Ever feel like you just don’t fit in? Then Stuck Rubber Baby is for you.

Actually, Stuck Rubber Baby is for everyone. It’s that good.

This graphic novel, created by Howard Cruse, is one of those landmark pieces of fiction that you can’t get out of your head. I first discovered Stuck Rubber Baby about five years ago. Paradox Press, though, first published this thick graphic novel in 1995. The 12 ensuing years have done nothing to lessen its impact or relevance.

What makes this book so successful? Let’s start with the vivid setting. Stuck Rubber Baby takes place in the U.S. south during the height of the civil rights era, with its characters living in the mid-size town of Clayfield. It’s not easy fighting racial intolerance here. The newspapers are against you. The police regularly blast protestors with water cannons or sick growling dogs on them. Worst of all, Mayor Chopper is running the show. Equal rights for African Americans isn’t exactly priority number-one on his agenda.

So, the setting is a strong one, and the background conflict driving the story's action is a powerful one. But what about the characters? Here, Cruse again sparkles. The main character, and narrator, of the story is Toland Polk. He’s a nice, unassuming guy. Problem is, he makes Hamlet look decisive. Toland just never can figure out who he is and what he wants out of life. Though he’s white, and therefore should fit into Clayfield far easier than do any of his many African-American friends and acquaintances, Toland actually seems like more of an outsider than does any other character in Cruse’s tale. That may be because Toland is never honest about himself and what he wants. He spends much of the book struggling with his own sexual orientation, managing to hurt his friends and family members along the way.

These friends and family, by the way, are what truly make Stuck Rubber Baby such a wonderful read. The cast is filled with an impressive array of characters, few of whom are overtly good or evil. We have Toland’s liberal friends, the couple Riley and Mavis; Ginger Raines, Toland’s sometimes love interest; freedom singer Shiloh Reed; civil rights activist Sledge Rankin; and, perhaps the most nuanced character in the whole book, Orley, the conservative Southern white man who marries Toland’s kind-hearted sister. This is a cast of real people, with traits both heroic and appalling, who never act like stock characters. They act like what they are, people struggling to make it through a contentious and sometimes violent time.

My recommendation? If you haven’t yet read Stuck Rubber Baby, find it. And if you haven't read it in years, read it again. Either way, you won’t regret it.