SUMMER OF LOVE, THE 603
sexual orientation. His inner confl icts mirror those reshaping the wider society, and
the likelihood that Toland Polk will eventually shed his political innocence and racial
prejudices, and embrace his same-sex desires, is pretty much a given. Yet the hero’s
journey toward enlightenment is both engrossing and believable. Toland is an every-
man type who happens to be gay; over the course of the narrative he inadvertently
gets swept up in a tsunami of counter-cultural protest. He is neither a rabble-rousing
militant nor a hide-bound traditionalist, and his transformation from small town naïf
to open gay artist unfolds gradually. A little gullible perhaps, but at the same time an
honest soul, Toland Polk is an appealing stand-in even for readers who were not yet
born in the 1960s.
Historical graphic fi ction is sometimes rendered in stark, declaratory lines that
seem to convey a certain seriousness of purpose. Much of the pleasure of Stuck Rub-
ber Baby can be found in Cruse’s sensuous linework, which favors sloping curves and
fragile shadows over sharp rectangles and brightly lit pages. Stuck Rubber Baby is fun
to look at quite apart from the appeal of the story. As a work of visual imagination
and recreation, it is obviously the product of a lot of thought and hard work. Densely
illustrated and crammed with visual information, Cruse’s pages are sometimes almost
pointillist in their commitment to molecular detail. Like Robert Crumb, Cruse here
makes extensive use of cross-hatching (a stylistic departure from his trademark stip-
pling technique), takes advantage of the expressive possibilities of black-and-white,
and composes whole pages rather than sequences of panels. Unlike Crumb, however,
Cruse does not make fun of his characters or his readers. Cruse is not a cynic, or even
a skeptic. Rather, he is one of the most hopeful and life-affi rming cartoonists to have
emerged out of the underground comics movement.
Kent Worcester
SUMMER OF LOVE, THE. A comics series republished under this title by Drawn &
Quarterly in 2002, Th e Summer of Love was originally created by Debbie Drechsler
for her fi ve-issue (1996–99) Drawn & Quarterly series Nowhere. Th e feminist under-
grounds of the 1970s and 1980s, especially Wimmen’s Comix, inspired Drechsler, as
did Peanuts and MAD Magazine. Her largest infl uences in stylistic terms are Lynda
Barry and Richard Sala, though her visual style does not overtly resemble either. Th e
correlation to Barry’s work is most evident in subject matter. Both creators deal with
adolescent pain and young girls’ coming to terms with diffi cult situations with little or
no help.
Drechsler’s background in commercial art is evident in the visual look of the book.
Th e Summer of Love is printed in two ink colors, a forest green and an earth brown.
No black is used, even in the lettering. James Vance used a similar duo-tone eff ect in
the Kitchen Sink Press series Owlhoots (1991). Th is color scheme gives the art a sort
of coloring book eff ect. It also mutes the darks, using color to reinforce the sense of
nuance and uncertainty experienced by the characters. Th ough the use of art tools
(straightedge, triangle, templates, etc.) in the preliminary stages is evident, all aspects
