If you're going to be picky about definitions, you'd have to define Alison Bechdel as a "lesbian cartoonist," but to me she is simply a good cartoonist. You don't have to be a lesbian to like her comics. Her characters are real -- I saw some of them this morning at the place where I sometimes eat breakfast -- and she has the ability to make the reader hear her character's voices, even though they're on paper in speech balloons. In a better world, she would already be a well-known mainstream creator. If you haven't read any of her Dykes to Watch Out For series yet, you're missing out on a positive life experience.

The first time I saw Alison, I recognized her right away. She looks like one of the characters in her strips. I was delighted when Mary Fleener asked me to interview Bechdel last winter, because I've long been fascinated by the differences between us. Bechdel had once told me that she couldn't draw women until she was in college; I still can't draw men. Her stories are real-life sitcoms; mine are fantasies. She's a humorist; I wish I were. Alison Bechdel is down-to-earth, as low-key as her comics and was darned nice about the fact that I kept interrupting her.

TRINA ROBBINS: Let's start by having you tell us what you're working on now.

ALISON BECHDEL: Well, I'm always working on my comic strip and trying to, you know, keep cranking that out. I've been trying to sort of make that my day job, which has been a huge struggle because...

ROBBINS: -- Which is pretty damn good because most self-published cartoonists have to have a day job.

BECHDEL: Well, yeah, I know. I know.

ROBBINS: I mean, when you think about it, you are successful because you're actually supporting yourself.

BECHDEL: I know, but I hustle, God knows. I'm trying to make time in my life to work on a graphic memoir. Although, at the rate I'm going, it'll take forever to finish.

ROBBINS: Yeah, well, this has always been an interest of yours. I saw a slideshow you did at this San Francisco women's coffeehouse, The Bearded Lady. In it, you showed us how when you were a kid, you could only draw men, and how you slowly evolved until you were drawing women, but the only women you could draw were lesbians. This is going to be taking off from that slideshow, am I right?

BECHDEL: It'll touch on some of that territory. I started to get bored with that stuff about only drawing men and I've taken it out of the slideshow. I had this basic feminist analysis of how I was only drawing men because they got to do all the fun things, they got to be real people whereas women had to be "female people," blah, blah, blah. That's all true, but there was something else going on for me as a kid, something about my gender identity that I haven't figured out yet. And that's one of the things I'm hoping to dissect and investigate in this memoir project.

But mostly, it's a book about my relationship with my father. Writing this book feels like a completely different activity from writing my comic strip because it's about real life. I feel like I'm using a part of my brain that's been dormant until now.

ROBBINS: There's so much about you that fascinates me: One thing is the fact that you could only draw men for awhile because when I was a girl I could only draw women. And, in fact, I still can only draw women. I have a terrible time drawing men. They come out really stiff and funny looking.

BECHDEL: I could see that. I've heard varying theories from a lot of different people and I still haven't figured out what it's really about. I'm thinking that it has something to do with your internal gender identity; it's who you are most comfortable being.

ROBBINS: I think when I look at your -- at those drawings you did when you were a kid, I think you were relating to those you saw as being in power.

BECHDEL: You know, that was always my interpretation of it for a long time -- a very feminist interpretation, but I think that it's more complicated than that. It's definitely part of it, that the men were having fun and doing the interesting things but also, I don't know, I'm just thinking more about gender and how maybe in some way I am more of a boy than a girl.

ROBBINS: But the guys that you -- it isn't just that you drew guys, but it's that the guys that you drew were the jocks. And you even had some drawings that really turned my blood cold because they were like, these big jocks pushing these little skinny guys with glasses out of the way. So it's like the jocks were in power, you weren't even just drawing the little skinny guys, you were drawing the big -- and, I mean, those were the guys I hate the most, the jocks, of course.

BECHDEL: Yeah, I think some of that is just wish-fulfillment, you know, how little kids fantasize through their drawings. I wanted to be powerful. Partly I resented being perceived as weak because I was a girl. And partly, the worst thing you could do in my family was need something from someone. So physical strength represented an avenue of self-sufficiency to me.

I pored over those Charles Atlas ads. The weight-gain drinks, the exercise devices. I sent away once for something that promised "the Secret to Superhuman Strength," but it was just a technical booklet about some martial art. When I grew up, I studied karate for years. I got pretty strong, but eventually I had to acknowledge that I really didn't like fighting at all, so I quit.

ROBBINS: Of course, a little girl growing up in the male-dominated 1960s with no strong female role models is gonna see all the guys having the fun and the power and is gonna want that, too! So it's power again?

