Alison Bechdel will revisit the characters from her influential comic strip Dykes To Watch Out For in a new graphic novel coming next year.
Mariner Books will publish Bechdel’s Spent in the spring, the press announced in a news release. It calls the book “a laugh-out-loud, brilliant, and passionately political work of autofiction.”
Bechdel launched Dykes To Watch Out For in 1983. The comic strip, about a group of mostly lesbian friends, ran for 25 years. In 2006, she published her debut graphic memoir, Fun Home, about her childhood and relationship with her closeted gay father. The novel, a National Book Critics Circle Award finalist, was adapted into a Tony Award–winning musical. She is the author of two other graphic memoirs, Are You My Mother? and The Secret to Superhuman Strength.
Spent, Mariner says, follows a character named Alison Bechdel, who runs a pygmy goat sanctuary in Vermont and whose memoir about her father has been adapted into a hit television series, causing envy from her friends—characters from Dykes To Watch Out For. The fictional Alison is herself stricken by jealousy after her partner posts a video about chopping wood that goes viral.
Spent is slated for publication on May 20, 2025.
Michael Schaub is a contributing writer.
