“Collected Gay Comix”
Howard Cruse
Nifty Kitsch Press
$19

Reviewed by Joe Palmer

Consider the current state of comics and LGBT characters and stories. The big four publishers have cautiously swam in the shallow side of the pool occasionally showing off or taking a dive in the deep part while an increasing number of queer artists and writers have not only left the pool for the beach, they’re riding a wave. That wave is certainly built on creativity and ambition and fueled by the desire to tell stories, just as it owes an enormous debt to the creative people who first jumped into the waters decades ago. Among those first cartoonists was a young man from Alabama named Howard Cruse.

Cruse is perhaps best known for his graphic novel Stuck Rubber Baby that tells the coming of age story of a gay man during the Civil Rights movement of the 1960s. Before the graphic novel Cruse created a number of cartoons and strips, notably Wendel, his other masterpiece that recounted the everyday adventures of a gay man and his friends in the pages of The Advocate. Cruse gave up editing Gay Comix in order to work on the strip. The Wendel strips were published in a collection in 2001 and others in the out of print Dancin’ Nekkid With The Angels. Other work was problematic in tracking down. The slightly oversized From Headrack To Claude gathers between its covers some of the difficult to find strips along with the cream of Dancin’ Nekkid along with a couple recent pieces from the Young Bottoms In Love and Boy Trouble 2 anthologies.

The world was changing in 1969 when Cruse first arrived in New York City. While I was too young to know on my eleventh birthday that  gay people (whom it seemed so outlandish an idea that there could be another person like me) rioted that June night in the Village, Cruse was just coming into adulthood in this transformative time when gays finally said no more and began to decide for themselves what life would be like rather than live by dictate and fear of retribution. Cruse was the right talent at the right time and place to capture the burgeoning, uncloseted gay subculture as it tried to define itself, defend against homophobia, and worst of all, dealing with the nascent AIDS epidemic. Somehow Cruse distilled these heady forces to show the human condition of the everyday gay man, and so much the better when the hypocritical and self-centered folks get exposed along the way.

As these strips are records of their time, one might think their relevance is diminished, but this is not the case. Granted, great strides have been made since Stonewall, but while reading through this volume I was consistently reminded of the old adage “the more things change, the more they stay the same”. Take the deeply closeted minister Jerry Mac, a man who as a teenager was beaten by the father of his best friend for an affectionate kiss or closeted celebrities and politicos lampooned in His Closet. Cruse had the foresight to insert backstories to help put the works and some in story references into context.

Homoeroticism Blues that crystallized the importance of Cruse. The artist quoted language added by the homophobic Senator Jesse Helms to As much as these backstories contribute, they are also my one extremely minor disappointment. Or rather their layouts are the issue since sometimes they were confusing to follow. Even so, it was in reading a little background forthe 1989 Senate Appropriations Bill who was incensed that the National Endowment for the Arts had partly funded an exhibit of Robert Maplethorpe’s explicit photographs. Cruse’s brief reference to Maplethorpe reminded me of Keith Haring and David Wojnarowicz, all gay artists whose sexuality informed their work. Tragically, their lives were cut short by AIDS. It made me realize how if some unknown factor had changed Cruse might have been lost to us as well.

Next year Vertigo will publish a new edition of Cruse’s Stuck Rubber Baby with a foreword by Alison Bechdel. A new edition is certainly welcomed. Now if some LGBT equality organizations will read it and find the relevance it has in bridging the gaps, perceived or real, between our community and other minority ones. If you don’t own a copy, then do yourself a favor next year and buy it.

From Headrack to Claude is available at Lulu .  Cruse’s Felix’s Friends can also be purchaed there. Shipping is extra.

Howard Cruse has a website and can be found on Facebook.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, October 13th, 2009 at 10:47 pm and is filed under Reviews. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.