Spent: A Comic Novel

This is a Graphic Novel. I read this book, and I listen to the audiobook. I think that the audiobook was done really well. I found the pictures were very cute, and I did get pulled in this story. I did find it looking on the negative side of everything which did get on my nerves. I received an ARC of this book. This review is my own honest opinion about the book like all my reviews are.

Great sense of humor, informative and fantastic graphics!

Before her breakthrough graphic novel Fun Home, Alison Bechdel drew a weekly comic strip called Dykes to Watch Out For, which appeared nationwide in various alternative newspapers in the late 1980s through late 2000s. It was hilarious, barbed and poignant, usually all 3 three in each installment. Many of the characters who appeared in the strip are featured here in her new graphic novel, and its great to see a selection of them return, as citizens in their matured years. Ms. Bechdel's keen sense of how to depict human nature remains fully intact, and her detailed comic art allows for more subtle expression than many artists might try to express. The story line is well, a little Canadian, ha ha, but well told, and with some on-target, gentle satire. And in mid-2025, as this review is written, Spent feels like kind of a balm for the soul.

A really boring story about miserable people and the super liberal takes that make me think that people may be a little happier if they didn't put such stringent rules on themselves.

For those of us who loved Dykes to Watch Out For, this book brings us up to date with their lives and with the absurdities of living in Trumpworld while enjoying the material fruits of talent and achievement.

I never wanted Spent to end. This comic novel had the intimate depth of a whole television series. The characters are deeply relatable and flawed in the best ways. Bechdel captures the essence of our painful slog out of the pandemic with empathy and compassion.

A beautiful piece of bookflesh. Great colors. I'm halfway through and, as usual, Alison is raising all the right issues, and in order. I cannot wait to get to The Transformation of the Value of Labor-Power into Wages. Das Kapital comes to the funnies! Thank you Ms Bechdel! I love yr stuff!!

I don't know what's better--- the drawing or the story or the characters. It pulled me in immediately and kept up the pace. Of course, I highly recommend (and everything else she writes).

It was in perfect condition with glossy colored pages, really nice.

While this is definitely an autobiographical musing on mixing fame with everyday life, having ones story co-opted, writer’s block, insecurity, financial woes, familial challenges, and an uncomfortable political environment, it may also count a very peculiar installment of the dearly missed “Dykes to Watch Out For” comic strip.And yes, the question, “But what about Naomi?” is properly answered.As life proceeds go on on around her, our intrepid heroine decides her next book, “$um,” will not only be an examination of the effects of late-stage capitalism on the average American, but also a roadmap on how to free ourselves from it— just as soon as Alison buys a new keyboard so she can be perfectly set up to actually write it. Well, maybe after taking Goaty McGoatface to the vet. Oh, and that project for the Farmer’s Market. And …I enjoyed both this peek into Bechdel’s brain and catching up with old, fictional friends.

Alison Bechdel: SPENT (hardback, Mariner Books, 2025)Alison Bechdel—the real one, the artist and writer—notes that the character Alison Bechdel in SPENT is much like her, the author, in outlook and attitude and sometimes in circumstance but is not otherwise her.First, the bad news: the glue binding of the hardback copy is stiff and does not easily allow the pages to lie flat.The good news is that that's really the only bad news. The drawings are reproduced on heavy opaque paper and beautifully colored by Holly Rae Taylor.I've always been impressed by Bechdel's drawings. For all their simple directness, they're exceptionally expressive (in this, even her goats are expressive) and her characters radiate personality and mutter their opinions and misconceptions as if it's no big deal. That's just what characters do—at least that's what her characters do. Along the way, they face moral quandaries, personal challenges, and professional failures. Again, no big deal, that's what they do.Alison and Holly, the characters, deal with the ethical dilemmas of living honestly in a capitalist culture and dealing—Oh, God!—with the business of a TV production, and somehow, Bechdel, the author, does it with a marvelous sense of humor. Not only is Alison Bechdel, author and character, a very good artist, she's a superbly intelligent writer.Be aware that nudity and some sex are depicted in some of these drawings. Plus, the goats are very frisky.Other reviewers have noted that this might not be her very best work, so perhaps five stars is a bit too high. Let's call it a solid 4.8. Or maybe 4.9.

