Alison Bechdel Takes May With Are You My Mother?

[Rich Johnston]

As the comics industry comes to grips with what will be coming to stores in April and May, there is one book likely to smash sales record that's not from the New 52, or an Avengers Vs X-Men tie in.

Alison Bechdel's Are You My Mother is her follow up to Fun Home, and has a hundred thousand first print run for its initial publication. And with a $25 cover price, will likely make more money than any other comic book coming out at that time.

Even The Walking Dead, Naruto and One Piece.

Recently David Cameron, British Prime Minister, was reported to have appealled to the British film industry to make more commercially appealling films, in the wake of the success of The King's Speech. It's been pointed out however, that this film wasn't expected to be the commercial success it was, and that the likes of Sex Lives Of The Potato Men is an example of an attempted success that failed miserably.

The media behemoths of DC and Marvel strive, month in, month out, running a Red Queen's Race for sales success. But the last time either has a graphic novel print run like this was with Neil Gaiman's The Endless. And DC didn't do what Neil wanted in order for him to write the Sandman Zero six issue-then-collected-in-leather story.

It's an incredible success for Bechdel, whose appeal before Fun Home could be described as niche - defined specifically by the market as a lesbian cartoonist, even as her "Bechel Test" for how movies handle female characters, gained wider and wider dissemination.

But now? She's more mainstream than Wolverine. I hope she appreciates the comparison.

[Jason A. Quest]

The non-spandex graphic novel market is still something of a niche. Bechdel's new book will undoubtedly sell well, just based on the success of the previous one, but that'll be hard to maintain (even if she had additional parents to write about ).

[majorjoe23]

The non-spandex graphic novel market is still something of a niche. Bechdel's new book will undoubtedly sell well, just based on the success of the previous one, but that'll be hard to maintain (even if she had additional parents to write about ).

I think this book will maintain a lot better than a lot of books. Sure, it wont do Watchmen or Dark Knight numbers, but I bet this will be in print in Noveber. Will The Kree-Skrull War be able to say the same?

[Matt Spatola]

Yeah this book will have legs for sure on the shelf.

[jcb10]

I work at a college bookstore and "Fun Home" (along with "Maus," "Persepolis," and a couple volumes of "Sandman") has been steadily selling as required reading in a few classes for several years now. Sadly, once the movie came out, "Watchmen" -- once a staple of humanities and creative writing classes -- hasn't been used in years.

The only graphic novel I ever read in class was a copy of "Frankenstein" illustrated by Bernie Wrightson, but an urban planning class I took read Eisner's "Dropsie Avenue" the semester AFTER I took it.

[Donna M.]

I will buy this book with money! And I will put on it on my shelf next to Fun Home.

[neowrites]

I ignored Fun Home for a couple of years before I finally picked it up---and I don't know if I've ever set it down since. Any time it's in my hand, I'm drawn into it all over again. I find it hard to believe that she'll do that again, but I'll definitely be checking this out.

Fun Home was a beautiful, complex, subtle example of what the comics medium can be. If Bechdel can repeat that, I'll declare her a super-genius, an upgrade from the mere genius that Fun Home showed her to be.

[jackolantern]

Even as someone who had followed Bechdel's Dykes To Watch Out For, Fun Home was a real revelation; the only thing that I could compare it to would be if you could imagine that Alan Moore had done The Big Bang Theory as a comic strip for a couple of decades, then written Watchmen. I don't expect this book to be as groundbreaking as the first one, but I'd still fuel a hot-air balloon with the flames of every "new 52" book I could get my hands on in order to get to my LCS to get Bechdel's book, if that were necessary.