June 16th, 2009
Dear President Obama:
As a gay American who supported you enthusiastically during your campaign, I am increasingly dismayed by the hollowness of your promise to be a "fierce advocate" for gay rights. Your sparse action on the repeal of Don’t Ask Don’t Tell has been hard to abide, but the tenor and fallaciousness of your Justice Department’s likening of same-sex marriage to incest in defending the indefensible Defense of Marriage Act is the last straw. (Quoting the description in today’s New York Times editorial: "In arguing that other states do not have to recognize same-sex marriages under the Constitution’s ‘full faith and credit’ clause, the Justice Department cites decades-old cases ruling that states do not have to recognize marriages between cousins or an uncle and a niece.")
It’s time for you to do some serious soul-searching about your own opposition to gay marriage. How can someone as intelligent as you fail to see that by choosing to keep a central institution of our society closed to a portion of the citizenry, you are fostering second-class citizenship for people who believe in much that you stand for and who want to be your allies?
I supported your candidacy despite your blindness to the injustice of refusing marriage to gay people because you seemed like someone who was reflective enough to listen and learn. But on issues of importance to LGBT people you offer something between lassitude and betrayal. Please go beyond simple efforts to mollify those you are wounding: giving us Bishop Gene Robinson at a concert to make up for Rick Warren at your Inauguration hardly qualifies you as a fierce advocate. Please actually think about these issues, and don’t be afraid to challenge your own habits of thought, just as you are asking the nation to accept change in its own assumptions about other issues on which I support you.
Howard Cruse
(Presently married in Massachusetts to Ed Sedarbaum
but ineligible for hundreds of Federal benefits
automatically provided to married heterosexuals)
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Posted in Soapbox Break | 1 Comment »
June 10th, 2009
Remember "abuse pillows"? Therapists used to encourage their clients to punch them, throw them, and stomp on them as a harmless way of venting their suppressed anger. Maybe they still do.
Anyway, they were obviously on my mind when I drew the sketch below as an adornment to a personal letter I wrote to a friend 22 years ago.
The Old Turf Calls
Odds are that the vast majority of you aren’t going to be in Birmingham, Alabama, during the next month, but should fate take you there (or if you’re an old pal of mine or blog-follower who happens to live in the area), you’ll find a page of my original comic book art included along with art by numerous other Hilltop graduates in the Alumni Art Exhibition that’ll be on view June 12-July 3 at my beloved alma mater, Birmingham-Southern College.
Above right: A panel from "Mister Bug Has His Say," the comic I loaned out for the BSC exhibit.
My fellow BSC alum Don Stewart (who’s a pretty fascinating artist himself, as you’ll see from his web site and presumably from art of Don’s that’ll be in the show) nagged—I mean, encouraged me to be part of the show until I finally overcame my resistance to packaging up yet another drawing for mailing. And I’m glad he persisted, since it’s pleasing to see that cartooning is being recognized these days by BSC as part of the "real" art landscape. That was a leap of the imagination that the Art Department Chair couldn’t quite muster when I was an undergraduate four decades ago (although a couple of more open-minded professors encouraged me individually).
The opening reception for the exhibit is this Friday (June 12) at 6 PM at the Durbin Gallery.
Underground
Overview
I recently found my mailbox next to the front door all but overwhelmed by a handsome hardcover catalog that’s been put together by James Danky and Denis Kitchen, the co-curators of the Underground Classics exhibit at the University of Wisconsin that I blogged about on April 28.
The book is a real pleasure to pore over, and besides showcasing the art that’s still on display (until July 12) at the Chazen Museum in Madison, Wisconsin, it includes enlightening essays by Jay Lynch, Patrick Rosenkranz, Trina Robbins, and Paul Buhle in addition to the introduction by Danky and Kitchen.