BECHDEL: I think.

ROBBINS: But then we get back to your parents: You say that your parents were, like -- well, can I use the phrase right-wing?

BECHDEL: Oh, no, they weren't at all.

ROBBINS: They weren't? You talked about how your mother was anti-choice.

BECHDEL: Oh, she is. She is, but I wouldn't call her right-wing at all. No. She's a complicated character.

ROBBINS: Was it because she was Catholic, then? It was a simple religious thing?

BECHDEL: Yes, to a large degree. But she's just very idiosyncratic. She doesn't follow any particular party line. I mean, she's anti-choice, but she goes to heavy metal concerts.

ROBBINS: They also sound very artistic.

BECHDEL: Yeah, they were. They are. My mother is, my father certainly was. They were kind of the local intelligentsia in the town where I grew up.

ROBBINS: So, how did all of this turn into Alison Bechdel?

BECHDEL: [Laughs.] I don't know. That's what I'm trying to figure out in this memoir.

ROBBINS: I can't wait to read it.

BECHDEL: Well, I hope that you get to. I hope I can actually finish it. It feels like a very daunting project and so far I've only been doing the text, not the drawings.

ROBBINS: Do you write out your comics first? I saw this complicated diagram in your slideshow of how you diagram your stories, but do you write them first as text?

BECHDEL: I do. For some reason writing and drawing are very separate processes for me. I mean, I'll have an idea about what a panel will look like as I'm writing, but I often don't touch a pencil until the text is completely finished. Sometimes I wish the writing and drawing were more integrated.

ROBBINS: Well, I wonder if you can do that. A really well-written comic, I think, has to be written first.

BECHDEL: You know, I get so involved in the writing that I think that might be the case. It's almost like I'm two different people, first the writer, then the sketcher and inker.

ROBBINS: So this graphic novel that you're working on, can we call this autobiographical? Does this mean you're entering into the ranks of autobiographical women cartoonists?

BECHDEL: Autobiographical comics, I love them. I love them. Watching everyone root through their psyche, it just delights me. Especially R. Crumb's stuff.

ROBBINS: Oh, my God!

BECHDEL: I know you don't --

ROBBINS: Doesn't the misogyny bother you?

BECHDEL: Yeah. But the honesty, even the honesty about his misogyny, I find that very bracing. And he's just such a great draftsman, I can overlook the more troublesome content.

ROBBINS: But how do you separate what he's saying from his honesty in saying it? I mean, I certainly agree that he's a great artist, but -- well, like, doesn't his depiction of headless women being raped, or his drawings of black people looking like apes hinder your enjoyment just a little? Sorry. I'm sputtering here, but -- like, if somebody else rather than Crumb drew these things, and wasn't as good an artist, but was still being honest, would you still enjoy it?

BECHDEL: I don't want to get drawn into defending how I can be a feminist and still love R. Crumb. That feels like a false issue. His work isn't about women, it's about him. If we were all as undeluded about ourselves as he is, the world would be a better place.

ROBBINS: But autobiographical comics in general I have extremely mixed feelings about.

BECHDEL: Do you think they're self-indulgent?

ROBBINS: I either find them really boring or sometimes just extremely embarrassing. I want to say, "No, I don't want to be told this." You know, you're telling me more than I really want to know.

BECHDEL: Yeah, like the cartoonist's masturbation habits. I don't know, maybe it's because I was raised Catholic. Confession has always held a great appeal for me. And the idea that a story is true, that it actually happened, is endlessly compelling, I think, not just to me but to people in general. When I speak in public about my comic strip, the first thing I invariably get asked is, "Are the characters real? Do you really know those people?"

ROBBINS: Well, but they seem real, that they're the dykes next door. Anyway, in my neighborhood they are the dykes next door.

BECHDEL: People really want to think that these things really happened. I don't know why that important, but I know that when I finish reading a novel or something, I want to know how much of that really happened to this author. Don't you?

ROBBINS: I remember when I was a little kid and my sister was reading Gone With the Wind aloud to me and my mother and when it was all over I really wanted very much for it to have been real.

BECHDEL: That's so funny and sweet. I just met someone who read Gone With the Wind 62 times for exactly that same reason. She couldn't bear that it wasn't real. She wanted to live in it.

ROBBINS: That's how I felt as a kid but it's interesting that I don't feel that way any more. I don't know what that means.

BECHDEL: It means that you're a mature adult now.

