GAY PEOPLE'S CHRONICLE May 10, 2002

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Wendel All Together

By Howard Cruse Olmstead Press, $17.95 Remembrance of Things Past Combray

By Marcel Proust Adaptation and art by Stéphane Heuet NBM/ComicsLit $19.95 Reviewed by Anthony Glassman

If a picture is worth a thousand words, as the adage says, does that make a picture book the equivalent of War and Peace?

Two volumes are available that beg that question. The first is a compendium of Howard Cruse's Wendel comic strip, a mainstay of the Advocate magazine in the 1980s era of the rise of AIDS, Ronald Reagan, the fall of the Communist bloc and really, really narrow ties.

Wendel Trupstock was a regular gay man going through the trials and tribulations of life with humor and panache, whenever possible. Of course, being a comic strip, things often got out of hand, but that's what makes life so darn fun.

Cruse, while not making new Wendel strips. has not been loafing, having released the award-winning graphic novel Stuck Rubber Baby on Paradox Press, an imprint of DC Comics, the same folks who print Batman.

The collection works both for the nostalgia value, bringing back memories of the times when the strips first ran, and as an historical text, something the young 'uns can read to learn a bit about the "good old days."

Of course, really nice thing about it is that it is the complete run of the strip, with a few little changes made for the edition. There are also some wonderful little pictures Cruse did for other outlets, as well as a nifty Wendel/ Ethan Green strip by Cruse and Eric Orner.

Remembrance of Things PastCombray is, on the other hand, not funny. Not at all.

It's not supposed to be. The first volume of Proust's epic autobiographical quintology is some pretty heavy stuff, expertly adapted

to the sequential art form by Stéphane Heuet, whose drawing is quintessentially French, resembling Tin Tin or Little Nemo more than the comic books Americans are used to.

Everyone loves Wendelstan Makli

Wendel

All Together

Howard Cruse

MARCEL PROC

TRAKLASHG GAY

complete in one book

"

However, any attempt to make the work of the late gay author accessible is an admirable quest, one that NBM/ComicsLit takes very seriously.

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Continued from page 9

bad at something, it doesn't matter!

I just read an article by a British writer who asked, will gay literature survive, or is it going to be assimilated into the culture at large now that mainstream culture is actually changing. In casting, there's this Hollywood "A-list" level, where you still hear that the whole issue of being gay as if it's the most defining feature, and you have to be in closet or else you're going to lose your career.

I think the directing thing, or anything behind the camera, is really different. It's really, really, really different. Yeah, the actor thing, it's a whole other kettle of fish. Thank God it's not my problem!

You've come from a background that is extremely visual, and you're into designing the “look” of things. I hope I'm not insulting you here, but I would say that it's a very straightforward movie, there aren't a lot of stylistic flourishes to it. Is that something you are planning to invest more time in for your future work? Do you have a whole side you want to explore that you didn't have the money to do?

Well, obviously we were on a tight budget, but I also think that the choices that you make are based on how you want to tell the story. I don't think a lot of bells and whistles would have made it any better. I think straightforward was the best way to do it. You know, it's not The Matrix!

Right, and it sounds like you're going to continue in the vein of more relationship-oriented stories.

Well, the weird thing is that I'm finishing another spec script right now that is actually a teen horror movie, but I think it's always the characters that I care about the most. If you don't care about the people, there's not much point.

Have you gotten any interest from Hollywood to do other kind of work: polishes, TV directing?

Yeah, I've been approached by a number of people, and I'm working with a couple of them to try to develop a television show, so that may be in the future. I think you'd be a good choice for Six Feet Under.

Right, I've spoken with them, they're unbelievably great people.

Rick Urban is a reviewer for Out in America.