Stuck Rubber Baby

Rating:
Summary: The Great American Graphic Novel
Review: A sweeping and delicately-etched coming-of-age story set against the backdrop of the civil rights movement in the Deep South, "Stuck Rubber Baby" raised the bar for what the graphic novel could do. Howard Cruse's short-form comics ("Barefootz," "Wendel") were smart, funny, and often thought-provoking, but barely prepared readers for the depths and daring of this richly fascinating work. Don't let the whole "comic book" thing scare you off, this is a smart, three-dimensional semi-memoir. Very highly recommended.

Rating:
Summary: The Great American Graphic Novel
Review: A sweeping and delicately-etched coming-of-age story set against the backdrop of the civil rights movement in the Deep South, "Stuck Rubber Baby" raised the bar for what the graphic novel could do. Howard Cruse's short-form comics ("Barefootz," "Wendel") were smart, funny, and often thought-provoking, but barely prepared readers for the depths and daring of this richly fascinating work. Don't let the whole "comic book" thing scare you off, this is a smart, three-dimensional semi-memoir. Very highly recommended.

Rating:
Summary: Masterful storytelling w/distinctive artwork
Review: By rights this funny and uplifting work should be listed as one of the important works of the 20th century. You must read it.

Rating:
Summary: Back In Print!
Review: Stuck Rubber Baby by Howard Cruse is one of the best comics stories ever written -- no hyperbole intended. It is on the list of "The 100 best Comics of the Century" by The Comics Journal. But, instead of writing more about it myself, I just want to direct your attention to the fact that the book is back in stock, according to the author's website: www.howardcruse.com . There you will also find a number of reviews and blurbs which do a better job of describing the experience of reading this classic of a comics novel than I can. If you've never read long-form comics as an adult, and have ever wondered what it would be like to read comics that put 99% of the best-seller list to shame, read Stuck Rubber Baby. -- Bill Realman Stella

Rating:
Summary: Terrific storytelling
Review: The average snoot wouldn't come within a mile of this book, for reasons which seem perfectly reasonable to snoots and are therefore entirely stupid.

Some might react with horror to the curviness of the characters, which is in fact a strength of the story. The people who populate _Stuck Rubber Baby_ do not share the perfection (or carefully controlled imperfection) of characters from other graphic novels. They are pudgy, fat, even unattractive. This is not a defect of the artwork; it is an essential feature. Real people do not have perfect bodies or souls, and this story is, above all else, very real -- almost distressingly so.

Cruse does not fall into the too-easy trap of sanctifying his protagonists. The modern trend of antihero storytelling might make this sound less significant, but given the topics Cruse is handling, this is truly an accomplishment. All of them are ordinary people, who can (and do) make significant mistakes. Some of them recover from their errors, others do not... but everyone emerges significantly changed. _Stuck Rubber Baby_ puts a convincing human face on an era that transformed America, and deserves a place on any well-stocked shelf.

Rating:
Summary: grotesque
Review: The briefness of this review does not do justice to its importance in the history of graphic literature, but I find it difficult to talk about without divulging crucial plot elements. I will say however that it won the Eisner Award (the comic book equivalent of the Oscar) for best Graphic Album, and was nominated for both the American Library Association's Gay and Lesbian Book Award and the Lambda Literary Award.

This story is set in Alabama during the early Sixties, and follows the life of Toland Polk, a white gay man who "comes out" to himself and others at the same time that he is becoming involved in the civil rights movement. Although based on the real life experiences of creator Howard Cruse (and others), he has embellished it enough to classify it as a work of "fiction."

One of the greatest aspects of the book, for me, was the two words on the cover that described "Stuck Rubber Baby" as simply "a novel." Of all the "graphic" novels I have read, no matter how well they were crafted or how much I enjoyed them, none left me feeling so much as though I had just finished a "real" book as this one did. Besides the obvious factor of Cruse's artistic and literary talent, I think this was due to the fact that "Stuck Rubber Baby" was written as a novel instead of being released in installments which were later collected in a book, and that it was rendered in black and white, lending it the same air of authority as more highly regarded works that make use solely of the written word. Ultimately, however, the personal insights into a seldom seen aspect of the civil rights movement's history shared in this work are most effecting precisely because of their presentation through the unique and powerful medium of "comics."

Rating:
Summary: grotesque
Review: The reason this book fails is that writing about such serious subjects with word balloons coming out of the mouths of these anatomically distorted, wildly out of proportion cartoon characters (who look more like cute and cuddly anthropomorphs with tiny little heads than real human beings)produces such a jarring contrast that instead of being dramatic and satisfying, as this very well-paced short novel should have been and would be in any other form, it becomes merely disturbing, and grotesquely inhuman.This book makes one queasy, as it means to, but for all the wrong reasons.