In 1975, cartoonist Howard Cruse was a staff artist at a Birmingham, Ala. ad agency. But beginning at dawn each day until he had to leave for work, Cruse would spend his time writing and drawing comics for underground comic publications.
"Underground comics meant cutting the bullshit and getting to the truth," Cruse said.
Last night, Cruse spoke about his life and the comics he has created as a reflection of some of his own life experiences. Those experiences range from growing up as a preacher's son in Civil Right's Era Birmingham, Ala., and identifying as a homosexual male. He spoke in Foster Auditorium of Pattee Library at 7 p.m. The University Libraries Diversity Committee and the LGBTA Student Resource Center sponsored his talk.
Cruse said he knew he wanted to draw comics when he was 8 years old. He said he was drawn to underground comics of the '60s because he liked the sexual freedom and psychedelic drugs.
"You could draw about issues that mattered," Cruse said.
In the 1970s, Cruse began the "Barefootz" series. It featured a character who wore a suit, tie and no shoes and lived with 100 cockroaches. "Barefootz" was reflective of his own "hippie lifestyle" at the time, Cruse said.
The cockroaches symbolized humanity and excess, he said, and Barefoot represented the untroubled cosmic overview.
But in the late '80s, things began to get more political in the gay community with the AIDS epidemic. Cruse was then living in New York City and began work on more politically charged comics.
One strip Cruse spoke about was the character, Wendel, he created. Cruse said many people told him that his Wendel comics helped people come out, made them less afraid and that it was a great relief once they were out.
The first job of an artist, Cruse said, is to know who they are. Some of Cruse's work is semi-autobiographical. Many of his comic strips feature the character in the physical world and also above the character's head, their thoughts are displayed.
Not only does Cruse play with perception within the context of the story, he also does so in the physical drawings.
He said he "felt crammed into a conventional newspaper strip" and instead sometimes opted to use jagged boxes that look like shards of glass and very linear rectangles, which are more classically used in comic strips.
Cruse said these layout changes aren't just for artistic license, but also set the tone of the comic.
Eileen Akin, the coordinator of the Fred Waring Collection in the Special Collections Library said Cruse's work pulls everything together. "It's a beautiful combination of the artistic side and the written word," Akin said. "He's a compassionate artist." Akin said she has learned a great deal by reading Cruse's comics. "His work really moved me," she said. "I don't identify as homosexual, and I don't think you need to. He wants people to feel, and it's a combination of his artistic style and the way he tells the story." Caroline Wermuth, the outreach coordinator for the Pennsylvania Center for The Book, also attended and said though she doesn't have much knowledge of comic books or graphic novels, she thought Cruse's work was enlightening. "I found the autobiographical details and historical settings interesting."