I’ll admit that I had misgivings when Denis Kitchen told me that the catalog would feature color photographs of the originals themselves instead of high-resolution scans, which is the way that my drawings normally make it into print. Color photos, after all, show all of the flaws and patches and corrections and marginal notes that are not expected to be visible to readers when a page of comic art is published, not to mention the yellowing that can afflict sheets of Bristol Board with the passage of time.
But now that I can see the finished catalog, I’ve gotta admit that there’s something especially intimate about encountering the sheets of art in their unadorned, physical "reality"—if photos in a book can be extrapolated by the imagination into something like physicality. I’ve always known that there is a special pleasure in seeing original comic book art on a gallery wall (or as part of a personal collection) instead of in reproduction, with all of the sweat marks, remnants of pencil sketches, and other artifacts left by the artist’s hand right there for the eyes to see. I wouldn’t have predicted, though, that this intimacy could be as effectively approximated in print as it has been in this book.
Seeing pages like the one above of the late Joel Beck’s art takes me back to 1966, when I first visited my brother in Berkeley and came across a hand-stapled copy of Beck’s Lenny of Laredo on Telegraph Avenue. It was a revelatory discovery. It had never occurred to me that the supposed "children’s medium" of comics could be represented by pages of art drawn excellently, without abandon, with the human id fully acknowledged and incorporated into the mix but without the visual griminess of the surreptitiously exchanged "Tijuana Bibles" I had seen.
Suddenly a new world seemed possible. I couldn’t imagine, however, how far into that world I would ultimately venture.
Posted in A Tip o' the Hat, Books in my Bookcase, Life & Art, Me, Me, Me!, Yesterday & Today | No Comments »
May 26th, 2009
[Wanna read Part 1 first? Click here.]
We were a motley crew as we chatted away in a dark back corner of the Chow Restaurant on San Francisco’s Market Street last Tuesday night. Gay cartoonists! Lesbian cartoonists! Bisexual cartoonists! Gay-friendly non-gay cartoonists! Gay spouses of gay cartoonists; non-gay spouses of bi cartoonists! Non-cartoonist gays! (Let’s see, have I overlooked anybody?)
Anyway, everyone there at our Chow chowdown on Tuesday had some connection or other to the Gay Comix underground comic book series that was launched nearly thirty years ago.
Below: The four issues of Gay Comix that I edited before passing the baton to Mr. Triptow.
I was the editor for the first four issues of the series; then Robert Triptow took the reins with the fifth issue in 1984 after I bailed out to concentrate on drawing Wendel. Then in 1991 Robert handed the series off to Andy Mangels, who steered the series (albeit with its name changed along the way to Gay Comics) from issue #13 through its reunion-blowout issue, #25.
Last Tuesday’s gathering was about breaking bread (or supping on salad) with old friends and enjoying memories of the part several of us played in getting Gay Comix’s on its feet way back when. It would have been even nicer if some of those Ster Trek teleporters had been on hand to beam in other Gay Comix veterans from the distant cities where they currently reside. But ya can’t have everything.
Vaughn, happily, was coincidentally on hand, having had unrelated reasons last week to leave his Portland digs behind and join us for the San Francisco festivities.
Here are some snapshots to make you almost feel you were there with us.
Above: See our group slowly gathering at the restaurant’s threshold, starting with (from left to right above) my husband Eddie Sedarbaum, Robert Triptow, Vaughn Frick, Burton Clarke, Robert’s husband William Blakely, and Eddie’s and my graphic-designing friend Tim J Luddy, who is graciously providing us with free lodging during our stay in the Bay Area.
Above: Next come Lee Marrs, who’s been recently elevated to a tenured professorship in the Animation Department at Berkeley Community College, with her domestic partner and main squeeze Mike Friedrich in tow. Among Mike’s many accomplishments was his role as the publisher/editor back in 1978 of the "ground-level" comic book series Star*Reach. (Hey, Mike, what’s doin’ with that mischievous right hand of yours?)
