The Dec. 6 Washington Post ran an obituary for Howard Cruse, who had passed away on Nov. 26 in a Massachusetts hospital at the age of 75. Among many other distinctions, Cruse served as founding editor of Gay Comix, one of the first series to feature work by and for openly gay men and women.
Reading Harrison Smith's excellent overview of Cruse's life and career, I am chagrined that I'd never even heard of him—or his acclaimed 1995 graphic novel, Stuck Rubber Baby, which recounts his experiences growing up and coming out in Jim Crow-era Alabama.
Fortuitously, that book will be reissued in May 2020 in a 25th-anniversary edition with an introduction by Alison Bechdel. I've already preordered it and anticipate it could be a good candidate for our 2020-2021 reading list.
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In the first issue of Gay Comix (Sept, 1980) Howard Cruse published his own 42-frame narrative "Billy Goes Out" about a night in the life of a young gay man trying to score (and escape the depression from a boyfriend's recent death). It must be a foundational text for many gay GenXers and is reprinted in No Straight Lines ("Four Decades of Queer Comics"), which is mentioned in the Post obituary and might itself become a good anthology for our group to read.
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