ROBBINS: [Laughs.] I guess so. But I remember asking my sister, "Could it have happened? Could she be real? Could she still be alive?" I have a similar reaction to your work: I love your work. I also kind of think of it as a lesbian Gasoline Alley. They're real without me having to wonder if they're really real, if you know what I mean.

BECHDEL: You know, I really need to read Gasoline Alley. That's something I've been meaning to do. I never read that.

ROBBINS: Well, you have to read the old ones. I mean, the new ones are nice but Frank King's old ones are wonderful. That's the difference.

BECHDEL: I want to study it because I know that it happened in real time. That's something I have to really learn how to handle with my characters as they start aging.

ROBBINS: Oh, God! That was going to be my next question. The little boy, Raffi. Is he going to grow up?

BECHDEL: Yeah, yeah. He's been growing up. Yeah, he -- has he seemed sort of static to you for awhile?

ROBBINS: Yeah, he's been kind of a little bit more than a toddler for awhile, I think.

BECHDEL: Well, he's seven now. If you didn't see the last book -- because he gets a lot more talkative. He's really starting to emerge more as a character. Although I haven't really gotten to that, like, what is his personality? But, yeah, he's been growing up. I've been trying to keep him right on track with, you know, he was born in 1993 and now he's in second grade. He's been a real help for me to sort of anchor the strip in real time because you can see him changing.

ROBBINS: How about the women? Are they going to get menopausal and stuff?

BECHDEL: Yeah. One of them is already having some menopausal symptoms. I'm working on that. I'm giving them all little lines under the eyes, trying to sort of make them age gracefully. It's a hard thing to age a character because you can't really suddenly give someone gray hair. Even drawing gray hair at all is difficult to render in black and white.

ROBBINS: Right. Well, you could kind of just keep an eye on your own hair.

BECHDEL: [Laughs.] I try not to!

ROBBINS: But I really recommend checking out old Gasoline Alley strips. Which brings up old comics in general because I was surprised when you had never heard of Ramona Fradon or Marie Severin.

BECHDEL: I never really read superhero stuff as a kid. I'm pretty illiterate when it comes to comics history. Some Little Nemo, some Krazy Kat, that's it.

ROBBINS: Oh, wow, yeah. So what's your inspiration then? You couldn't have just sprung from an oyster shell or something.

BECHDEL: Mostly it was Mad magazine. And I did read a lot of -- I had a subscription when I was little, but I also had access to some old collections, the little paperbacks of the really good stuff.

ROBBINS: Yes. Mad. They were the best. I also see Jules Feiffer in your work.

BECHDEL: I love Jules Feiffer. I didn't discover him until I was a little older. But I read comic books. I read things like Richie Rich and Little Lulu. I had a big box of classic comics up in the attic that my dad got from an antique show. But I don't feel like the comic books, the Richie Rich and Little Lulu stuff really shaped my work in a substantive way, except to maybe teach me basic visual grammar. The satiric ethos of Mad was a much bigger childhood influence. That and Charles Addams. I discovered his stuff before I could read, and was mesmerized by it. It was so frustrating because I thought I'd be able to understand these cartoons when I learned to read the captions, but they were still a complete mystery. I'd look at them for hours, trying to figure out what the joke was. I think I learned my biggest cartooning lesson from Addams -- how to calibrate that crucial, tantalizing distance between the image and the words. Not too wide, not too narrow - just enough for the reader to complete the circuit.

ROBBINS: Oh, that's great. Do you still have those old Mads?

BECHDEL: I do. I should dig those up. But I just read them the way most people do. They're just fun to read. They didn't particularly inspire me to draw --

ROBBINS: You never read any -- well, you read Little Lulu. I would definitely call it a women's comic, or a girls' comic.

BECHDEL: Yeah, I loved Little Lulu.

ROBBINS: She's wonderful. But you never read any of the other girls' comics?

BECHDEL: No, I didn't like the stuff that was directed towards girls. Like I always read The Hardy Boys and --

ROBBINS: And not Nancy Drew? Oh God, I loved Nancy Drew.

BECHDEL: Actually I did read one Nancy Drew that scared the shit out of me. It was a really scary ghost story. The Hardy Boys were somehow easier to take.

ROBBINS: I find you so fascinating, Alison, because we're so different and yet I really like you. I always loved Nancy Drew and never bothered to read The Hardy Boys because they were boys, and I found all boys boring. Something tells me your dislike of Nancy Drew and love of Hardy Boys might be for similar reasons. Am I right?

