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Maybe I've become too hardened to the violence of 90s comics, or maybe I'm just too accustomed to the purely surreal. The first time I heard a reference to Howard Cruse's Stuck Rubber Baby, what came into my mind was the image of something being stuck into a solid rubber baby: a pin, maybe, or a bayonnet. As a tactile concept it was oddly attractive, but as a sidelight on my thought processes, rather sinister. So I was comforted that Francis Blake found the title equally obscure:

Maybe our problem is simply that we are speakers of British, rather than American, English. And that's all the clues I'm going to give. If you don't know what the Stuck Rubber Baby really is either, it's about time you read Howard Cruse's graphic novel.

You'll find Todd Verbeek's review of Stuck Rubber Baby at Beek's Books and D. Aviva Rothschild's review at her site, The Comics Get Serious.

Order Stuck Rubber Baby from Amazon.co.uk.

Francis Blake is a professional illustrator; see more of his work at the website of his agent, Three in a Box.