The Secret to Superhuman Strength (Signed First Edition)

Alison Bechdel (author); Holly Rae Taylor (illustrator)

ISBN 10: 0358554845 / ISBN 13: 9780358554844

Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, Boston, 2021

About this Item

Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, Boston, 2021. First edition. First printing, with full number line to 1. A new copy in a new jacket. A clean, tight copy with price ($24.00) intact on front flap. Comes with archival-quality jacket protector. This copy has been SIGNED by Bechdel along with her original doodle of a wise-looking bird, on a tipped-in page (as pictured).

Seller Inventory # FLAHIVE-3301

Bibliographic Details

• Title: The Secret to Superhuman Strength (Signed First Edition)
• Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, Boston
• Publication Date: 2021
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0358554845
• ISBN 13: 9780358554844
• Binding: Hardcover
• Illustrator: Bechdel, Alison
• Edition: 1st Edition
• Condition: New
• Dust Jacket Condition: New
• Signed: Signed by Author(s)
• Seller catalogs:
  • Signed Graphic Novels
  • Graphic Novels
  • Signed First Editions

About this title

Synopsis

Comics and cultural superstar Alison Bechdel delivers a deeply layered story of her fascination, from childhood to adulthood, with every fitness craze to come down the pike: from Jack LaLanne in the 60s ("Outlandish jumpsuit! Cantaloupe-sized guns!") to the existential oddness of present-day spin class. Readers will see their athletic or semi-active pasts flash before their eyes through an ever-evolving panoply of running shoes, bicycles, skis, and sundry other gear. But the more Bechdel tries to improve herself, the more her self appears to be the thing in her way. She turns for enlightenment to Eastern philosophers and literary figures, including Beat writer Jack Kerouac, whose search for self-transcendence in the great outdoors appears in moving conversation with the author’s own. This gifted artist and not-getting-any-younger exerciser comes to a soulful conclusion. The secret to superhuman strength lies not in six-pack abs, but in something much less clearly defined: facing her own non-transcendent but all-important interdependence with others.

A heartrendingly comic chronicle for our times.

About the Author

Alison Bechdel’s cult following for her early comic strip Dykes to Watch Out For expanded wildly for her family memoirs, the New York Times bestselling and Time magazine #1 Book of the Year graphic memoir Fun Home, adapted into a Tony Award–winning musical, and Are You My Mother? Most recently, The Secret to Superman Strength was named a New York Times Best Graphic Novel of 2021. Bechdel has been named a MacArthur Fellow, among many other honors.