Above: Cartoonist/writer/herstorian Trina Robbins gives a hello kiss to novelist/cartoonist/musician Mary Wings. That’s Trina’s longtime partner, comics great Steve Leialoha, on the right with his chin in his hand.
At left, top: Charter Gay Comix contributor Burton Clarke needs to whip up a web site for himself so I can provide a link on occasions like this to online samples of his beautiful comic book art.
At left, bottom: Tim Luddy is a longstanding pal of most of the Gay Comix crowd. Tim is also the award-winning creative director of Mother Jones magazine. If you can spare of minute or two, take a listen to the voice-over Tim contributes to this fascinating slideshow chronicling the evolution of one of MoJo’s recent cover designs.
Above: See Vaughn being pensive while Eddie smiles. But wait! Was Eddie still my husband that evening? Inquiring readers want to know, to quote the old National Enquirer ads—among them being pur friend Martha Thomases, whose pop culture columns have now migrated along with several others from ComicMix to Michael Davis World. (See the mordant query Martha appended to my May 11 post to this blog.)
Above: A nice shot of Lee and Mike. Did I mention that Mike represented me during the 1991 contract negotiations that made Stuck Rubber Baby possible?
At right: An equally nice shot of Trina, who won my heart 33 years ago by being the first underground comix creator to make me feel welcome at the 1976 Berkeley Con, which was the first comics convention devoted entirely to undergrounds. Trina actually liked Barefootz, which at the time was being widely dismissed by most of the male core of San Francisco’s undergrounders.
Thanks, Trina. It meant a lot.
Above: To return from Berkeley to last Tuesday’s doings on Market Street, here’s Mike deep in conversation with Robert Triptow….
…while, Lee offers a thoughtful assessment of my contention that I’m looking a lot more suave now that I’m letting my hair grow out.
Solution to the Puzzle
in my May 24 Blog Entry
Question: What two things do the cartoonists who drew the characters in the montage below have in common?
Answer: (1) They all contributed to early issues of Gay Comix; and (2) they were all present and accounted for at the aforementioned Chow party on May 19.
The cartoon character seated in the foreground above is the work of Mary Wings. Those in back (from left to right) were drawn by Trina Robbins, Burton Clarke, Vaughn, Robert Triptow, and Lee Marrs. (Drawings are copyrighted © by their respective creators)
Posted in Family & Friends, Life & Art, Yesterday & Today | 6 Comments »
May 24th, 2009
Aunt Fagie has long been a favorite relative of Eddie’s and mine. Below is a 1982 sketch of mine drawn during one of her stays with us in New York City. The occasion for her cartoon cameo was our moment of familial self-indulgence when we were strolling through Greenwich Village one afternoon at the height of the Sedutto’s Ice Cream Shop craze in Manhattan.
Eddie and I hung out with some really big trees in Oregon last week.
While we were in Portland we paid a visit to Eddie’s aunt, who is known to the world as Laura Carper but who enjoyed within the Sedarbaum family the nickname "Fagie," derived from the Yiddish word for "little bird."
In her day Fagie wrote about social issues for the New York Review of Books and other publications, as is indicated by the link above.
During our too-brief stay in Portland we grabbed an evening to visit with cartoonist Vaughn Frick, a longtime friend and earlky Gay Comix contributor, seen below in his amazing backyard garden.
As you can see from the example below, Vaughn’s garden is as lush as his artwork.
Above: A typically rich panel from "Our Love Was Too Cosmic" (Gay Comix #10), which Vaughn illustrated in collaboration with the late writer/cartoonist Michael J. Goldberg. (©1988 by Vaughn & M. J. Goldberg)
Below: Vaughn has a great dog, too — always an indicator of good moral character.
Characters shown above: © by their respective creators, whose names will be revealed in my blog entry to follow.
From Portland we drove our rental car down to San Francisco, where among other things we spent all day Sunday gabbing with my cool big brother Allan, who is retiring this month from his long-held tenured position as a Professor of Computer Science at the University of San Francisco.
