Stuck Rubber Baby
Stuck Rubber Baby | |
---|---|
Creator | Howard Cruse |
Date | 1995 |
Page count | 210 pages |
Publisher | Paradox Press |
Stuck Rubber Baby is a 1995
Background
In 1979
Publication history
Piranha Press, an imprint of DC Comics for alternative comics,[4] contracted with Cruse for a graphic novel. It gave him an advance against royalties to cover expenses for the two years projected to finish the book; it ultimately took four years. When his finances became tight, Cruse took time away from the book to raise funds by applying for grants and selling original art pages from the book before they were drawn.[5] Piranha Press was discontinued in 1994, before Cruse finished the book. It was instead published by DC's Paradox Press imprint in 1995 in hardcover, and in paperback in 1996 by HarperCollins[4] In 2010, DC published a new edition under its Vertigo imprint. Cruse's agents Denis Kitchen and John Lind moved the book to First Second Books, which published a 25th Anniversary edition in 2020, incorporating unpublished material from Cruse's archives; the book was released a few months after his death.[6]
Playwright Tony Kushner wrote an introduction to the first edition.[3] Cartoonist Alison Bechdel contributed an introduction to the 2010 reprint edition. Translations have been published in French,[a] German,[b] Italian,[c] and Spanish.[d][7]
Plot summary
Decades after the book's events, the forty-something Toland Polk[8] narrates his youth in the fictional town of Clayfield, in the American South in the 1950s and 1960s.[9] After his parents die in a car accident, he finds he has no direction.[10] He chooses to work for a gas station rather than go to college.
Polk becomes involved with the black community and the
Style and analysis
The dense black-and-white artwork is more restrained and less cartoony than that of Cruse's earlier work.[11] Cruse abandons his trademark stippling for heavily crosshatching.[9] He gives particular attention to buildings and other background details, and to rendering characters with individuality.[11] Ben Bolling likens the rounded rendering of the figures to those in the paintings of American artist Paul Cadmus.[12] The pages are dense with dialogue balloons.[11]
The frame story, set off with rounded panel borders, takes place in the late 1980s or early 1990s, as the adult 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 reflect seasonal changes from summer to winter.[13]
Overview
The story is not autobiographical, but Cruse draws from his experiences growing up in Birmingham, Alabama.[14] He also includes such historical events as the 1955 murder of Emmett Till in Mississippi and the 16th Street Baptist Church bombing in Birmingham in 1963.[15]
In an interview with Comic Book Resources, Cruse said that he based the novel 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".[3]
In another interview, Cruse stated: "My goal was to create the kind of novel that is too full of incident for someone to simply summarize in their mind in one sentence. I wanted it to be like life, where you spend a year of your life and you can’t just remember everything that happened, but it's all part of a process".[16]
Character list
- Toland Polk, the main character/protagonist
- Melanie, Toland's sister
- Orley, Melanie's husband
- Stetson, an elderly handyman/gardener who worked for the Toland family
- Ben, Stetson's son
- Ginger Raines, Toland's old girlfriend
- Riley Wheeler, Toland's friend
- Mavis Greene, Riley's girlfriend
- Sammy Noone, a longtime gay friend of Mavis & Riley
- Lester Pepper, the gay son of preacher Harland Pepper
- Reverend Harland Pepper, a preacher and nonviolent social activist
- Anna Dellyne Pepper, a former New York singer and the preacher's wife
- Shiloh Reed, a singer who suffers from brain damage following an accident
- Lottie, Shiloh's wife, who has cancer
- Sledge Rankin, a black person who is murdered by the KKK
- Robert Samson, a friend and bi-sexual lover
- Esmo "Esmereldus", a drag queen
- Mabel Older, a piano player and Effie's sister
- Cindy Neuworth, Mabel's younger, "butchy" girlfriend
- Marge, a lesbian, Effie's partner and co-owner of Alleysax
- Effie, Marge's partner and co-owner of Alleysax and Mabel's sister
- Father Edgar Morris, another preacher in town
Reception and legacy
Stuck Rubber Baby was published with high expectations, given the success of Art Spiegelman's graphic novel Maus (1991).[17] Stuck Rubber Baby won a favorable critical reception, but its sales were modest.[7]
The book won the award for Best Graphic Novel at the
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".[2] Upon its reprinting in 2011, Comics Alliance wrote that Cruse "harnessed a symphony of discordant subtleties".[20] Cartoonist and comics scholar Justin Hall wrote of the importance of this work: "Stuck Rubber Baby, with its complex meditations on race, sexuality, and gender in the Civil Rights era Alabama is perhaps the closest we’ve come yet to the Great American Graphic Novel".[21]
The book has generated some controversy because of its subject matter. In 2004, a Texas citizens' group asked that it be removed from the young adult section of the local library.[22]
Cruse's earlier work influenced Alison Bechdel in her comic strip Dykes to Watch Out For. She later published the graphic novels Fun Home (2006) and Are You My Mother? (2012), which also deal with an individual's homosexual awakening.[11]
See also
Notes
References
- ^ a b Booker 2014, p. 979.
