Happy Pride Month everyone, and incidentally today we also enter Year #7 of this ongoing project. Therefore triply appropriate to today, we look at the remarkable life of another comic book artist and illustrator: Clarence Matthew Baker.
Born in 1921 North Carolina, Baker later moved with his family to Pittsburgh; where he graduated high school in 1940. While most men of his age and station would have been drafted into service during World War II, a heart condition prevented this and he began studying art at the famed Cooper Union in New York. In 1944 Baker's work came to the attention of comic book publisher/packager Eisner & Iger, whose executives were reportedly so impressed with Baker's minimal portfolio that they hired him on the spot. Baker's style is considered the standard-bearer of what became known as "Good Girl Art;" a pulp style that lends itself to clean lines and a dynamic elegance --particularly when it came to depicting glamorous femme fatale leading ladies. This illustrative style would later be mimicked/homaged by modern-day artists such as Dave Stevens, creator of The Rocketeer.
In that vein, Baker's work quickly elevated from ad hoc background artist to leading penciller and inker, on well-known titles such as Phantom Lady, Sky Girl, Tiger Girl, and particularly the very popular Sheena, Queen Of The Jungle. At a time when racial segregation starkly defined American life (and the comics industry was certainly no exception to this), Baker was nevertheless quietly defying convention by laying out --and eventually defining-- an artistic style all his own. Perhaps his most significant contribution to the art form was in illustrating the then-described "picture novel" It Rhymes With Lust, a 126-page detective thriller that is today regarded as the earliest known example of a full-length graphic novel.
This last title brought its own controversy; notorious moral crusader and faux-psychologist Frederic Wertham brandished It Rhymes With Lust as one of his principal outrage-producers when he testified in Congress about the Evils Of Comic Books and their contribution to the so-called "epidemic" of juvenile delinquency, which led to the much-maligned Comics Code Authority. In 1945 Baker kicked off his own jungle adventure series for Crown Comics, Voodah. Such obvious Edgar Rice Burroughs imitations were innumerable in those years, but Voodah was unique in that the lead character was Black and did not fit the established stereotypes. Fearing consumer backlash after the character's first appearance, Crown's publishers insisted --for the covers, at least-- that the lead character's skin be lightened and that his hair be drawn longer and more flowing, for subsequent serials. This series ran for 15 more issues.
Closeted, Baker nonetheless carried on an understated relationship with publisher Archer St. John --eventual founder of St. John Publications, which featured many of Matt's illustrations in its various titles, including the aforementioned It Rhymes With Lust. Baker and St. John traveled together frequently, and in a 2012 interview Matt's brother Fred Robinson stated "They had a very close relationship. I don't know exactly what it was."
Baker continued to work (prolifically and under multiple pseudonyms) with various comics publication houses throughout the 1950's, including some anthology work for up-and-coming Atlas Comics, the eventual precursor to what would become Marvel Comics. Sadly Baker died very suddenly of a heart attack in 1959 at the age of 37; the same heart condition that precluded his enlistment. Largely forgotten by history (despite having created an entire subgenre of illustration style), his name is lately enjoying something of a renaissance in the comic book industry, and in 2009 Baker was inducted into the prestigious Will Eisner Comic Book Hall Of Fame.
