Howard Cruse’s groundbreaking, semi-autobiographical graphic novel, Stuck Rubber Baby, first published in 1995, returns in a new 15th anniversary edition, published under DC Comics’ Vertigo imprint, in honor of Pride Month. The winner of Eisner and Harvey Awards, including the Angouleme Festival Prix de la critique and the United Kingdom Comic Art Award, is in stores now, with a new cover and an introduction by Alison Bechdel, award-winning author of Fun Home.

"Cruse's visceral, visual account of America's recent past contributes with grace and force to what we can only continue to hope is history's bend toward justice,” says Alison Bechdel from her introduction.

Set mostly in the 1960s in the South, the central character of Stuck Rubber Baby is Toland Polk, a young white working-class man who gradually comes to grips with his homosexuality while struggling with his own learned racism and that of his community. Cruse drew heavily upon his own experiences as a gay man growing up in Birmingham, Alabama.

Scott McCloud had this to say about Stuck Rubber Baby: "A remarkable achievement, a story so richly drawn – in both senses of the word – that it will pull you, headlong, into a bottomless world of hopes, fears, dreams and the all-too-real prejudice witnessed by its author."

Howard Cruse's comic strips and humorous illustrations have appeared in Playboy, The Village Voice, Artforum International, Heavy Metal, Starlog, and numerous other mainstream American magazines, as well as in assorted underground comix and in Howard's solo Barefootz Funnies series. Howard was the founding editor in 1980 of Gay Comix, and his comic strip series Wendel, a popular feature in The Advocate during much of the 1980s, has been reprinted in three book collections.

For the most updated information on Howard Cruse, go to www.howardcruse.com and check out his blog.

And check out the following interviews with Howard in Publishers Weekly and Queersighted about the return of “Stuck Rubber Baby”.

There will be a plethora of Howard Cruse appearances in June and July—more information coming soon on this site.

Prism Comics promotes the works of the LGBT community in comics. It does not implicitly endorse any other material or products associated with those works. Any opinions expressed are those of the author(s).