And then there was the time that I hired Howard Cruse…
Once upon a time, there were 2 comic book journalism sites. Neither site exists in their former forms, but that is another story for another day. The important part of this story is how they both had a connection to Gay League. You see, I was an editor at both sites at some point in history and as one of the first 24 members of Gay League, I had a profile up on the site (thank you, Anton Kawasaki and Joe Palmer). A gay cartoonist named Tim Fish found me on that site and an origin story of how that turned out can be read in the Introduction I wrote in the print version of Young Bottoms in Love. The short version is Tim reached out to me in 1997 while I was News Editor at Slush Factory, and would pitch a gay romance anthology to me in 2002 after I had become Co-Editor in Chief of PopImage.
This was a hard YES. But this is where I explain why, because I am absolutely certain Howard would like this memorialized. You see, part of what Gay League did was advocate for gay characters in mainstream comics. And at PopImage, we would ask publishers why there weren’t more of them. “Oh, we’d love to add gay characters but there is no market for it,” would be one of the common refrains. I begged to differ. My intuition told me that there was an audience that was hungry for this content. What I needed at this point were metrics and hard data.
Enter Tim Fish with his pitch. I promised a forum to publish, and he promised the anthology. As long as the cartoons kept coming, I would make sure there was a home to publish them. And there were 6 volumes of Young Bottoms in Love published on PopImage.
Tim introduced me to Howard at MoCCA Festival and after introducing us, we developed a rapport. I wanted to have a month of Howard Cruse at the site including reviews and interviews. The next part fit in and made logical sense.
When Tim and I both decided we were ready to end the series on a high note, I don’t remember how our conversation led us to “you know, we should hire Howard Cruse to do the final Young Bottoms in Love” but it was a brilliant idea and it would fit the theme of this planned month. We negotiated something that worked for all parties; Howard Cruse would own the cartoon he drew for our site, Tim Fish would have first print rights for a Young Bottoms in Love anthology, and all rights reverted to Howard after this happened. It was some of the best money I ever spent. The process was amazing. Tim can confirm his back and forth with Howard, but my favorite part was him asking exactly how naughty he was allowed to be. I told him I wanted a gay romance strip that a teen could read online without getting arrested. He then sent what was one of the most incredible poster sized cartoons that he sent to publishers that showed, in visual narrative form, where he wanted you to point on the page to establish what that meant! It lives in my memory and if Tim can find it hopefully we can see it someday at The Smithsonian.
The cartoon “My Hypnotist” has been published in color on PopImage, in the print anthology of Young Bottoms in Love and in black and white in Howard Cruse’s From Headrack to Claude: Collected Gay Comix by Howard Cruse. Both Tim and Howard thanked me in their books. This is where I say, no, thank you. How gracious of both of you to allow me to be a footnote in this history.
Editor’s note: Cruse’s “My Hypnotist” strip was published daily from February 13th, 2006 – February 17th, 2006. Each Young Bottoms In Love page was numbered. The “My Hypnotist” pages were numbered #486 to #490.
Tim Fish is the creator of Cavalcade Of Boys, the popular Young Bottoms In Love anthology webcomic, the YA webcomic Please Say It, and the artist of Liebestrasse on which he partnered with writer Greg Lockard.
When I started to push my comics work from mini-comics to longer form, I found myself at a few conventions–Comic Con International, SPX, and MoCCA, with some test material… a smattering of super-hero fare, slice-of-life, and my take on “gay romance” (which turned out to be more observational dramedy in hindsight. To my surprise and delight, the queer content is what took off! I wanted to keep the forward movement going with Cavalcade of Boys, but it took so long to create enough content for print, I was nearly disheartened. Until I reconnected with Ed Mathews, that is.
I’d known Ed from Slush Factory days, and PopImage seemed like a great fit to post ongoing webcomics. Thus was born the anthology series Young Bottoms in Love. The inspiration for the series was romance comics of the ’50s and ’60s and the title a play on such fare as Secrets of Young Brides and Career Girl Romances. To keep the content flowing, so many amazing artists agreed to create short stories for the series over the course of its four-year run… Greg Lockard, Monica Gallagher, Paige Braddock, Jen Van Meter, Abby Denson, Jack Lawrence, and many, many more. When I look back at the list of contributors, it’s staggering… in large part because Howard is at the top of the list.
I was too young to have read Wendel’s run, but I was very familiar with Stuck Rubber Baby. I was dumbfounded Howard was so willing to get involved in the web series as we were winding it down. The artist who had done so much for gay comics, from early underground days through winning an Eisner–was on board.
What always struck me in all our back-and-forths was his professionalism. Sure, we had become pals from our run-ins at comic shows, but he had no ego in the game at all. He treated us and our publication with dignity and respect. We were a client like any other. His story was a story like any other (from his perspective, at least… for us, it was a gem!). I was too shy to ask him directly why he was all in, but I never took it for granted he was.