Goodbye to Howard Cruse
On November 26th, the day before Thanksgiving, we lost the legendary cartoonist Howard Cruse to lymphoma. He was 75. Howard was one of the kindest, most supportive cartoonists in all of everdom.
I first met Howie at an OutWrite conference in Boston in the early 90s. Any trepidation I felt upon meeting this master of the art form—while I was still trying to get established—quickly vanished under his relaxed southern charm. He was always supportive of me and scores of other cartoonists. Later, when I moved to NYC in 1995, he and the rest of the NYC cartoonist queers (Jen Camper, Joan Hilty and Ivan Velez Jr.) welcomed me into their fold. Every now and again we’d all get together, usually at Jen’s apartment, and talk about whatever we were working on over drinks and snacks. It was all super-caszh, but it fed my always-hungry artistic soul. One time Alison Bechdel came, and another time Andrea “Stonewall Riots” Natalie showed up. Those meetings left me with some really happy memories. Howard always made the long trek in to Manhattan from Queens. He was that kind of person; he showed up. He was such a gentleman.
One time in spring of 1998, Howard had me over to his apartment in Jackson Heights to help me color the cover of my first Curbside book. Howard had just learned this exotic new coloring app called “Photoshop” and was happy to show me the ropes (ah, yes, those early the days of the internet. Happy to report that I am now rudimentarily proficient with that there Photoshop). Over the years Howard would draw for a couple of my anthologies like The Book of Boy Trouble 2 and QU33R. In 2007 my husband John got both Howard and I a good-paying gig drawing comics for this weird Onion parody newspaper that Marriott Hotels would use for internal trainings (though it turned out to be too edgy and didn’t see the light of day - as both John and I suspected, it was a one-and-done campaign). I will put up a couple of Howard’s single-panels in another post sometime soon. John just unearthed them and they’re pretty great.
The photo below, from that Out/Write conference I mentioned, features all of us, in our younger days. That’s Howard on the far right.
It hurts to know he’s no longer around. But his legacy, which includes above all else his magnum opus, Stuck Rubber Baby, will continue to inspire people for years to come. I don’t know how else to end this ramble except to say goodbye one more time. Thanks for everything, dear Howie, may you rest in peace.
(L-R): Jen Camper, Diane DiMassa, Alison Bechdel, Rob Kirby, Joan Hilty, & Howard Cruse; Boston, MA, probably 1992 or ‘93