The One-Sided Admiration Society Part 1

They're making a Broadway musical out of Alison Bechdel's Fun Home (2006 Time Magazine's Book of the Year). Or at least it was in discussion about two years ago, although I haven't really heard any news since. Then again I just learned about it yesterday, and only because I had been re-reading the book for the umpteenth time this week, savoring every nuance in the art and dialogue that I didn't pick up the first nth time (how could I have missed all those Sunbeam Bread references throughout the story?). Has anybody heard any new word about this? I tried googling but haven't gotten much substantial back.

And a... a musical? How does one make a musical about their closeted homosexual father's suicide and make folks want to come out in droves (literally and figuratively)?



But anything to get the phenomenal cartoonist Alison Bechdel's name out in the public, which has already happened without a smidge of my help, thank you. This remarkable storyteller and illustrator is best known for her series Dykes To Watch Out For but it was her autobiographical Fun Home and its choice for Time's Book Of The Year that put the wheels in motion it seems, for her to make this funny, intelligent, and talented woman's living as a full-time comix creator, which she richly deserves.

Fun Home is so unabashedly personal, so vivid in detail, that I myself could have lived it, despite how different it was from my own life and upbringing, And that's what makes Bechdel the important American storyteller that she is. The video above is a nice little introduction to Bechdel the person as well as the artist, directed by Eva Sollberger. It's about seven minutes long, but it's very well done. And I just loved seeing all the copies of Fun Home in all those different languages.