Howard Cruse's chronicle of a gay man coming of age at the height of the '60s civil-rights movement, appearing for the first time in paperback, is one of the few works in comics that truly deserve the label of "graphic novel." Set in the Deep South, Stuck Rubber Baby focuses on the slow growth of its protagonist as he becomes involved with the intertwined, racially and sexually marginalized communities around him while discovering his own identity. Cruse possesses a talent for drawing, both literally and figuratively, convincingly rich characters—a quality maintained in spite of Baby's expansive cast of dozens. Stuck Rubber Baby captures a time and place in which the ongoing struggles for social justice were beginning to take shape, but its personal style avoids preachy didacticism. Unfortunately, Cruse's finely detailed drawings occasionally suffer from the compression of mass-production, but this is a small complaint in light of such superb writing.