"[1] A long-time resident of San Francisco,[1] Robert Triptow was one of the earliest contributors to Kitchen Sink Press' anthology Gay Comix, beginning with issue #2.
[4] As a journalist, Triptow has contributed to The Advocate, The Bay Area Reporter, Frontiers, The San Francisco Sentinel, and other West Coast LGBT publications.
[6] Lee Marrs, standing witness to the question, asked Triptow if he starved while living in the Haight-Ashbury district of San Francisco, to which he answered yes.
[1] Triptow had no exposure to alternative cartooning until a junior high journalism field trip to Brigham Young University, where he discovered the works of cartoonists Jules Feiffer, Gilbert Shelton, and R. Crumb in the school's book store.
[12] Robert Triptow became involved in Strip AIDS U.S.A. (1988) when invited onto the fundraiser as co-editor by Trina Robbins, who felt unable to complete the project by herself as a heterosexual.
The comic consists of illustrated, fictionalized outcomes of each individual posing for a black and white 1937 class photograph labeled "Public School 49" from Brooklyn, New York, which Triptow found with his uncle as college students under a pile of garbage in their hometown of Salt Lake City.