Required Reading

"This year, World AIDS Day looked a bit different. With over 44 million HIV-related deaths worldwide, the Trump administration - which has already cut global funding supporting prevention programs - canceled the White House's annual commemoration of the ongoing pandemic in a chilling echo of the vicious homophobic rhetoric of the 1980s. But activists, organizers, and advocates across the country pushed back in countless marches and demonstrations."

"Bechdel is likely one of the people for whom it's fair to say that aspects of her life have become easier with added income, but the generating of the work still relies on her alone. She still has to come up with something to say about the world that interests both herself and the buyers of her work-something that Alison struggles with regularly in Spent."

"And with that in mind, it seems notable that, at this moment in her career, Bechdel is returning to the work with which she started, to the characters and world she first developed in the 1980s, which helped her build her body of work. It's a kind of return to basics, a touching-ground after what have likely been some pretty heady years."

The Trump administration canceled the White House's annual World AIDS Day commemoration after cutting global funding for prevention, echoing 1980s homophobic rhetoric. Activists, organizers, and advocates staged marches and die-ins, including a die-in outside the Stonewall Inn Monument, to protest government attacks on healthcare, LGBTQ+ rights, and free speech. Alison Bechdel released a new graphic novel while facing the ongoing necessity of generating work alone despite greater income. Bechdel has returned to characters and the world she developed in the 1980s, treating the move as a return to basics after heady years, with public records portraying her as a Horatio Alger–style success.

Read at Hyperallergic