Alison Bechdel in The Atlantic

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.

Read the full article in The Atlantic.