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| Kyle Baker | |
|---|---|
 Baker at theNew York Comic Con | |
| Born | Kyle John Baker 1965 (age 59–60) Queens,New York, U.S. |
| Area(s) | Cartoonist, Writer,Penciller,Inker, Publisher,Letterer,Colourist |
Notable works | Why I Hate Saturn Plastic Man Nat Turner |
| Awards | Eisner Awards (eight) Harvey Awards (five) Glyph Comics Awards (five) Inkpot Award[1] |
Kyle John Baker[2] (born 1965)[3] is an Americancartoonist,comic book writer-artist, andanimator known for hisgraphic novels and for a 2000s revival of the seriesPlastic Man.
Baker has won numerousEisner Awards andHarvey Awards for his work in the comics field.
Kyle Baker was born in theQueens,New York City,[4] the son ofart director John M. Baker and high-school audiovisual-department manager Eleanor L. Baker.[2] He has a brother and a sister.[4] Their parents had both attendedPratt Institute inBrooklyn,New York, and their father, who, Baker said, "worked in advertising [and] made junk mail", would "draw pictures for us and entertain us."[4] Aside from this exposure to art, Baker has said, his early artistic influences includedcomic book artistJack Kirby,caricaturistJack Davis, and painter and magazine illustratorNorman Rockwell. He noted:
When I was a little boy I loved thefunny papers. ... I used to readPogo,Li'l Abner,Peanuts,Blondie andB.C. among others. I loved to drawJohnny Hart'sB.C. characters and theMuppets. I made up my own cartoon characters and drew stories about them. I lovedMad magazine. I had paperback reprints of the early[Harvey] Kurtzman stories, illustrated byWally Wood,Will Elder, and Jack Davis. I lovedDisney movies. ... I would come home from the movies and practice drawing the characters. I drew little animatedflip books onindex cards. When I was 11, I had aSuper-8 movie camera and I made animated cartoons. I remember making a 'King Kong' out of clay, and a drawing of a New York skyline, and I made a stop-motion film of King-Kong fighting model airplanes. In junior high school, I drew comic books andXeroxed them at my dad's office. I sold the Xeroxes for five cents each. I think I made fifteen cents.[5]
Other influences included theCharlton Comics artwork ofJim Aparo andSteve Ditko.[4]
In his senior year ofhigh school, Baker became an intern atMarvel Comics, making photocopies and filing fan mail.[5] "I sort of fell into Marvel because I happened to know somebody there," he said. "But I always thought I was going to do funny stuff" rather thansuperhero comics.[4] He became background assistant to MarvelinkerJosef Rubinstein, and later also assistedVince Colletta andAndy Mushynski.[5] He cited Marvel artistsWalt Simonson,Al Milgrom andLarry Hama and writer and editor-in-chiefJim Shooter as providing him art and storytelling advice.[6] Part of his duties involvedphotocopying, and he would take copies ofJohn Buscemapenciling home on which to practiceinking.[6] While working for Marvel, Baker attended theSchool of Visual Arts, inManhattan, studyinggraphic design andprintmaking,[7] but dropped out after two years.[5] Through that connection, however, he began freelancing with famed graphic designerMilton Glaser, an SVA instructor, assisting him on a set ofchildren's books.[7]
Baker's first credited work at Marvel ispenciling the half-page entry "Kid Commandos" inThe Official Handbook of the Marvel Universe #13 (February1984).[8] After a handful of inking assignments on issues ofTransformers,The Avengers Annual #14 (1985) and elsewhere, Baker made his professional story-illustration debut as penciler and inker of the publisher Lodestone Comics'Codename: Danger #2 (October 1985), with a 23-page story written byBrian Marshall,Mike Harris, andRobert Loren Fleming. Cover penciling and more interior inking for Marvel and occasionally DC followed. His first story penciling for one of the two major comics companies was the three-issueHoward the Duck: The Movie (December 1986 - February 1987), adapting the 1986 filmHoward the Duck, and which he self-inked.[8]
During this time, Baker also attempted to sell humor spot illustrations, but was rejected by the majornewspapersyndicates.Jim Salicrup, a Marvel editor, did commission him "to write a few one-panel gags about [the superhero team] theX-Men",[5] titled "It's Genetic" and appearing in the Marvel-produced fan magazineMarvel Age.[9]
At the recommendation of freelance artistRon Fontes, an editor at the Dolphinimprint of the publishing houseDoubleday expressed interest in Baker's sample strips of the character Cowboy Wally, "and asked if I had any more. I lied and said I did."[5] This led to the 128-pagegraphic novelCowboy Wally.[8] "The character of Noel was pretty much based on me," Baker said in 1999. "I lie all the time.[10] The first part of the books is the collected strips, and the other three chapters were written for the book.[5] "It didn't sell many copies," Baker said, "but at least it convincedDC [Comics] I should be allowed to draw, not just ink."[5]
Baker went on to draw DC's 1980s comics revival of thepulp fiction heroThe Shadow, beginning withThe Shadow Annual #2 (1988), followed by the monthly series from issue #7 to the final issue, #19 (February 1988 - January 1989). He did assorted other DC work includingJustice, Inc. In 1990, Baker and writerLen Wein produced three issues ofDick Tracy forThe Walt Disney Company'sHollywood Comics, the first two issues containing original stories, the third an adaption the 1990Dick Tracy film.[11]