Alison Bechdel is very talented and everyone should read her at least once - especially adults who have never read a graphic (meaning a cartoon, nothing nasty) novel. She basically invented the form for adults and she's delightful!

Enjoyable, but in all honesty I liked her prior books, Dykes to Watch Out for and Fun Home, somewhat better. Found it a little difficult to keep the hard cover format open to read the comic art.

This book is hilarious. And timely.

HioHilarious

☆☆☆☆☆4 out of 5 stars. · a few seconds agoGood read and funnyThe celebrated and beloved New York Times bestselling author of the modern classic Fun Home presents a laugh-out-loud, brilliant, and passionately political work of autofiction.I'll admit I've never heard of autofiction but I have heard of AlisonBechdel. I have read "DTWOF, so many times and still have such fond memories of the group.Bechdel help me in my own coming out process more than I thought was possible.So seeing a new graphic novel was exciting and I just couldn't wait.I still love her art work, and its both sad and satisfying to see the old gang, grayer and older than I remember but then so am I.Maybe because of how bad things have become I don't come away with that same feeling of years gone by. I'm not sure I buy that any protest or activism will save us this time. How many times do we have to keep.fighting for the right to simply live and love? To feed our families instead of the pockets of the megarich?So forgive me if I found the story itself a bit of a downer. It also moved slowly and for me took forever to get to its point if it had one.So not the best Bechdel has ever done, but still heads above the rest.Recommend. Expected publishing date May 20, 2025

A brilliant update on the Dykes to Watch Out For_ aged into cronehood (60+), surviving and also consumed, trying to understand and connect with younger generations of outside identifier, and wondering what to do. A sign at the airport reads "Vermont: No need for LSD." Still living in this hippest part of New England, Bechdel taught me some new Queer culture vocabulary even as I recognized the country-living Sorels, muck boots and barn coats. A very funny, as well as loving, take on where my peers, the Lesbian feminist activists of the 1970s and 80s, find ourselves. Her clear and easy to read comic graphics style includes all those little hidden jokes we've come to expect from her. Well done. Insightful. Kind. Sexy :)

It’s nice to see the “real” (but incredibly factionalized) world of Bechdel and her cartoon creations in “Dykes to Watch Out For” merge. It’s been a while since we’ve seen some of these characters and it was really nice to catch up. Having been a DTWOF fan since 1991, it did my heart good to see them. Bechdel’s incisive and dry wit is on full display. The only character I wasn’t crazy about was the sour and humorless offspring of Sparrow and Stuart. They just didn’t add a lot to the narrative for me. Otherwise, it’s a great read.

A wonderful fusion of Meta Alison, commentary on our political climate, and the return of DTWOF characters. Kind of wish Clarice and Toni had been included, but it was great to see the others. I'm hoping she continues in this vein - we need more work like this.

This book is so laugh out loud funny.Disclaimer, I’m Bechdel’s age and I also went to Oberlin(OMG did we overlap? Was just there almost all of 78-79 before a health event) but I have loved Dykes to Watch Out For since I used to live above a Lesbian bookstore in the West Village called Judith’s Room. So funny and this book is LOL funny. I wasn’t expecting another. Wow Bechdel is so prolific! I don’t want to give away any of the great jokes but it’s structured around the contents of a Marxist explanation of money,makes fun of well meaning liberals and also helps us understand the college kids of today and where they’re coming from which is so great for me because my nieces and nephew are that age, two of them are pretty activist and another is definitely pro-choice if not openly activist. It gave me a lot of empathy for their struggles even though they’re not main characters. SPOILER ALERT: As two generations explore polyamory, I can relate. Older love/younger love. What to tell, what not?If on Kindle of course it’s best on a tablet because the phone renders it readable but not as visible! All of these jokes really land so sharply !