- ^ a b Pekar 1995.
- ^ a b c Dueben 2011.
- ^ a b Bolling 2012, p. 776.
- ^ Hatfield 2005, p. 161.
- ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved 2020-01-24.
- ^ a b Bolling 2012, p. 779.
- ^ Dickel 2011, p. 617.
- ^ a b c d Kohlert 2014, p. 1769.
- ^ Worcester 2010, p. 602.
- ^ a b c d e Kohlert 2014, p. 1770.
- ^ Bolling 2012, p. 778.
- ^ Dickel 2011, pp. 617–618.
- ^ Kohlert 2014, p. 1769; Dueben 2011.
- ^ Dickel 2011, p. 618.
- Hartford Advocate. Archived from the originalon 24 February 2021. Retrieved 12 March 2013.
- ^ Hatfield 2005, pp. 161–162.
- ^ Freeman, John. "In Memoriam: Those We Have Lost in 2019 – Part Two", DownTheTubes.net (December 30, 2019).
- ^ Worcester 2010, pp. 601–602.
- ^ Warmoth, Brian. "Comics We Love: Howard Cruse's 'Stuck Rubber Baby' in Print Again, At Last". Comics Alliance. Archived from the original on 26 May 2012. Retrieved 12 March 2013.
- ^ Hall, Justin (December 2, 2019). "Howard Cruse 1944-2019". Comics Journal. Retrieved 5 December 2019.
- ^ Oder, Norman. "Group lists 119 books it wants moved, file requests on 20". Library Journal. Archived from the original on 11 April 2013. Retrieved 12 March 2013.
Works cited
- Bolling, Ben (2012). "Stuck Rubber Baby". In Beaty, Bart; Weiner, Stephen (eds.). Critical Survey of Graphic Novels: Independents and Underground Classics. Salem Press. pp. 776–779. ISBN 978-1-58765-950-8.
- Dickel, Simon (2011). ""Can't Leave Me Behind": Racism, Gay Politics, and Coming of Age in Howard Cruse's "Stuck Rubber Baby"". Amerikastudien / American Studies. 56 (4). Universitätsverlag WINTER Gmbh: 617–635. JSTOR 23509432.
- Dueben, Alex (2011-06-23). "Cruse Returns with "The Complete Wendel"". Comic Book Resources. Archived from the original on 2011-06-30. Retrieved 2013-03-12.
- Project MUSE.
- Kohlert, Frederik Byrn (2014). "Stuck Rubber Baby". In Booker, M. Keith (ed.). Comics through Time: A History of Icons, Idols, and Ideas. ISBN 978-0-313-39751-6.
- Booker, M. Keith, ed. (2014). "Howard Cruse". Comics through Time: A History of Icons, Idols, and Ideas. ISBN 978-0-313-39751-6.
- Pekar, Harvey (1995-12-03). "Compelling Comic Howard Cruse's 'Graphic Novel' Of Serious Concerns". Chicago Tribune. Archived from the original on 2015-04-14. Retrieved 2015-04-14.
- Worcester, Kent (2010). "Stuck Rubber Baby". In Booker, M. Keith (ed.). Encyclopedia of Comic Books and Graphic Novels: [Two Volumes]. ISBN 978-0-313-35747-3.
Further reading
- Bergman, Jason (June 14, 2021). "'Well, this book has been talked about within the industry for a while': Howard Cruse in 1995 (complete interview)". The Comics Journal.
- The Comics Journal #182, pp. 93–118, Fantagraphics, November 1995. A critical overview of Stuck Rubber Baby, with an interview of Howard Cruse.