RUTGERS UNIVERSITY PRESS
LIFE & COMICS OF HOWARD CRUSE TAKING RISKS SC
(W) Andy Kunka
The Life and Comics of Howard Cruse tells the remarkable story of how a self-described "preacher's kid" from Birmingham, Alabama, became the so-called "Godfather of Gay Comics." Cruse's remarkable fifty-year career included working in the 1970s underground comics scene, becoming founding editor of the groundbreaking anthology series Gay Comix, and publishing the graphic novel Stuck Rubber Baby, partially based on his own experience of coming of age in the Civil Rights era. Andrew J. Kunka also chronicles the dramatic ways that gay culture changed over the course of Cruse's lifetime, from Cold War-era homophobia to the gay liberation movement to the AIDS crisis to the legalization of gay marriage.