The Secret to Superhuman Strength (book)

"The Secret to Superhuman Strength" (2021)
Art & text: Alison Bechdel

Pengo's 2023 Summer Book Club

Reading Alison Bechdel’s third graphic novel, The Secret to Superhuman Strength, I was (of course) reminded of my own attempt to describe my obsession with exercise, the solo performance And Then You Die (How I Ran a Marathon in 26.2 Years).

That was very much my midlife crisis play, parts of it are a bit cringey. But I was trying to search my soul for reasons and understanding, to explain to a lay audience why running is important, even necessary, for my continued existence.

Bechdel’s experience has had a more varied relationship with activities of physical exertion, and describes them with her fascinating attention to detail, in written word and her unique, specific and elegant illustrative style. Not only how to run, bike, ski, hike, to perform karate and yoga, but also the accumulative effect these exercises have on the body, the self, the bank account, as well as interpersonal relationships and family.

"And Then You Die" (2009)
Art: Cat Kenney

By the end of calendar 2022, I was trying to accept the shape I was in, a 190 pound man. I had assembled a fine wardrobe of clothes that looked good fit me comfortably, that did not constrict or pinch; layered looks, a fuller beard. Accepting, but also concealing. Acceptance is good, if you mean it, but I wasn’t happy. 

It wasn’t all vanity, I didn’t feel good. I was uncomfortable, hile driving, sitting. Also, my breathing was not easy, walking up stairs left me winded. Sleeping I could feel my heartbeat throughout my body, sometimes hard, sometimes trembling. It wasn’t good.

And so I made the decision, starting last March First, to dry out, and to eat with more intention. Less sugar, fewer snacks, no alcohol (for that month, anyhow). More recently I made a commitment – with the encouragement of our eldest – to limit my alcohol intake to one drink a day, if that. I have kept this pledge for several week and it has made a difference.

And I resumed running, which I had nearly given up on. Since then I have taken no fewer than twenty runs each month, March, April, May, June, July, and on track for August. I thought I’d never enjoy running again, and I love it more than ever.

"The Secret to Superhuman Strength" (2021)
Art& text: Alison Bechdel

Bechdel’s own relationship with alcohol is something she shares in the book. Wine is her beverage of choice (full glasses and empty bottles rendered in loving detail) as well as her intimate relationships, and how exercise affects, or even fosters those. This was also a major part of my running play, with the pursuit of monogamy, like my recent alcohol control, arrived at as another commitment necessary for my continued happiness and existence.

The book is braided with narratives of the writers Bechdel was affected by at varying stages of her life’s journey – Kerouac, Coleridge, Fuller – and their relationship to nature and the outdoors – which are necessary partners of hiking, running, skiing, climbing, et al. – and the expression and understanding of the self.

This also comes up in my play, as I ruminate while running, over stories by Forster, Cheever, London.

"And Then You Die" (2009)
Art: Cat Kenney

But running or any exercise is one of the few opportunities we allow ourselves to think. Our bodies are occupied, with movement, so our minds are free to wander, consider, and ideally to make connections we may not allow ourselves to make when we are at rest.

Admittedly, this book, my play, these are documents of privilege. Many cannot afford to or are physically unable to spend time and money (all the money) on these physical pursuits. So I appreciate the kinship I share with this author in the ways her personal journey reflects my own* and I am grateful for the opportunities I have had to pursue them. Running has brought me great joy, and has provided a potential path to enlightenment.

The ex-wife once asked if I run the same path every day, because for the most part, I do. A mile to the park, a mile through the park, a mile home. Her question made me ask myself why I do. I doubted. Surely, I should change it up, for reasons both physical and mental. Don’t I get bored? Am I not progressing?

I have decided that, either metaphorically or literally, taking the same path each day may be a key to my enlightenment, or at least acceptance. In meditation, as in life, beginning again, from the start, is not a failure of achievement nor imagination. It just is. Every day we begin again.

