The Essential Dykes to Watch Out For (2008)

The strip came first, and it is the best follow-up to Fun Home if you want laughter rather than grief. Dykes to Watch Out For ran from 1983 to 2008 as a serialized ensemble comedy about Mo Testa, a politically committed lesbian feminist with a tendency to kvetch, and her circle of friends and lovers, with each year's news bleeding into their arguments. This 2008 volume gathers 390 of the 527 strips, plus a 12-page introduction from Bechdel about drawing them. Read it in short sittings: the soap-opera threads reward following, but each strip still lands its joke alone. It is also where the Bechdel test began, as a gag in one strip.