Early life and career
As a 17-year-old at Hunter College High School in New York City, Kyle Baker began interning at Marvel Comics, where he came into contact with such comic book 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. Finding himself already gainfully employed in comics and illustration, he eventually dropped out of SVA.
Comics and graphic novels
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. Baker went on to draw the pulp revival series The Shadow and Justice, Inc. for DC Comics, as well as the Classics Illustrated series Through the Looking Glass and Cyrano. In 1990, Baker released two graphic novels, one an adaptation of the film Dick Tracy, the other an original story, Why I Hate Saturn. He went to Los Angeles, where he wrote a TV show called Cosmic Slop for HBO. He next spent three years illustrating the weekly strip "Bad Publicity" for New York magazine. in 1994, Baker directed an animated video featuring the hip hop singer KRS-ONE, called "Break The Chain".
Baker's other graphic novels as writer-artist include You Are Here, King David, and I Die At Midnight. He has also illustrated a graphic novel written by Aaron McGruder and Reginald Hudlin titled Birth of a Nation.
Later career
Beginning in the 1990s, Baker's cartoons and caricatures began appearing in Businessweek, Details, Entertainment Weekly, ESPN, Esquire, Guitar World, MAD Magazine, National Lampoon, New York, The New York Times, Rolling Stone, Spin magazine, Us, Vibe and The Village Voice. His animation has appeared on BET and MTV, and in animated Looney Tunes projects, including Back in Action, an animated feature. He also was guest art director for Cartoon Network's Class of 3000 as well as 'storyboarded' the Class of 3000 Christmas special.
In the 2000s, Baker drew the miniseries Truth, a Captain America storyline with parallels to the infamous Tuskegee experiment, which was 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 The Amazing Adventures of the Escapist, a spin-off of Michael Chabon's Pulitzer Prize-winning novel, The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay.
In 2006, his company, Kyle Baker Publishing, serialized a four-part comic book series about Nat Turner, and published the series The Bakers, based on his family life in two anthologies, Cartoonist and Cartoonist Vol. 2: Now with More Bakers
In 2008, Watson-Guptill published How to Draw Stupid and Other Essentials of Cartooning, Baker's art instruction book.
2009: Baker started work on the Hawkman piece in the ongoing Wednesday Comics for DC Comics. Special Forces was the NY Times reviewed & praised, semi-satirical tale of special education students, tricked into US Military service & sent off to 'post-Saddam' Iraq.
Baker won two Eisner Awards in 2000 for the controversial story "Letitia Lerner, Superman's Babysitter". He has won a total of eight Eisner Awards, including four wins in the "Best Writer/Artist: Humor" category for a variety of works, and one each for "Best New Series" (2004) and "Best Title for Younger Readers" (2005) for his Plastic Man comics. Baker has also won five Harvey Awards. Baker has also won several Glyph Comics Awards. In 2006, he won three awards for Nat Turner (Best Cover, Best Artist, and Story of the Year); in 2007, he won Best Artist for The Bakers.
