Dykes to Watch Out for: The Sequel

Bechdel's ( Dykes to Watch Out For ) comics present an idealized community of lesbian friends, lovers and gay activists. This new collection of ``dykes'' follows the politically earnest and neurotic Mo and her affable lover Harriet as they prepare to live together. Their many friends--happily promiscuous Lois; Ginger, the black college professor; Ginger's Asian housemate Sparrow; and lovebirds Clarice and Toni--make appearances through subplots that humorously detail the course of their lives and love affairs. Needless to say, Bechdel's work is politically correct--racially diverse to a fault, her characters routinely spout liberal political platitudes and radical sexual ideology; but her stories combine a gentle humor with a forthright depiction of the complex social issues facing homosexual women. Her drawings are charming, simple and skillfully comic, but the book's real gem is a separate feature, ``Serial Monogamy,'' a very funny, autobiographical examination of the cartoonist's own inability to make a relationship last (``Not only do lesbians have less sex than Hets and Gay men, we break up more often''), something with which heterosexuals can certainly sympathize. (Apr.)