Stuck Rubber Baby

Background

Howard Cruse (b. 1944) was born in Alabama to a Baptist preacher. He earned a degree in drama and worked in television before turning to a cartooning career. From 1971 he published a strip called Barefootz that appeared in a number of underground comix publications, including three issues under its own title—though Cruse's contemporaries gave it little regard, deeming it too cute and gentle compared to the countercultural works alongside which it ran. In 1976, Cruse introduced a gay character into the strip, committing to the gay liberation movement.

In 1979 Denis Kitchen of Kitchen Sink Press invited Cruse to edit the comic-book anthology Gay Comix; the first issue appeared in 1980. From 1983 to 1989 Cruse produced Wendel, an ongoing humorous comic strip for the LGBT magazine The Advocate.

Publication

Piranha Press, an imprint of DC Comics that published alternative comics, contracted with Cruse, giving him an advance against royalties to cover expenses for the two years projected to finish the book. Cruse ultimately took four years, and when his finances became tight he took time away from the book to raise funds by applying for grants and selling pages from the book before they were drawn. Piranha Press was discontinued in 1994, before Cruse finished Stuck Rubber Baby, so the book was instead published by DC's Paradox Press imprint in 1995, in hardcover.

Stuck Rubber Baby runs 210 pages. Playwright Tony Kushner wrote an introduction to the first edition; he and Cruse had met socially. It was reprinted in paperback in 1996 by HarperCollins. Translations have appeared in French, German, Italian, and Spanish. Reprinted the book in 2010 under its Vertigo imprint, as Paradox was by then defunct. Cartoonist Alison Bechdel wrote the introduction to the new edition.

Summary

Decades after the book's events, the forty-something Toland Polk narrates his youth in the fictional town of Clayfield, in the American South in the 1950s and 1960s. After his parents die in a car accident, he finds he has no direction and chooses to work for a gas station rather than go to college. He becomes involved with the black community and the Civil Rights Movement, and courts a folk singer named Ginger in the hopes of "curing" his homosexuality; together they have a child they give up for adoption. Toland finds the black community more accepting of his homosexuality than his own white community. The bombing of a black community center, the lynching of a gay friend, and other such events push him to social activism.

Style and analysis

The dense black-and-white artwork is more restrained and less cartoony than that of Cruse's earlier work. Cruse abandons his trademark stippling for heavily crosshatching. He gives particular attention to buildings and other background details, and to rendering characters with individuality. Ben Bolling likens the rounded rendering of the figures to those in the paintings of American artist Paul Cadmus. The pages are heavy with dialogue balloons.

The frame story, set off with rounded panel borders, takes place in the late 1980s or early 1990s, as Toland narrates with his male partner by his side. The narration appears to occur over a substantial span of time, as the pair's clothing and background moves from summery to wintery.

Overview

The story is not autobiographical, but draws from Cruse's experiences growing up in Birmingham, Alabama. He also includes such historical events as the 16th Street Baptist Church bombing and the murder of Emmett Till. In an interview with Comic Book Resources, Cruse said that the story drew on his own experiences in the 1960s and his "anger at the degree to which the ideals of the Civil Rights Era were being abandoned."

Character List

Reception and legacy

Stuck Rubber Baby appeared among high expectations generated by the success of Art Spiegelman's Maus, completed in 1991. Stuck Rubber Baby won a favorable critical reception, though sales were modest. The book won the award for Best Graphic Novel at the Eisners, Harveys, and UK Comic Art Awards. It was nominated for the American Library Association's Lesbian and Gay Book Award and the Lambda Literary Award. It won the 2002 French Prix de la critique and the Luche award in Germany.

Comics writer Harvey Pekar wrote that, if enough people read it, "it surely will help convince the general public that comics can appeal to adults." Upon its reprinting in 2011, Comics Alliance wrote that Cruse "harnessed a symphony of discordant subtleties". The book has generated some controversy; in 2004, a Texas citizens' group asked that it be removed from the young adult section of the local library.

Cruse's earlier work influenced Alison Bechdel in her comic strip Dykes to Watch Out For, and she later produced the graphic novels Fun Home (2006) and Are You My Mother? (2012) which also deal with homosexual awakening.