Before Persepolis, before Fun Home, there was Stuck Rubber Baby. After 15 years, Vertigo's handsome hardcover reissue of Howard Cruse's classic is truly cause for rejoicing. Long before "graphic novel" became a genre, with only Art Spiegelman's Maus as a precedent, this book was a historic quantum leap in illustrated autobiography. These aren't cartoons in an animal parable, these are highly individualized, error-prone human beings, both black and white, in a sophisticated, fully orchestrated, memoir-style novel. In a stroke, Cruse practically invented the genre that would be amplified by Marjane Satrapi and Alison Bechdel into the realistic graphic novel, in which cartoonists tell the story they know best--their own.
Cruse's tale takes place in the '60s in a city modeled on Birmingham, Ala., called Clayfield, where closeted Toland Polk becomes involved in the civil rights movement.
The novel unfolds in flashback, as a mature, bearded Toland recounts what happened to him just after college. He's talking to us, but hovering in the background is another man, a male friend who seems to know Toland very well. As Toland tells his story, he's no college hero, more acted upon than acting, present at the demonstrations because of the straight girl activist he's courting, seduced by Les, propositioned by Sammy, manipulated by the police, perpetually helpless and confused and guilt-stricken. He's swept into his first demonstration, his first gay bar, his first racist bomb, his first homophobic violence and, of course, the moral dilemma of the "stuck rubber baby." We watch Toland forced to grow up and take a stand.
With slightly more text than most graphic novels today, intensely illustrated but with smaller panels, Cruse creates an illusion of blocks of words floating in front of pictures that seem to open out behind them into another world teeming with strokes and shadows. His pictures are so technically delicious, the shading and cross-hatching so painstakingly executed, you can't help but want the pages blown up to triple their size, just to admire their staggering detail.
The characters are unforgettable: Sammy Noone, the flaming in-your-face gay activist; Anna Dellyne, one-time blues singer now married to a preacher; Mabel the elderly church pianist, with a brick in her purse for police dog attacks; and the Reverend Harland Pepper, who doesn't hesitate to walk into a crowded gay bar to tell his son that three black choir children have been killed in a hate bombing.
With superb plot architecture, as this startlingly dramatic, wrenchingly sad flashback fades into the last few chapters set in the 1990s, Cruse pops a last big surprise and lets the story's simple, haunting conclusion tell itself.--Nick DiMartino
Shelf Talker: Reissue of a classic graphic novel, with unforgettable characters and story set during the civil rights movement--homophobia, racism and coming out, with evocative artwork.