GLR July-August 2025

complacent and more hopeless,” she sighs. Bechdel spins her wheels trying to come up with a socially con scious reality TV show to help peo ple resist the capitalist grind of consumer pressures. I frequently found myself questioning whether Bechdel’s social consciousness was a product of guilt for her commer cial success or a genuine existential dread. But then she establishes her leftist credentials, making it clear that even before she became a fa mous author and artist, she pledged ten percent of her earnings to char ity. When she tells J. R., the nonbi nary adult child of a friend who’s living in her yurt, about her plan for an anti-capitalist reality TV show, the young activist says: “I might be a college dropout but at least I know

MyHusband For years I conjured up the man I would marry and Live my entire life with. He was taller than me and more Slender, a pipe-smoker, two years older, ordinarily solemn but Given to rare bouts of silliness, less demonstrative than I But more loyal, more truly affectionate. He could seethe With anger but was good at containing it. Generous, sure of himself, He liked it when I was honored; he always praised my writing. His olive skin didn’t tan easily but looked best when slightly Burned. He liked to crouch over me and fuck my face. His nipples

Were hard and black, leaking a scarcity of long black Hairs. He was tidier than I. He remembered everyone’s Birthdays. Trouble at work could upset him. Best of all, He never tired of me and into my seventh decade he

Occasionally screwed me in my sleep and seemed quietly grateful in the Morning over a breakfast of toast and butter and scrambled eggs. E DMUND W HITE

playful, and quite funny. They are moodily shadowed by Jon Chad and beautifully colored by Holly Rae Taylor. As in her previous efforts, Bechdel’s moral imagination, artistic daring, and social analysis enliven every page. The world may feel like it’s on the brink of implosion, but her creative roadmap to sal vation takes some of the despair out of the panic.

you can’t dismantle the master’s house with the master’s tools.” Badger, J. R.’s girlfriend, responds to Bechdel’s reality TV ambitions by pointing out that it was another reality TV show that got the country into its current predicament: “A populace so distracted by capitalist entertainment products that they can no longer have serious discussions about the existential problems facing humanity.” J. R. chimes in: “If it weren’t for The Ap prentice , we might be solving wealth inequality and the climate crisis instead of sitting around watching democracy die.” Bechdel’s relationship with her sister, a teacher who sup ports Trump and gets caught up in the book-ban craze, becomes increasingly fraught. She tells her sister: “The G.O.P. is work ing you into a lather over race and gender and abortion and im migration so you won’t notice they’re screwing you too!” Her sister relents, but then Bechdel realizes it’s only a dream. As Bechdel wrestles with a host of internal conflicts and concerns, hilarious antics ensue among her friend group cen tering on polyamory, Covid, and sex fantasies gone awry. It all comes to a self-reflexive crescendo when Holly becomes Inter net-famous after posting a wood-chopping video on YouTube and Bechdel grows envious of all the attention she receives. After being hounded by her agent to post more “content” on In stagram and TikTok to raise her profile and help move sales of her books and TV show, Bechdel is stung by Holly’s overnight celebrity. In the end, Bechdel learns that to make a difference she does n’t have to write a book or create a reality TV series; she only has to pitch in with her friends in their efforts to sustain com munity agriculture and make changes in their immediate cir cles. On a twilight hike, J. R.’s father Stu displays a tattooed excerpt from Peter Kropotkin’s 1902 Mutual Aid: A Factor of Evolution across his back: “Practicing mutual aid is the surest means for giving each other and to all the greatest safety, the best guarantee of existence and progress, bodily, intellectual, and moral.” The quality of Bechdel’s illustrations match the power of her writing. Like her dialogue, the drawings are energetic, fluid,

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