Lesbian cartoonist Alison Bechdel’s new graphic novel Spent begins with her walking through the woods with her father as a young girl. The story ultimately transforms into a tale of pygmy goat farming, a burning dread of climate change, and a lurking civil war.

In one scene, a tiger attack and its enormous roar wake Bechdel up in bed; she finds her wife, the artist Holly Rae Taylor, shooting a rifle out the window to scare a bear off their compost pile. This brings Spent viewers to the present day in Bolton, Vermont, where Bechdel and Taylor run a pygmy goat farm. Here, Taylor also produces art and Bechdel theoretically works on her graphic novels. Theoretically, because, after decades of critical praise and a MacArthur “Genius” Award, she has hit a wall with her work.

Bechdel’s monotonous days consist of waking up, using the toilet, fixing coffee, and listening to NPR unspooling the corrosions of Trump II. But she feels checkmated by the system. In capitalist America, big money beckons, but it comes with Republican strings attached. Should she take it and make life easier on herself, Holly, and the goats? Or should she refuse it and ease her conscience?

A Pennsylvania native, Bechdel was out and proud from an early age. Dykes to Watch Out For, her popular weekly comic strip, ran from 1983 to 2008, showing the cartoonist, her friends, and assorted antagonists and bit players navigating Queer culture, Lesbian concerns, and just plain day-to-day life in a somewhat-ambiguous American city, dealing with love, lust, loss, school, poverty, opportunity, and existential wonderment as they grew up.

Bechdel’s 2006 graphic memoir Fun Home: A Family Tragicomic, broke new ground. She reflected on her own childhood and adolescence, pondering her father, who, shortly after Bechdel’s mother asked for a divorce, stepped into the path of an oncoming truck. Was he secretly Gay? Did he commit suicide and make it look like an accident for the sake of family decorum? Did his death have anything to do with Bechdel’s coming out? She dove into the uncertainties, and the hurt beneath them. A stage musical followed, and a movie might be in the offing.

            After a series of other works, Spent returns Bechdel to family and social concerns. The vivid colors delineate characters, summon passing seasons, and bring the moods of the characters to life. Bechdel faces her dedicated cycle of routine that is a functional but limited hamster wheel. And outside of that routine lie hopes, fears, challenges, and the need to face a broken nation that may not heal in our time. She unpacks her passion and finds a through line.