Unwanted

I find that I like Stuck Rubber Baby less and less as the book drags on, becoming more trite in terms of narrative and overabundant detail. Honestly, unless someone is crafting a graphic novel like Watchmen that absolutely requires such detail, he needs to go easy on readers. The story isn't as compelling anymore and the themes get old when mired in a surplus of detail. Parsimony is a word that Cruse needs to learn.

As an aside, I also feel the need to rail against the main characters' moral failings. Honestly, Toland is way too self-absorbed and starting to look like the main character in Blankets more and more with his dependency on Ginger. I feel like he's just using her as a lifeline or a facade to convince others he's not gay rather than for any substantial relationship. It's quite aggravating how he gets all high and mighty by proposing a marriage in which he's free to cheat and then speciously asks why she'd want to "experiment" since she's not gay. He shows absolutely no guilt for lying to Riley (not that I much like Riley as an upstanding example of morality either) about his whereabouts and then hopping in the sack with Les. Likewise, I have no idea why Ginger is even in a relationship with Toland. She does not seem to care one whit for him and always talks condescendingly down to him, even while he deifies her like Craig did to Raina.

Now some might criticize me for wanting all characters in a story to fit into my prescribed moral categories, but I'm just complaining about the lack of a strong stable relationship example in the novel. I wish there was something that worked among all the dysfunctional relations among the characters. But perhaps I'm being a hopeless romantic, and such positivity would undermine the point of the comic. Though of course, there is one such example of such a relationship, and that's the one between the older Toland narrating and his boyfriend.

Nevertheless, the comic does bring up some poignant themes to address, and I still count it above Portraits from Life for that. One of these, recently examined in Juno, is unwanted pregnancy and its proliferation in today's society. Granted, during the 60s births out of wedlock were fairly uncommon and frowned upon in general society, as Orley's sensibilities demonstrated. However, his divorce from Melanie foreshadows the cascade of divorces in the 70s and the changing social mores. Even back then Ginger faced the same difficult choices many nonmarried mothers face today.