Cruse was raised inside Springfield, Alabama in the 1950s, the boy of the preacher man & the lady of the house. His earliest promulgated cartoons were in The Baptist Student once he was within high school. His operate late appeared around Fooey and Sick. He attended Birmingham-Southern College, where he exposed dramthe, & experienced a brief career inside television. Inside 1977, Cruse moved to New York City, where he met Eddie Sedarbaum, his life partner.

Cruse's cartooning number one attracted united states-countrywide attention in the 1970s, when he contributed to underground comix publications. His right-known character from either this time was Barefootz, the title character of the surreal series about a good-natured, easily-well-groomed young human by using big bare feet. Although fired by numerous underground fans when excessively "cutesy", others detected it the refreshing vary of pace from either "edgier" comix.

Starting within 1979, Cruse - who experienced been open all about his queerness throughout a Seventies, however never acknowledged it within his act - edited Gay Comix, a recently anthology featuring comix by openly gay & sapphic cartoonists. For lot of the 1980s, he created Wendel, the strip (One-Two places by the episode) all about an uncontrollable & ideal shirtlifter, his lover Ollie, & a cast of diverse urban characters. It was published in the gay newsmagazine The Advocate, which allowed Cruse substantial freedom around terms of language & nudeness, & to location content like AIDS, gay rights demonstrations, gay-bashing, closeted celebrities, & equivalent-gender relationships, using the combination of humor and anger.

Cruse spent a number 1 half of the 1990s creating Stuck Rubber Baby, a 210-web page graphic novel accredited by editor Mark Nevelow for his DC Comics imprint Piranha Press but eventually published by DC's Paradox Press. These are the story of Toland Polk, a young human growing higher in the Western South in the 1960s, & his growing awareness of two his have homoeroticism and a racial injustice of U.s. society. Although however somewhat cartoony in the style of illustration, it features Cruse's virtually all elaborate & naturalistic comedian art, & his severest & complex storytelling. It received many awards & nominations.