjoy the evolution of the characters and the stories.

I saw Alison Bechdel speak in Chicago a few months ago, drawn by the fact that she was the inventor of the Bechdel test, which measures female representation in film and other media. I read this collection after that talk because the test originated in a 1986 strip of "DTWOF" (although Bechdel did not give the test a name). For some reason, that strip is not included in this volume. But enough is included to make it entertaining and engaging.

Some explicit sex scenes make this at least a PG-13 rating. But none of it feels gratuitous. I enjoyed watching the characters age and evolve, as well as the improvements in Bechdel's artistic style and the stories themselves.