A review by drkottke
Stuck Rubber Baby by Howard Cruse

5.0

Like Maus, Stuck Rubber Baby deals with the intersection of the personal and the historical, in this case, a young man coming of age in the South during the Civil Rights era while coming to understand his own gay identity. It belongs in two canons, really: coming of age stories and graphic novels, as it's a masterwork of both. The visual style is straight out of 70s/80s underground comix, and the narration is reminiscent of Harvey Pekar. Most of the pages have a tightly traditional, moderately dense grid structure, making it a slower read than many graphic novels, but that only makes the panels and pages that break out of that pattern all the more powerful, mirroring the struggles between the comforts and shackles of tradition as all of the characters negotiate authentic identities against the backdrop of the turbulent 60s.