While the book is not autobiographical, it draws upon Cruse's experience of growing up in the South during this time period, including his accidental fathering of a child, as referred to in the title.

From 1971 he published a strip called Barefootz, which appeared in a number of underground comix publications, including three issues under its own title.

Cruse's contemporaries gave it little regard, deeming it too cute and gentle compared to the countercultural works alongside which it ran.

[d][7] Decades after the book's events, the forty-something Toland Polk[8] narrates his youth in the fictional town of Clayfield, in the American South in the 1950s and 1960s.

[11] The frame story, set off with rounded panel borders, takes place in the late 1980s or early 1990s, as the adult Toland narrates with his male partner by his side.

The narration appears to occur over a substantial span of time, as the pair's clothing and background reflect seasonal changes from summer to winter.

[14] He also includes such historical events as the 1955 murder of Emmett Till in Mississippi and the 16th Street Baptist Church bombing in Birmingham in 1963.

[15] In an interview with Comic Book Resources, Cruse said that he based the novel on his own experiences in the 1960s and his "anger at the degree to which the ideals of the Civil Rights Era were being abandoned".

[3] In another interview, Cruse stated: "My goal was to create the kind of novel that is too full of incident for someone to simply summarize in their mind in one sentence.

[16] Stuck Rubber Baby was published with high expectations, given the success of Art Spiegelman's graphic novel Maus (1991).

[20] Cartoonist and comics scholar Justin Hall wrote of the importance of this work: "Stuck Rubber Baby, with its complex meditations on race, sexuality, and gender in the Civil Rights era Alabama is perhaps the closest we've come yet to the Great American Graphic Novel".