BECHDEL: Maybe it was a stylistic thing. Nancy Drew was always changing her outfits. I despised girls' clothing, I couldn't wait to get home from school and get out of it. The last thing I wanted to read was minute descriptions of Nancy's frocks. I probably read Harriet the Spy about 70,000 times. When I was growing up in the 1960s, there was starting to be more books geared towards young adults --

ROBBINS: Judy Blume?

BECHDEL: Yeah, I read Judy Blume. My mother didn't like that, but I read it anyhow.

ROBBINS: Really? Why didn't she like it?

BECHDEL: Well, because it was all about sex. It was pretty racy stuff.

ROBBINS: On your calendars you do all these little themes. That's where you work with genre. Have you ever thought of doing a Gothic Dykes to Watch Out For? It would be great!

BECHDEL: I do love doing that self-referential stuff. But it feels really self-indulgent to me, even more than autobiographical comics. I can't think of anything more supremely self-indulgent than writing a comic strip about your comic strip, assuming that readers know your characters so well that they give a shit what you think about them.

ROBBINS: Right. But anybody who buys your calendars does know who they are, don't they?

BECHDEL: Well, I guess that was the assumption I was operating under so I let myself do it. But I haven't been doing the calendars for years. Those were difficult things to sell. I put so much work into them and then they'd only be on the shelf for (a couple) months. I've stopped all my little merchandising spin-offs where I'd sell mouse pads and mugs -- ROBBINS: You're not doing that anymore? Was it just too exhausting?

BECHDEL: It was exhausting and I realized that I was barely breaking even. It did help me to support myself for years but it just got to be too much work. It might have been OK if I was just creating the designs and someone else was running the business. I was doing almost everything myself. Writing clever copy for the catalog, doing the layout, dealing with T-shirt wholesalers, taking orders from people over the phone -- I'd pretend I wasn't me when I answered so people wouldn't know it was this pathetic one-person operation. It was all fun for a while, but eventually it became clear that this was a sad misallocation of my skills.

ROBBINS: But just the fact that you're actually supporting yourself on your comics is such a victory in the world of independent comics.

BECHDEL: Yeah. Not just comics but any creative work.

ROBBINS: Yes. Fine artists, that's even worse. The only profession that is harder to make a living at than an artist is poet. People who decide to be poets - they're just -- they're masochists who want to suffer for the rest of their lives.

BECHDEL: I just have this sort of entrepreneurial spirit and I work really hard at promoting myself.

ROBBINS: Do you go to conventions?

BECHDEL: No, I've never been to a comics convention. My world has always been much more the queer literary subculture, that's been my province much more than the comics subculture.

ROBBINS: You know, I think you'd find a lot of fans.

BECHDEL: I wonder if that might not be an inevitable direction. If only because the gay and lesbian subculture is starting to sort of change and disappear so much.

ROBBINS: Well it's kind of going mainstream, isn't it? I mean, every sitcom has one lesbian, don't they?

BECHDEL: [Laughs.] It's unbearable. I miss the good old days of --

ROBBINS: I know. But you have mentioned about how you'd like to go mainstream because then you could actually make money.

BECHDEL: Well, I don't think actual mainstream is even a possibility. Not like a daily paper strip. I'm trying to get into more alternative weeklies. And I'm making a little headway there. But whether I'll make more money, there's a real question. I don't know. I think, in a way, being a lesbian has been as much of a boost to my career than a negative influence because I had a very cohesive, ready-made audience. You know, if I had been doing cartoons about straight people --

ROBBINS: Oh, no, no, no. No, I just meant being mainstream doing what you're doing. Good heavens, not changing it.

BECHDEL: I hope that I can get people to read it without having to change it. Especially now that the strip has more different kinds of characters. It's really not all lesbians any more. I didn't do that on purpose to win people over, it happened organically with the story. But the result, I think, is that it's helping to bring in more readers. I get a lot of mail from men who really identify with Stuart, you know, Sparrow's boyfriend. I love that. Even though I used to say I wanted men to read the strip even though there weren't any men in it, so they'd be forced to identify with the women.

ROBBINS: Tell me why you've chosen to live in Vermont.

BECHDEL: I don't know. I'm feeling a little ambivalent lately about my isolation. I grew up in the country so in a way rural life is very familiar to me. I like the quiet. I like being able to walk out in the yard in my pajamas in the morning to pick berries for my cereal.

ROBBINS: You must also like the winters. BECHDEL: I do. Although this one is really testing me. I've never seen so much snow in my life.

ROBBINS: So you like Vermont, but you're champing at the bit?

