Part 1:
Stuck Rubber Baby brings up a questions of morality and humans rights. I really fins this book relatable (having had been in the closet until last December (pansexual, if you were or were not wondering)) and incredibly sad. While reading I find myself kind of holding my breath and feeling bad for the characters dealing with the problems of that time. So here are my questions for you.
1. How is the way Toland’s camp counselor explained his “experience” harmful? Remember, he told Toland that is was alright, as long as he didn’t love the other boy, or want to take him on dates and give him flowers.
2. Race is a very prominent thing in this story, as is racism. How does this event (the protests, the violence, the bombings) compare to other stories we’ve read, like Shortcomings , or American Born Chinese?
3. On page 26, Marge says (with shock) “What?!” Are you straight?!” Similarly, people act like this when they find out someone is gay. What do you think spawns this kind of behavior? Family upbringing? Friends? Why do you think this?
4. Bolded words are normally used for emphasis and onomatopoeia. Do you think Cruse over-uses this technique? Are all of the bolded words important, or to be emphasized? Do you think it’s on purpose, as if mimicking a southern accent?
5. In chapter nine, all hell breaks loose at the protest. So far the role of race is part of the main plot. How do you think the extreme racism and hate crimes compare with the subject of sexual preference?
6. By the end of chapter ten, we can assume that the police are pretty corrupt in this story. Can the way the police are written compare to any events in today’s world? Has it changed? How?
7. We’ve talked a lot about style and how it affects the story. We’ve been faced with extreme detail in MAUS and Shortcomings, a colorful cartoon in American Born Chinese, and a lovely simplistic style in Persepolis. Where on the spectrum does this fall? How does it affect the story, the way you perceive it, and the way you relate to the characters?
Part 2:
So Stuck Rubber Baby really does live up to the expectation I had upon reading the comment from Booklist. “Move over MAUS, as a great graphic novel, you’ve met your match.” They weren’t kidding. Just like MAUS, we were taken back in time to a prominent point in history, and yet this was different. If you’ll pardon the accidental joke here, the only way to put it is that SRB felt a lot more human to me. Perhaps because I was able to relate to it and to the characters. Perhaps because they looked human and weren’t drawn using caricature and clever metaphor, but with a pretty organic style.
So toward the end of the story, Sammy was murdered. Honestly, I had expected his to end up dead. It was nothing other than when someone is a charismatic and bright as he sometimes was, chances are they don’t come out of the story alive. Yet when it happened, it still came as a shock. Did anyone else expect this to happen? Did you think something else should have happened instead (i.e. suicide)? Do you think the way this death was set up fit the life the character had been given in the pages of SRB?
Another unexpected twist was that Orley was A) a hippie, especially since I didn’t think that guy had a liberal bone in his body and B) that he was the one to call the papers and ruin Sammy Noone’s life. Now though this seemed like the kind of thing the character would do, I was shocked to realize that it wasn’t just some jerk in the media or a random bigot who didn’t like what Sammy had been saying on the news. The fact that Orley was the one to call it in was horrifying and, in my opinion, a great way to set it up. For me, it left me winded and, like I said, completely shocked at how close to Toland the person who sent Sammy spiraling downward had been. Did you guys feel the same way? What where your thoughts about this bit of character that was revealed about Orley? Did you even expect Orley and Mel to divorce (I did, since they were having trouble since page one)? How about Toland? The way he left the conversation was not the way he would have in the past. He was very quiet and reserved, and yet here, he was very firm and final. Where do you think this attitude came from?
There were points where I had to reference McCloud’s “Understanding Comics” when it came to the full bleed pages, or when the flow was messed up because of a picture exiting the frame, which I don’t really have any questions for. I just really liked that Cruse chose to do this. I also enjoyed the connected word bubbled, so I always knew who was talking.
Overall, what was your experience about reading this comic? What kinds of opinions did you form?
