Baker, Kyle
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Wikipedia-Article "Kyle Baker"
Kyle Baker (born 1965 in Queens, New York City, United States) is an American writer and illustrator of comic books as well as an animator. He is also an award-winning publisher of two anthologies, Cartoonist and Cartoonist Vol. 2: Now with More Bakers.
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Background
As a high school intern at Marvel Comics, Baker came into contact with such artists as John Romita, Jr., Al Milgrom and Walter Simonson. He eventually became an assistant inker, working on backgrounds. He got further inking work at Marvel while attending the School of Visual Arts, from which he eventually dropped out. His inking style was very loose, and even at this early stage his art stood out from the standard Marvel fare. Fans comlained. The Dolphin imprint of the publishing house Doubleday expressed interest in his Cowboy Wally comic strips, which he expanded into a 128-page, graphic novel published in 1988. Nobody bought it. Remaindered copies were distributed for pennies, though later they were being sold on the Internet for $100. Next, Kyle Baker drew "The Shadow" for DC Comics. The book didn't sell, and Baker quit the series when his monthly royalties dropped below $10. He also illustrated "Through the Looking Glass" and "Cyrano" for Classics Illustrated. In 1990, Baker released two graphic novels simultaneously. The first, an adaptation of the film "Dick Tracy" is Kyle Baker's best-selling book to date. He pencilled, inked, colored, and lettered 64 pages in a week. His other book that year was called "Why I Hate Saturn." It didn't sell very well at all, and Baker did not release another graphic novel for seven years. He went to Los Angeles, where he wrote a TV show called "Cosmic Slop" for HBO. He also spent three years illustrating a weekly strip called "Bad Publicity" for New York Magazine. in 1994, Baker directed an animated video featuring KRS ONE, called "Break The Chain".
Baker's graphic novels as writer-artist include "You Are Here" The Cowboy Wally Show, Why I Hate Saturn, King David, and I Die At Midnight. He has also illustrated the graphic novel Birth of a Nation, no relation to the famous, slightly differently-named D.W. Griffith movie, The Birth of a Nation.
For mainstream comics in the 2000s he drew the miniseries Truth, a Captain America storyline with parallels to the infamous Tuskegee experiment, later collected as a trade paperback. He also wrote and drew the comedic adventures of the DC Comics superhero Plastic Man, and was one of contributors to the Dark Horse Comics series Michael Chabon Presents...The Amazing Adventures of the Escapist, a spin-off of Chabon's Pulitzer Prize-winning novel, The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay.
His work is known for its sense of whimsy and wit, often veering into caricature. Some of the motifs to which he often returns include satires of the dating game, gender roles, and hipster culture. Also fatherhood, slavery, The Bible, superheroes, George W. Bush, and girls wrestling in liquid. His characters often throw each other into high relief, with thoughtful cynics playing off guileless straight men. Others just hit each other.
Baker's cartoons and caricatures have appeared in Details, Entertainment Weekly, ESPN, Esquire, Guitar World, MAD Magazine, National Lampoon, The New Yorker, The New York Times, Rolling Stone, Spin magazine, Us, Vibe and The Village Voice. His animation has appeared on BET, MTV, and in Looney Tunes.
As of 2005, his company, Kyle Baker Publishing, released a four-part comic book series about Nat Turner, as well the series The Bakers, based on his family life.
Quotes
Publishers Weekly [1]: "The Boondocks creator [Aaron] McGruder, filmmaker [Reginald] Hudlin and Why I Hate Saturn cartoonist Baker are a kind of dream team, and this work (drawn in Baker's animation-storyboard style) has a fairly hilarious premise. When the virtually all-black population of East St. Louis, Ill., is disenfranchised en masse in electoral shenanigans that result in a George W. Bush–like Texan governor being elected president, the impoverished city decides to secede from the U.S. Renaming itself "Blackland," the city becomes a wildly rich money-laundering capital."
Bibliography
- Through the Looking-Glass (Classics International Entertainment; year n.a.; reprinted Berkley Publishing, 1990; illustrator)) ISBN 1572090022 (orig.); ISBN 0425120228 (rep.)
- Why I Hate Saturn (Piranha Press, 1990; reprinted Vertigo, Dec. 1998; writer, illustrator) ISBN 0930289722
- The Residents: Freak Show (Dark Horse Comics, collected 1992; illustrator) ISBN 1569710015
- The Cowboy Wally Show (Marlowe & Company, 1996; writer, illustrator) ISBN 1569248346
- You Are Here (DC Comics, Nov. 1998; writer, illustrator) ISBN 1563894424
- I Die at Midnight (Vertigo, 2000; writer, illustrator) ISBNB0006RONA0
- King David (DC Comics, 2002; writer, illustrator) ISBN 1563898667
- Undercover Genie: The Irreverent Conjurings of an Illustrative Aladdin (DC Comics, collected ephemera 2003; writer, illustrator) ISBN 1401201040
- Truth: Red, White and Black (Marvel Comics, collected Feb. 2004; co-creator with Robert Morales, illustrator) ISBN 0785110720
- Cartoonist (Kyle Baker Publishing, May 2004; writer, illustrator, publisher) ISBN 0974721409
- Birth of a Nation: A Comic Novel (Crown; July 2004; illustrator) ISBN 1400048591
- Plastic Man: On the Lam (DC Comics, collected 2005; writer, illustrator) ISBN 1401203434
- Plastic Man: Rubber Bandits (DC Comics, collected 2006; writer, illustrator) ISBN 1401207294
- Cartoonist, Volume 2: Now With More Bakers (writer, illustrator, publisher)
Other works
- Bad Publicity (1990s comic strip, New York magazine, illustrator)
Awards
In 2000 he won two Eisner Awards for the controversial story "Letitia Lerner, Superman's Babysitter". He was nominated for the Squiddy Awards for Favorite Artist in 1989, and the Award for Favorite Writer in 1990, 1992, and 1995. He won a Harvey and two Eisners in 2005.