BECHDEL: I like Vermont very much but I think I need more cultural stimulation than I get here. I can be a hermit -- I don't go out much. I could get more of what I'm craving in Vermont, but I don't really ever leave my house.

ROBBINS: So why these characters then? I mean, you don't get any outside stimulation for these characters? They're really right inside your head?

BECHDEL: Well, I'm always doing research on the Internet. That's been a real -- it's what has enabled me to live like this because I can get information on anything. I'm reluctant to read periodicals. So that's how I stay in touch.

ROBBINS: Wow. Because I see your characters right here in my neighborhood all the time.

BECHDEL: I just had a trip down to New York City and it was so exciting. I haven't been there in years. I didn't want to go. I was dreading it. But when I got there it was like this infusion of energy. It was wonderful.

ROBBINS: It's incredible, isn't it. I was just there, too. I was a guest at, believe it or not, Vassar College's first student-run science-fiction convention. I managed to sneak in two days in Manhattan. And even I, who live in what's supposed to be a big city, was going "Gosh, look at all the people."

BECHDEL: You know, San Francisco is not a big city. It's a little city. It's a very small city.

ROBBINS: It is a very small city. I mean, I can walk down the street and I run into so many people I know. It's like a neighborhood. So you really live in the country, then?

BECHDEL: Yeah, I really do. I can barely see my neighbor's house. I have 40 acres of hillside behind my house.

ROBBINS: You must have animals.

BECHDEL: I don't have any livestock if that's what you mean. A cat.

ROBBINS: Not a dog to go walking with in the fields?

BECHDEL: No, I don't, because my cat needs to be the only animal.

ROBBINS: Oh, of course. They're like that. I'm trying to remember whether you put animals into your strip.

BECHDEL: There are. Like, my character Mo has two cats. People always seem to think that those are my cats, that I really have two Siamese cats, but I never did. And another character had a dog who died recently. One of the story lines was following the demise of the dog, it was really sad. That was another way of anchoring the strip in real time to show someone actually dying. Another character had her mother dying.

ROBBINS: That's what Lynn Johnston does, of course.

BECHDEL: You know, there are so many funny parallels between my strip and hers. Just today, the episode I read today, Elly's elderly father gets a girlfriend. And I had this storyline recently where my character Jezanna's father, who lives with her, got a girlfriend. So we've been kind of like, following each other.

ROBBINS: Well, and she's also -- her strip is very Gasoline Alley-esque.

BECHDEL: I'm determined to have someone get cancer in my strip before she does it, though.

ROBBINS: Oh, wow. That's a good idea. What an awful thing to say that having someone get cancer is a good idea, but it is.

BECHDEL: I know. That's one of the horrible things about doing any kind of fictional work is that you get excited about these terrible things.

ROBBINS: Have you ever met Lynn Johnston? She's very nice. She is very, very, very nice.

BECHDEL: I really admire one thing that she's doing now. She finds ways to keep her strip real but also to keep it within the values of the daily comics page. So she can't have Michael and his fiancé really live together before they get married.

ROBBINS: Yeah. That was disappointing. They had to secretly get married.

BECHDEL: But she finds ways to make it work, you know, to make it realistic.

ROBBINS: Yeah, because on the other hand everyone thinks they're living together.

BECHDEL: Right. Right. So I think that's kind of cool how she -- I mean, talk about a restrictive format.

ROBBINS: I know that at one point one syndicate had approached you, right?

BECHDEL: Sort of, yeah. United Features contacted me. They'd seen some interview with me in The Boston Globe and I got an inquiry about whether I was interested in trying out -- developing a gay strip.

ROBBINS: That's incredible! No kidding? They didn't want you to change?

BECHDEL: They wanted a gay strip but they didn't want what I was doing. They wanted something - well, we didn't really get into much detail about it because I decided I wasn't interested but they wanted something about -- that was coed, that had boys in it, too. And that wasn't political. And I just didn't see how I could do that.

ROBBINS: It's funny because I don't think your strip is all that political.

BECHDEL: Well, you know, it's really not. It mostly political because of its subject matter. It gets seen as political. I think The Family Circus is just as political.

ROBBINS: Oh, God help us. Well, it isn't because you don't have people like Mo who carries on about various political things even if she doesn't do them. So if you could do exactly what you're doing now and get it nationally syndicated, would you do it?

BECHDEL: Well, the other thing is, I don't do a daily strip.

ROBBINS: That's right. That's hell. That's hell.

BECHDEL: That would kill me. My strip is biweekly, which is what enables me to do such lengthy, detailed episodes. I don't think I could do anything shorter.

