The Secret to Superhuman Strength

 

The Secret to Superhuman Strength by Alison Bechdel (2021 Houghton Mifflin hardcover 234pp)

 

Last year I had the pleasure of reading Alison Bechdel’s “Fun Home” (2006) a graphic novel autobiographical work which followed her life from childhood and ended up focussing on her relationship with her father. I do also possess the sequel “Are You My Mother?” (2012) but have yet to actually read it. As you probably can guess that volume covers her mother and the past life she never told young Alison.

“The Secret to Superhuman Strength” is yet another graphic novel memoir from Bechdel, this time ostensibly focussed on her life and the various fitness fads and crazes she has taken part in. Well at least it starts out following that formula but by the end it has become something much more.

The book is divided up into sections, each covering a decade from the 1960s to 2020s which also fits each decade of Bechdel’s life. As a child she was fascinated by the strong man fitness ads she saw in comics and fantasied about becoming the strongest kid at her school to overcome bullies etc. Not allowed to play boys’ sports she finds her own ways to exercise and keep fit. As the years pass it becomes a bit of an obsession and she becomes a dedicated follower of all the latest fads. Bechdel shows us the necessary and fashionable equipment of each era in neat little asides that become a running gag in the book.

Part way through the book starts to broaden its focus, diverging to cover discussions of the meaning of life itself, eastern mysticism and the lives of several free-thinkers over the last couple of centuries. Bechdel shows us her life warts and all as she seeks for …something she can’t quite reach with all the sports, exercise and martial arts classes. She drinks, she falls in and out of love and begins a career as an artist drawing cartoons and eventually producing books of her own.

All of this is drawn in a precise line-work style with occasional pages in a looser more expressionist form. Unlike “Fun Home” this book is in full colour although the colours are purposely somewhat muted.

While some of it necessarily re-treads the ground covered in “Fun Home” I found it a fascinating and thought-provoking read.