It is not unintentional that the cover of The Secret to Superhuman Strength, as well as the chapter chapter pages, are evocative of ink and wash artwork. Bechdel’s relationship with Buddhism is a central theme of the book. As I set out each morning, I hope to enjoy the run itself, to be running, the action itself, not its end.

Last weekend we delivered our youngest to university, and now our house is once more a home for two. My sister-in-law congratulated me, as though it were me that had accomplished something, by successfully concluding some kind of undertaking.

But now that this stage of my life is past, I’d like to think I was more engaged with the journey than working toward the finish line.

My running blog, Daddy Runs Fast, is a chronicle of every run I have taken since 2006.  

*One thing that’s not entirely accurate about And Then You Die is what the protagonist – me – does for a vocation. I made myself a cartoonist. The remarkable Cat Kenney created all of the artwork used for the show.

Gay Comics #19 (1993)

Ten years later. My Guerrilla Theater partner and I were on our way to the studios of WRUW. We had been invited by a DJ and fan of our show to come in and be her on-air guests and to share some sketches we’d recorded for her new releases program.

The day of our visit also happened to be her birthday, and I had even brought a gift. I’d been to North Coast Nostalgia, that used to be next to the Cedar-Lee Theatre, and noticed the recent issue of Gay Comics was entirely created by Alison Bechdel.

One of the cool things about having our storefront theater in Tremont was that the weeklies would drop papers at our joint. We got short stacks of Scene, Free Times, Plain Press, Call & Post and the Gay People’s Chronicle, to make available for our audiences. 

I had been following Bechdel’s weekly strip, Dykes To Watch Out For in the Chronicle for some time by then. It was a very important education for me, not only in the lives and concerns (and humor) of non-heteronormative women, but women in general, also also women who were African American, Asian American, Latinx ... and even gay men!

Gay Comics #19 was an all-original book in which Bechdel told stories about herself (in keeping with Gay Comics’ stated mission) and her childhood, her coming out, laying the groundwork for her later, best-selling graphic memoirs, Fun Home and Are You My Mother?

"Coming Out Story"
Alison Bechdel (1993)
Click on for detail.

I picked up a copy of Gay #19 for our DJ friend, and showed it to my colleague as we made our way to the radio studios on the Case campus. He raised an eyebrow.

“You got her a gay comic,” he said, “because ... she’s gay?”

I hadn’t thought of that, and immediately felt self-conscious. I mean, it wasn’t like I was thinking, “Lesbian comic book?! I know a lesbian!!” This was an artist I really liked, and it was our friend’s birthday, and … well, shit.

Long story short, I gave the DJ the comic, and she was delighted. “I love Alison Bechdel!” she said, and I will assume she meant it. 

"I got out of college in 1981 and went into a gay and lesbian bookstore one day and found an issue of 'Gay Comix' ... It hadn't occurred to me at that point to put together my penchant for silly drawings with my personal life and my political interest in gay and lesbian issues, but there were these people who were doing it." - Alison Bechdel, 2007

Digging through my collection this week, I discovered that I had actually bought two copies of Gay #19, and kept one for myself. Smart boy.

Gay Comics ceased publication in 1998.

See also: The Bechdel-Wallace Test

Source:

“Life Drawing” by Emmert, Lynn, The Comics Journal No. 282, Fantagraphic Books (2007)

The Bechdel-Wallace Test

Alison Bechdel (b. 1960) is a MacArthur Grant Awarded cartoonist, creator of the long-running strip Dykes To Watch For and the graphic novels Fun Home and Are You My Mother? As a young theater artist in the 1990s reading Dykes in the Gay People’s Chronicle was a primer helping me to see beyond coarse stereotypes about lesbians when my circle of friends were either largely straight or closeted.

Click on to enlarge.

An edition of Dykes titled "The Rule" featured two friends discussing what movie to see. One explains she has three rules which dictate whether or not she’s interested in seeing a movie:

1. One, it has to have at least two women in it,
2. Who, two, talk to each other,
3. about , three, something besides a man

Now generally referred the Bechdel Test, the cartoonist prefers joint attribution with the person who originally thought up the criteria, an old friend names Liz Wallace -- whose contribution, you will notice, was noted on the original strip. Though "The Rule" is thirty years old, the term has become a meme in the past decade and a starting point for discussion about gender parity across all spectrum of media.

