The Essential Dykes to Watch Out for

I first saw a DTWOF comic in one of the campus newspapers of my hometown growing up. In the years of DTWOF comic strips that followed, I'd occasionally catch one posted online, or in another newspaper, or a few strips in a collection at someone's house. But the comics are intensely serialized (not making much sense as a standalone), the whole archive was never available online and only 527 comics were ever published in the 21 years of the strip, so it always seemed like I was catching a glimpse of an elusive whole. This collection is near-complete and the storyline finally manages to be cohesive. Don't get me wrong: this still reads like a serial, and threads drop and there are one-off jokes, but it reads a lot better as a collection.

Perhaps what I found the most interesting from a modern perspective was actually the politics. It was fascinating to realize that the things that the characters said about Bush (HW) and Clinton (Bill) strongly resemble the things that I've said about Bush (W) and Clinton (Hillary) and Trump and Obama, too, for that matter. And indeed, the protest wing of leftwing politics versus the run-for-office-wing versus the tear-your-hair-out-publicly wing have apparently always had the tension that is so apparent now.