He began scripting comics around this time: Baker penciled and inkedFirst Comics'Classics Illustrated #3 & 21 (February 1990 & March 1991), adapting, respectively,Through the Looking Glass andCyrano de Bergerac. WhilePeter David scripted the latter, Baker himself wrote the adaptation of theLewis Carroll work.[8] "I'd never planned to become a writer," Baker said in 1999. "I wrote short gags, like the kind you see in the newspapers and Cowboy Wally, but not stories. I only learned to write stories because people kept paying me to write them. In the years 1991-1994, 90 percent of my income was from writing, and I received very few offers to draw. I figured I should learn to write."[5]
Baker achieved recognition and won anEisner Award for his 1990 graphic novelWhy I Hate Saturn, published by the DC ComicsimprintPiranha Press. Baker said in 1999 of his breakthrough work:
I wroteWhy I Hate Saturn at a time when comic books had stopped being fun for me. I was tired of being told how to draw and what to draw. And I was sick of begging people to let me work the way I wanted. Editors told me my stuff was 'underground' and 'alternative'. I decided that if I were going to work in a creatively oppressive atmosphere and not even be allowed to own my work, I might as well go toHollywood and be oppressed for big money. Back in the eighties,DC andMarvel wouldn't let you own your characters, andFantagraphics had no money. So when I finally got permission to doWhy I Hate Saturn, a book I'd been trying years to sell, I decided to write it like a sitcom and send it to Hollywood. ... However, I don't have anything to do with the [then-proposed]Why I Hate Saturn movie. DC controls those rights. I don't own those characters, so it is of no interest to me.[5]
Baker's cartoons andcaricatures began appearing inBusinessWeek,Details,Entertainment Weekly,ESPN,Esquire,Guitar World,Mad,National Lampoon,New York,The New York Times,Rolling Stone,Spin,Us,Vibe, andThe Village Voice. He spent three years illustrating the weekly strip "Bad Publicity" forNew York magazine.[3]
Baker's animation has appeared onBET andMTV, and in animatedLooney Tunes projects, including the animated featureLooney Tunes: Back in Action.[citation needed] Baker was "guest art director" for Cartoon Network'sClass of 3000, andstoryboarded theClass of 3000 Christmas special.[citation needed]
in 1994, Baker directed an animated video featuring thehip hop singerKRS-One, called "Break The Chain".[citation needed] Marvel Comics had publishedBreak the Chain as a comic book packaged with a read-alonghip-hopaudiocassette.[10] That same year and next, he contributed to the four-issueDark Horse Comics humor anthologyInstant Piano (December 1994 - June 1995), including drawing the cover of the premiere.[8] For another anthology, DC'sElseworlds 80-Page Giant #1 (August 1999), Baker drew,colored,lettered and with his wife, teacher Elizabeth Glass, whom he married July 18, 1998,[2] wrote the 10-pageparallel universe story "Letitia Lerner, Superman's Babysitter". It would win a "Best Short Story"Eisner Award despite DC destroying all copies intended for theNorth American market after deeming some of the content unsuitable, though copies were still distributed inEurope.[12]
Baker said in 1999 he was writing aChristmas movie forParamount Pictures, titledU Betta Watch Out, and was animating aTV-movie titleCorey Q. Jeeters, I'm Telling on You.[5]
At this point in his career, Baker stated in an interview, "Nobody tells me what to write or how to draw. Only an idiot would dare tell Kyle Baker how to make a good cartoon. Hollywood and the magazine world are full of idiots. They water my stuff down and make it unfunny."[10]
He is credited with writing and storyboarding on the "Phineas and Ferb" television episodes "Candace Loses Her Head" and "Are You My Mummy?".[citation needed]
Baker drew writerRobert Morales' Marvel Comics miniseriesTruth #1-7 (January–July 2003), aCaptain America storyline with parallels to theTuskegee experiment. He also wrote and drew all but two issues (#7 and #12) of the 20-issue comedic adventure seriesPlastic Man vol. 4 (February 2004 - March 2006), starring theGolden Age of Comic Bookssuperhero created byJack Cole forQuality Comics. Baker contributed to theDark Horse Comics seriesThe Amazing Adventures of the Escapist, a spin-off ofMichael Chabon's novel,The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay.[8]
In 2006, his company, Kyle Baker Publishing, serialized a four-part comic book series aboutNat Turner, and published the seriesThe Bakers, based on his family life, in two anthologies,Cartoonist andCartoonist Vol. 2: Now with More Bakers. He has also continued to provide comics material sporadically to Marvel, DC andImage Comics through at least 2010.[8] In 2007 and 2008,Image Comics published Baker's six-issueImage Comics miniseriesSpecial Forces, a teen-soldier militarysatire that criticizes the exhortation of felons and disabled Americans into military service.[8][13]The New York Times reviewed the 2009trade-paperback collection of the first four issues, calling it "the harshest, most serrated satire of theIraq War yet published."[14]
In 2008, Watson-Guptill publishedHow to Draw Stupid and Other Essentials of Cartooning, Baker's art instruction book. That same year, Baker hosted the comics industry'sHarvey Awards.[15] In 2010, he became regular artist onMarvel Comics' mature-audienceMAX-imprint series,Deadpool Max.[citation needed]
