Howard Cruse

Howard Cruse (1944-2019) was an American cartoonist and a pioneering figure in LGBTQ comics. Born in Alabama to a Baptist preacher and his wife, Cruse earned a degree in drama and worked in television before pursuing cartooning full-time. He began publishing his strip Barefootz in underground comix in 1971.

In 1979, publisher Denis Kitchen invited Cruse to edit Gay Comix, a landmark anthology of comics by openly gay and lesbian creators. Throughout the 1980s, he created the strip Wendel for The Advocate, following an idealistic gay man and his partner through the realities of the AIDS crisis, gay rights activism, and everyday life.

Cruse spent the early 1990s creating Stuck Rubber Baby, a 210-page graphic novel exploring race, sexuality, and the Civil Rights movement in the American South. Published by DC's Paradox Press in 1995, it won the Eisner, Harvey, and UK Comic Art Awards for Best Graphic Novel. Cruse died on November 26, 2019, from lymphoma. He is featured in the documentary No Straight Lines: The Rise of Queer Comics (2021).