Breaking Point (1989)

What do the results signify? You could deduce from the dearth of roles for women in film that the point is representation. You can also consider what those roles consist of; do the female characters exist merely as romantic foils or objects of sexual desire - do these female characters even have names?

The bigger question, and the question I have been asking myself of late, is what stories are we telling? It’s not about cramming more women into your movie, and it’s not even about employing more women writers - although that would go a very long way to ameliorating the discrepancy. We should be asking ourselves what stories we writers choose to present to the world.

Scripts written for the theater (call them plays) have a handicap when it comes to passing the test, if only because most plays by design will have fewer total characters. But the challenge remains the same, what story do we choose to tell?

The first play I tried writing was the one-act Breaking Point, based on my own college comic strip. One night, as I was conversing with my stage manager and fretting about the one female housemate in an apartment of four. She was as smart and smart-alecky as the rest of them in the strip, but distilling several months of story line into a thirty-minute play, I realized how all the male characters treated her like shit.

“I write terrible female characters,” I sighed.

“Yeah," she said, shaking her head somewhat sympathetically. "You do.”

The Vampyres (1997)

I didn’t have another play produced for the better part of ten years. When I finally started composing The Vampyres in the mid-90s (finally, as in, why wasn’t I writing plays before this?) I had a story I was burning to tell, about a cynical med-student and a couple of poseur vampires which also included a former crush of the protagonists and a teenage barista onto whom he transfers his affection.

No, the two women do not talk to each other. If they did, it would certainly have been about the men. However, by that time I was aware of sexism in my writing, even if I didn’t know exactly what to do about it. I strove to retrofit the character of Mary so that she was a strong women who had her own agenda as an artist, but really, in brief she fell in love with a male vampire because he was irresistible in the way we are all told we just have to accept.

The story belonged to the male characters. It was a struggle between he and the other two hes. And it was represented in a battle over possession of the two shes. Giving the female characters their own personal agendas does not change what was the central conflict of the plot.

More recently, I have been working on a two-hander, the as-yet unproduced The Way I Danced With You. There’s two people in this play, one man and one woman, so the Bechdel Test does not really apply. But is the story equally theirs? Is the pursuit of her goals on an equal footing with her pursuit of her own goals? I believe that it is, and it is important to me that it is -- and not merely to satisfy an agenda. As I reported previously, the reception of this play changed from the Valdez reading in June and the Cleveland reading in November.

My breakthrough in creating feminist plays, however, comes largely thanks to my work in children’s theater. Who knows why this is, perhaps because at a distance I can tell stories to children in which gender has the fluidity that children themselves possess.

White Garlic and Red Onion

Adventures in Slumberland featured a protagonist in the form of a five year-old boy, who could be a girl, and was, in fact, played by a woman, and probably usually should be. His hero’s quest ostensibly is to find the princess (this is eighty years before Donkey Kong) but that’s a McGuffin, it’s really about a child growing to appreciate their own personhood.

Rosalynde & The Falcon turns the princess story on its head, as a young woman is persecuted by her wicked stepfather the king, and escapes to the wood where -- instead of looking after a band of thieves (or dwarfs, what have you) she becomes the leader of the thieves, and eventually the ruler of her nation. There are two named female characters … I guess it’s funny that one of them doesn’t even speak until the very end, but they certainly do not talk about the men, they talk about governance.

My latest work, Red Onion, White Garlic, opens early next month. I hate to describe a play by what it is not, but I did not set out to create a feminist children’s play. It was not my intention to create a play which passes the Bechdel Test entirely and without qualification.

What I did do was investigate Indonesian folktales, arrive at one which centers upon the relationship of two sisters, and every moment I found myself searching for a new character to add to the narrative, she was always female. I even considered male characters, but they never made sense as part of the story. It is not that men are absent. The tale belongs to women.

Red Onion, White Garlic opens April 8, 2017 at Talespinner Children's Theatre.