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The total Wendel

by Robert Greenberger

To most people, Howard Cruse is an acclaimed writer as well as artist, perhaps finest understood for the underground comix Barefootz or the semi-autobiographical Stuck Rubber Baby. But, when I very first satisfied him, he was coming off a function as Art director for Starlog Press. When I got there in 1980, he was a friendly guy who shared my rate of interest in comics so it seemed like a natural to ask Howard to compose a column for the just-aborning Comics Scene. His loose Cruse column ran in just the very first five issues, however provided a wonderful unique voice (and I stay honored he still utilizes that title for his own blog). It was only after this time around that I got to understand as well as respect Howard for his pioneering work with Gay Comix as well as his character Wendel.

Comics by as well as about homosexuals are not frequently explored so its particularly nice to see Howard’s long-running function Wendel get a total collection. The 288-page book is coming from Universe, a division of Rizzoli as well as the exact same people who last year published my question lady book. With an introduction by Alison Bechdel, this comes well recommended.

“I got my advance copy over the holidays as well as they’ve put together a handsome bundle indeed,” Howard composed to me recently.

“As you understand however as a few of your visitors may not, Wendel was a comic strip series about a group of gay buddies that originally ran during much of the 1980s as a routine series in The Advocate, the LGBT newsmagazine. The strip looked with a largely humorous prism at the lives gay people like me as well as the magazine’s other visitors led during the Reagan-Bush era, when homophobia was rampant in the public ball as well as the helps epidemic added life-and-death concerns as well as the requirement for political activism to the more mundane elements of daily life. The strip gained a great deal of popularity among gays of my generation during its run. By now, of course, a couple of younger generations of gays have never been subjected to it—which makes a compilation of the series in book type a rational step to take.”

For a short moment, the adventures of Wendel, his enthusiast Ollie as well as their friends, was collected in 2001 as Wendel All Together, by LPC group under its Olmstead press imprint. LPC was the publisher that left many comics creators, distributors, as well as retailers stranded by declaring bankruptcy in April 0f 2002.

“It had barely had time to produce a handful of positive evaluations when LPC’s stock was frozen (as I comprehend it; there was no official system for us authors to be informed about what was going on) by the sluggish machinery of bankruptcy proceedings. The upshot was that retailers who desired copies of WAT had no method of getting it for rather a while, as well as by the time the book was technically offered once again so much time had passed that whatever momentum WAT may briefly have had was lost. LPC’s Olmstead press backlist was offered to a little press in Rhode Island that evidenced bit smart when it came to advertising to either gay retailers or comics shops as well as whose idiosyncratic distribution system made it difficult for my book to reach traditional bookstore shelves. So to my aggravation Wendel All together dropped off of most people’s radar screens before it had a fair possibility to reach its natural constituencies of LGBT readers—not to mention non-gay visitors who may be thinking about getting an insider’s look at exactly how daily gay people survived the 1980s.”

Thankfully, Denis Kitchen, who published Gay Comix, assisted Howard, who lastly regained rights to his material, discover a new, much better publisher for this entertaining material. Howard happily tells me the new volume contains “everything that was in Wendel All together as well as more. As in the earlier collection, the entire Wendel series is there from beginning to end together with the ‘scrapbook’ products that were reward features in WAT; however in addition there’s a new introduction by Alison Bechdel, author of the award-winning graphic memoir fun Home, as well as a two-page ‘Where Are They Now?’ comic strip that I drew last summer. I have likewise updated my own preface to the book and, of course, drawn new color artwork for the cover.”