ROBBINS: Now that's also hell -- having to do the whole thing in four panels.

BECHDEL: Oh man! No, I need to have a longer format so I can really get some structural resonance.

ROBBINS: I think that the male equivalent to your strip is Leonard and Larry.

BECHDEL: I love Leonard and Larry. I think it's beautifully drawn.

ROBBINS: Because they're the gay couple next door. And his people are real.

BECHDEL: Yeah, he has this huge cast of characters. That's something I only see when it comes out in books. I don't get it anywhere regularly. I always think of my male equivalent as The Mostly Unfabulous Social Life of Ethan Green, a strip by Eric Orner. Maybe just because we both run in the same kind of newspaper and we have a similar format. His is less narrative and more topical, but he's a kindred spirit.

Well, going back to -- we were talking about the problem of attaining a wide readership when you write about a limited world or subculture. And this is my current challenge: How do I convince people that just because these characters are queer, they are also human? And that even though this strip happens in a physically queer framework that these things are human things.

ROBBINS: It's like, I was never a little boy but I could enjoy Calvin and Hobbes.

BECHDEL: And I am not a software engineer but I read Dilbert --

ROBBINS: Yes! Very good!

BECHDEL: Why can't all the software engineers read my work?

ROBBINS: Because there's humanity in Dilbert. Even though I had a problem in the beginning getting past the art, which is just - you know, they look like little finger puppets. But once I got past the art and started reading it I could relate to it even though I'm not a software engineer. I could relate to the stupid boss and the whole thing. And one can relate to your stories. Besides being the dykes next door, they're the people next door.

BECHDEL: I think that it's a cultural challenge. I'm just trying to ride the wave but I think that the dominant culture is becoming more and more open to other narratives.

ROBBINS: I know, like the token lesbian on every sitcom again.

BECHDEL: Right. But here's the thing: Will an authentic representation of lesbians also work? Because those things on TV aren't real.

ROBBINS: Well, nothing on sitcoms is real. But all those young women who watch Buffy the Vampire Slayer just love Willow and Tara. So why shouldn't they like your strip?

BECHDEL: Yeah, dammit! You know, maybe they will. Maybe some of this will cross over in a more enduring way.

ROBBINS: OK, that's the word we want. Crossover, not mainstream. Well, like I said we have Willow and Tara, not to mention Xena and Gabrielle.

BECHDEL: They're killing Xena off, did you hear that? Yeah, they're going to kill her.

ROBBINS: No! You're kidding.

BECHDEL: End of the series. I'm sorry that's upsetting. I've actually never even seen Xena.

ROBBINS: Oh, it's wonderful! Have you seen Crouching Ti--?

BECHDEL: No.

ROBBINS: I didn't even have to say the rest of it and you knew what I was talking about. Oh, it's just wonderful. And after that maybe you could turn on Xena experimentally now that she's almost dead and watch that too, because there's really something wonderful about women warriors.

BECHDEL: Hmm, yeah. My mother was a Wonder Woman fan.

ROBBINS: I am a Wonder Woman fan. Not of the contemporary Wonder Woman, but the older Wonder Woman. In fact, I was reading, I think it was Anne Rubenstein's interview with you in which you talked about how -- well, now you have guys in your strip, but at the time it was nothing but women in the strip and it was a women's world. It made me think of when I was a kid and I read about Paradise Island. You could read just page after page of some of those Wonder Woman comics and it would just be all women characters.

BECHDEL: Isn't there a gay man writing Wonder Woman now?

ROBBINS: Yes, he's drawing and writing it. Well, unfortunately, sadly, it's true that I only gave it one chance. I read one issue so maybe that's not enough to make my decision but I just didn't see any difference between him and all the other guys who've been doing Wonder Woman.

So women warriors don't excite you, huh?

BECHDEL: No, warriors of any kind don't really excite me. I never got into that superhero thing. I'm too absorbed with how magical real life is.

ROBBINS: Have you ever thought about doing some whole entire other form of comics fiction?

BECHDEL: No. I don't know what will happen after I do this.

ROBBINS: A fictional graphic novel?

BECHDEL: Yeah, I don't know if I could do that. That would seem to be the only thing left.

ROBBINS: You know, it's interesting. Do you know Joyce Farmer? She was one of two women who actually self-published what was one of the first all-women anthologies, Tits 'n' Clits in 1972? Well, she's currently working on a 200-page graphic novel about her mother and father.

BECHDEL: Uh oh. I better get the hell to work.