This marks Allan’s debut appearance in my blog, although his nine-year-old self has been lurking for quite some time at the bottom of this page of my web site.
Today’s Puzzle
What two things do the cartoonists who drew the characters in the montage below have in common?
Look for the answer in my next blog entry!
Posted in Family & Friends, Life & Art, Yesterday & Today | 2 Comments »
May 11th, 2009
Well, I was going to blog at more length today, but time has run out and Eddie and I have to pack for our trip to Portland and San Francisco that begins tomorrow.
I’ll report back as soon as I after May 20, when we’ll return to the Berkshires and resume our New England existence. Hang loose!
Posted in Home Life, Life & Art | 3 Comments »
May 6th, 2009
Now that the May issue of Berkshire Living has finally rolled off the presses, I can share with you the cool collaborative image that photographer Adam Mastoon and I concocted last fall (see above).
Adam brought along his intriguing idea for this cartoon-photography hybrid when he came to our house to take pictures to appear with the magazine’s profile of me, which was expertly written by Kaitlin Bell. (See the snapshot Eddie took of Adam in action in my blog entry from November 12.)
I had great fun applying my drawing to Adam’s portrait, and Berkshire Living has rewarded us for our efforts by giving full-page play to the result.
Although Eddie stayed modestly out of camera range during Adam’s photo shoot in November, Lulu the dalmatian sat still and posed for Adam’s camera the way she almost never will for Eddie’s and mine, darn it! Lulu the blur would be an appropriate caption for most of the pictures Eddie and I manage to take of her!
But for Adam, she all but smiled for the camera. Even canines, it seems, can’t resist the allure of fame.
Posted in A Tip o' the Hat, Me, Me, Me! | 1 Comment »
April 28th, 2009
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Yesterday I stumbled across some unpublished spot illustrations I drew nine years ago that were commissioned to accompany a humorous article about moths.
The drawings (for which I was experimenting with some techniques that gave them a different look from typical Cruse cartoons) would have appeared in the fourth issue of Tom Toldrian’s Harpoon magazine if Harpoon hadn’t folded, alas, after issue 3.
But I still like ‘em so I’ll share ‘em.
Above from top to bottom: A moth being bottle-fed; a moth tangled in fabric fringe; a moth getting spanked; a moth colliding with a wall; and an elderly moth groping toward The Light while undergoing a near-death experience
Hey, if you find yourself
in Madison, WI, this Friday…
In fact, why don’t you arrive an hour earlier and catch the 5:30 PM program featuring co-curators Denis Kitchen (the publisher who got me into underground comic books in the first place thirty-seven years ago) and librarian James Danky?
A few of my Wendel pages are part of the show, and so are comix by a breathtaking array of the pioneering cartoonists (like R. Crumb, Gilbert Shelton, Trina Robbins, Aline Kominsky-Crumb, S. Clay Wilson, and—well, the list of countercultural luminaries goes on and on) who turned the world of comic books upside down during the 1960s and ’70s and helped generate exciting new career opportunities for prosecutors and would-be comics censors all over America.
The show will remain available for viewing through July 12, if you can’t get to the opening festivities but still have a Madison visit in your plans for early summer.
Posted in Me, Me, Me!, Pure Toontime, Yesterday & Today | 3 Comments »
April 22nd, 2009
I returned from New Haven this weekend with many fond memories of the comics panels and camaraderie at "Encountering the Text," Saturday’s all-day Graduate English Conference at Southern Connecticut State University.
I even developed a certain admiration for the mind-stretching title of the day’s comics component, "Subcultures, Semiotics, Sexualities, and Superheroes: Textual/Pictorial Methodologies in Graphic Narrative Media," which falls trippingly off the tongue for academics but for others of us may be the most daunting assemblage of tricky words since Dr. Seuss wrote Fox In Socks.
And for once I not only remembered to bring a camera, I also remembered to take pictures with it!
