Originally Posted By: the G-man
I would’ve guessed Howard Cruse was the first openly gay comic book creator. But perhaps they mean mainstream rather than underground.



Hard as it might be to believe now, Howard Cruse also started out in the closet.

I like Howard Cruse's work a lot. I first read his BAREFOOTZ and other series in short segments in ALIEN ENCOUNTERS, ECLIPSE magazine, ANYTHING GOES, COMMIES FROM MARS, SNARF, BIZARRE SEX and a few other titles. But the BAREFOOTZ comic that collected a lot of these shorter stories presented something of an awakening for Cruse.

From Comixjoint, a site devoted to underground comics:


http://www.comixjoint.com/barefootzfunnies.html

 Quote:
Cruse's Barefootz debuted in the University of Alabama's student newspaper in 1971, where it ran for a year, and later appeared in several alternative tabloids in Birmingham. Denis Kitchen gave Barefootz wider exposure when he published several stories in Snarf (it also appeared in Commies from Mars #1). Barefootz also became a regular feature in Comix Book [a rather odd magazine-size anthology from Marvel, Marvel's brief 5-issue dance on the edge of underground comics publishing], which soon led to the debut of Barefootz Funnies, the printing of which Cruse and his friends funded through a limited partnership called Woofnwarp Productions. Kitchen Sink then managed the production and distribution of the books. [BAREFOOTZ FUNNIES 1 was published in 1975, collecting mostly earlier strips.]

Barefootz Funnies took an interesting journey from 1975 to 1979. When Barefootz debuted as a comic character in 1971, Cruse was still in the closet about being gay. Cruse later admitted the character was not the most representative of his own personality, since Barefootz wasn't gay.
But in Barefootz #2 [1976], Cruse revealed that Barefootz's artist buddy Headrack was gay. This type of revelation ran counter to Barefootz's reputation as being too cutesy to be part of the underground comic revolution. Cruse's publicly emerging sexual orientation in real life was leading him to become more bold in his comics, which created ambivalence about the cartoony style and nature of the Barefootz character. Cruse began to ponder abandoning the character, and even considered murdering Barefootz in a comic book, a la Crumb's Fritz the Cat, thus enabling Cruse to re-create the characters in Barefootz Funnies as more realistic-looking people.

Instead, Cruse finished the series with one final issue, which featured the cathartic "Barefootz Variations," a story that summed up his mixed feelings about Barefootz and about cartooning itself. Barefootz Funnies #3 [December 1979] allowed Cruse to bid farewell to his first original comic character and move on to comics that meant more to him, his fan base and the critics who had complained so loudly about his cutesy cartoon style.

Barefootz Funnies rarely makes the list of any underground comic fan's favorite comic books, but it was certainly a fascinating account of one comic creator's evolution in real life.