Alison Bechdel has long been an aficionado of exercise, as she chronicles in her graphic memoir The Secret to Superhuman Strength. In her drawings and text, Bechdel—best known for her long-lived comic strip “Dykes to Watch Out For” as well as her graphic memoir Fun Home—examines some of the reasons for her pursuit of jogging, cycling, skiing, martial arts, and nearly every exercise trend of the last sixty years: stress relief and a desire to look like Charles Atlas. There are also deeper reasons for the fitness habit: Bechdel looks for control, inner calm, one-ness with the world, and flow. Throughout the decades, Americans suited up for jazzercise and spinning to train their bodies, of course, but also for something bigger than themselves. Bechdel presents the history of exercise as a search for self and meaning in a consumerist American society.
While graphic works such as Bechdel's might...
