The World of Wordy Cartoonists with Alison Bechdel

At the Believer, Alison Bechdel spoke to Kristen Radtke about her newest book, The Secret to Superhuman Strength, and how she reflected on her own creative process as it came together. “I feel like I’m an unusually wordy cartoonist,” Bechdel says. “I often worry that that makes me somehow not quite authentic, like I should rely on the images more or give them more space, but I really do equally love to write and draw. I feel like these two elements are constantly fighting one another for space on the page. There’s never enough room for the drawing, there’s never enough room for all the words I want to use. And I like that process of just trying to trim it all down, and in the end not really being able to.”