Alison Benchdel post Fun House.

In 2006 Alison Benchdel became a best-selling and critically acclaimed author with her autobiographical graphic memoir Fun House. She had hoped that an honest account of her youth would somehow stitch her family back together and perhaps even bandage old wounds. However, this was not case at all as she revealed in an interview with Emma Brockes this week.

"I had this fantasy that this book was going to heal us and bring us all together. I was going to tell the truth and everything would be out in the open." The truth of her father's not-quite repressed homosexuality, and the day he stepped in front of a truck and was killed, in what she believes was suicide, required a lot of healing. And? She smiles in understatement.

"That didn't happen."

Well, it seems like post Fun House Benchdel is reaquainting herself with comfort by issuing The Essential Dykes To Watch Out For on December 18th as a compendium of her comic strips published between 1987 and 2008. Its these comic strips that were the founding blocks that helped her create her master piece Fun House.

And so, the real question is... What will Bendchel come up with next? Will she bask in the comfort of the old, or will she continue to push her own boundaries with her acquired knowledge of consequence with regards to honesty? Well, it appears that Benchdel likes a challenge because she has set her sights on writting yet another memoir even after all the shit she had to deal with after the publishing of Fun House--and its this honest fearlessness that makes anything written by Benchdel so damn wonderful to read.

For the next memoir, she is going back to her ex-girlfriends, asking for permission to write about them. "I'm hoping to have everyone be OK with it." She smiles beneath the weight of experience. "That might be a little unworkable".

Check out Benchdel's interview with Emma Brockes HERE.

Oh, and just for the heck of it, here's Bredchel's coming out story. Below is the first page preview.

I think many people could relate to her stories, which is why I dig her so much.