Synopses & Reviews
The groundbreaking, award-winning semi-autobiographical graphic novel returns in a new edition featuring an introduction by Alison Bechdel, award winning author of
Fun Home.
In the 1960s American South, a young gas-station attendant named Toland Polk is rejected from the Army draft for admitting homosexual tendencies, and falls in with a close-knit group of young locals yearning to break from the conformity of their hometown through civil rights activism, folk music and upstart communality of race-mixing, gay-friendly nightclubs.
Toland's story is both deeply personal and epic in scope, as his search for identity plays out against the brutal fight over segregation, an unplanned pregnancy and small-town bigotry, aided by an unforgettable supporting cast.
Review
"The first image we see in Howard Cruse's 1995 Stuck Rubber Baby is of a smiling John and Jacqueline Kennedy walking arm in arm. It sets the book in what Cruse's main character, Toland Polk, calls 'Kennedytime', that happy precipice upon which the US teetered between the end of the '50s and the whirlwind of assassinations and demonstrations of the '60s. These things are sign posts, easy summaries of the era that are well-worn in story and art. It's easy to feel at home in that era whether you lived through it or not because the battles fought and the lessons learned then still reverberate through nearly every aspect of American society...." PopMatters
Review
"This story highlights that people, regardless of who they are, what they do, or what they are, need to be treated with respect. The era of segregation should never be forgotten, and the lessons of the time should be in people's minds today, as they watch the news, and decide about what issues they care about. You're not going to get away with reading Stuck Rubber Baby without having to think about these kinds of issues, and I think that's a wonderful thing about this important work, just as poignant and relevant today as it was when it was released fifteen years ago." iFanboy