Won’t You Be My Neighbor? by Martha Thomases – Brilliant Disguise

March 19, 2011 Martha Thomases 5 Comments

Once upon a time, magazines used to include comics.  No, really, and not just The New Yorker.  Some even ran on-going series.  The most famous of these series, at least to comic fans, is probably Little Annie Fanny, which ran in Playboy.  Some of us also have admiration and affection for The Adventures of Phoebe Zeit-Geist, which ran in Evergreen.

And then there’s Wendel, written and drawn by Howard Cruse.

Like the other two, Wendel ran in a magazine that defined its readership by their interest in sexual activities.  Like the other two, it’s hilarious.  Unlike the others, the magazine it ran in was explicitly gay, The Advocate.

Started in 1983, Wendel is the story of Wendel Trupstock, a young man in a city who works at a literary magazine, aspires to finish his science-fiction novel, and, within six episodes, meets Ollie, the love of his life.  Over the next few decades, we meet their friends, the irrepressible Sterno, Sawyer and Ramon, the lesbian couple Deb and Tina, Wendel’s parents, Ollie’s son and (eventually) his ex-wife.  We meet bosses and uncles and tricks.  We go to marches with them, do the laundry with them, change jobs with them and, slowly, feel like part of the family.

Which is, I think, the point.

Rizzoli, the classy Italian publisher of fine-art books, will publish a complete collection of the Wendel strips next month, through its Universe imprint.  The new book includes every strip, including ones that weren’t published in The Advocate, and rarities including Wendel’s appearance on a Comic-Con poster and a Gay Yellow Pages cover.  Complete with an introduction by Alison Bechdel and cover blurbs by Sir Ian McKellen and Tony Kushner, this volume is a handsome edition to any graphic novel library.

It’s a terrific book, not only because Howard is a funny, insightful guy, but because it encapsulates twenty years of history – gay and straight – in a way that’s profound but not stuffy.

Hey, remember the AIDS epidemic?  Although I lost dozens of friends, I find that it doesn’t seem so painful on a day-to-day basis.  When I read this collection, I got angry again, at the indifference our elected officials showed at the time and at the fact that we still don’t have a cure, or a health-care system that gets medication to those who need it most.

Remember when the religious right seemed like a nutty fringe group?  Read this book, and watch them saying the same stupid, scientifically debunked crap they’re still saying today.

Howard’s strength as an artist is his affection for people, even those he doesn’t like.  Reading about Wendel and his friends, I’m struck by how warm I feel towards characters like the bloviating editor of Gayblaze, or the homophobic shock-jock.  They may stand in the way of the revolutionary utopia, but Cruse lets us see their insecurities and humanity.

At the end of this collection is a new strip that shows us what has happened to the cast of characters since they stopped being published in The Advocate.  It’s a testimony to the story that we want to know.

Media Goddess Martha Thomases fondly remembers meeting Howard at a Village Voice holiday party circa 1979.