Above: The aforementioned Shannon Wheeler observes comics panel moderators Corinne Blackmer and the aforementioned Michael Sivak conferring about whatever conference panel moderators confer about between sessions.
Above: In a closing orgy of gustatory delight before hitting the road, we comics panelists gathered with assorted friends, family members, and fellow presenters to gorge ourselves at the fabulous Miya’s Sushi on Howe Street.
At Left: At Miya’s we were greeted by Bun Lai, the restaurant’s gracious, skilled, and (if I may be forgiven for noting) hunky proprietor and chef.
Below: The three effervescent canine bedmates who shared an expansive fold-out couch with me during my overnight stay at the home of SCSU Professor Corinne Blackmer and Pilar Stewart. Many thanks for your hospitality, Corinne and Pilar.
At left: Lulu, fortunately, is not the jealous type.
(And besides, what happens in New Haven stays in New Haven—right?)
Posted in Family & Friends, Life & Art, Me, Me, Me! | 2 Comments »
April 15th, 2009
Above: My 1981 cover art for the second issue of Gay Comix, digitized and spruced up a bit in anticipation of the book collection that I’m in the process of pulling together of my never reprinted or long-out of-print gay-themed comics from the last thirty years.
A bit of publicity is now surfacing to promote this weekend’s comics conference at Southern Connecticut State University, at which I and several other comics creators will be making presentations about our work. For example, here’s an online piece about the event written by Christopher Arnott, a reporter for the New Haven Advocate.
And if you’re within range of New Haven radio station WNPR (or enjoy streaming its broadcasts off the web or downloading them in Podcast form), you can listen to an hour-long live gabfest about the conference on the station’s "Where We Live" series this Friday (April 17) between 9 and 10 AM. Comics historian Dr. William Foster III and conference organizer Michael G. Sivak will be John Dankosky’s guests for the hour, and I’ll be brought into the discussion by phone, I’m told, around 9:20.
Also…
…today is Eddie’s and my anniversary. Congratulations to us! It’s been a good thirty years, loverboy.
Posted in Me, Me, Me! | 4 Comments »
March 27th, 2009
Above: Me doing a slideshow last May at the Norman Rockwell Museum.
Once in a while I’m called upon to leave my lair in the Berkshire mountains and engage directly with comics readers in presumably learned dialogues about the art of comics creation.
One such occasion is coming up a few weeks from now — on Saturday, April 18, to be specific. That’s when Southern Connecticut State University will be hosting, at its Adanti Center on its New Haven campus, an academic conference called "Subcultures, Semiotics, Sexualities, and Superheroes: Textual/Pictorial Methodologies in Graphic Narrative Media" at its campus in New Haven. (Click on the link immediately above for more details.)
Assuming that the gods of digital projection technology cooperate, I’ll be presenting an illustrated discourse that day about my own adventures as a comics creator. And mine won’t be the only "insider’s perspective" being shared with attendees; other comics professions who’ll be part of the conference’s graphic narrative panels are Gabrielle Bell, Abby Denson, Tim Fish, and Shannon Wheeler. (I suggest that you make use of their respective links if you’re not already familiar with the work of these distinguished colleagues of mine.)
And if you’re worried that your brain cells may not get an adequate workout from us artists alone, there should be ample presenters from the academic side of things on hand to do the analytical heavy lifting suggested by the event’s daunting title. An entire day’s programming is planned, after all.
Plus, in addition to the formal presentations, we artists will be spending time at an "artists’ alley" where we’ll sign and sell books or just chat with anyone who chooses to drift by.
The organizer of the event is named Michael G. Sivak — except when he’s calling himself Mykl G. Sivak, as he does in this interesting guest column about his personal history with comics that he posted on February 18 at Popimage.
I know that most of you reading this don’t live in or within easy reach New Haven. But some of you may, and if you drop in for a day of comics submersion I’ll enjoy seeing you.
Posted in Me, Me, Me! | No Comments »
