In the opening scene of Spent, billed on its cover as a 'comic novel,' Alison Bechdel's cartoon avatar, also named Alison, has rearranged her sock drawer in an effort to stave off 'the feeling of impending doom.' Ever since she was born on the page four decades ago, Bechdel's fictional self has regularly journeyed between insecure and panicked, conveyed by the artist through subtle downturns in her tiny dash of a mouth. She perseverates about impending nuclear war, environmental disaster, 'patriarchal death culture,' girlfriends cheating on her, the local gay bookstore where she works closing down. For fans who have followed Bechdel from underground lesbian cartoonist in the 1980s to best-selling author of Fun Home: A Family Tragicomic, and then watched with amazement as her life on the page went 3-D in a multiple'Tony Award'winning musical, the doom-tinged update in Spent will not come as a shock: She can still get pretty freaked out. Bechdel's latest title refers to late-stage...
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