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SPOTLIGHT (HEADLIGHT?) ON “GOOD GIRL” ARTIST

MATT BAKER

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ALEX TOTH MICHAEL T. GILBERT BILL SCHELLY ALBERTO BECATTINI JOHN BENSON JIM AMASH et al.!

In the the USA USA In

No. 47 April 2005

Title writer/editorial

A Baker’s Dozen

Ferguson—who was basically if not solely a letterer—shows how relatively rare it was.

ven in the weird world of comic art, Matt Baker is a special case:

An artist who was never celebrated openly during his life or artistic career, and who signed relatively little of his work—yet who is today perhaps the most venerated practitioner of a sub-genre of comic book illustration: “Good Girl Art.” Myself, I’ve never cared much for that term… but we’re pretty much stuck with it now, and anyway the name itself isn’t important.

What matters is that, much like the far more celebrated Vargas and Petty, Matt Baker had a distinctive approach to drawing the female form— one that was clearly recognized and appreciated during the latter 1940s and the first half of the 1950s, both by his peers and employers, and by young male readers who were attracted to the well-drawn and erotic images he rendered.

All the more reason why I was delighted when Alberto Becattini, whom I met in Turin, Italy, a couple of years back, sent this issue’s study of Baker and his work. And when two of Baker’s kinfolk—a nephew and a half-brother, no less—made their existence known on Internet lists a few months back, giving Jim Amash a chance to interview them, we decided to devote most of a very special issue to a very good artist who drew very good—and, in another sense, sometimes very bad—girls. John Benson rounds out our special section with a brief appreciation of Baker’s work on the St. John romance comics. My only regret? We didn’t have thirteen of anything this issue, so I could use somewhere the punnish-ing title: “Baker’s Dozen.” That’s the reason I deliberately made this paragraph exactly thirteen paragraphs long… even if I had to make some arbitrary cuts to do so.

It’s an approach which has made his work collectible for the past several decades, and will probably continue to do so for the foreseeable future. At least for as long as pubescent and post-adolescent males would rather look at curvaceous females than at bunny rabbits or at teenagers who’ve been wearing the same school sweater for more than sixty years. Matt Baker was also a special case because he was an African-American artist in a field which, for whatever reason (and I can’t believe that racial prejudice accounts totally for this), had very few of them in the 1940s and ’50s.

But then—does anybody out there still know that a “baker’s dozen” is—or at least used to be, when the expression was invented—thirteen of something: a dozen cookies, say, plus a “free” thirteenth one if you bought twelve of them? Forget it. Read the articles. And don’t just look at the pictures. You’re on your honor here…. Bestest,

The mere fact that the only other African-American comic book person from that period that I can think of off-hand was Howard

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Baker Of Cheesecake An Appreciation Of MATT BAKER, Good Girl Artist Supreme by Alberto Becattini A 1940s studio shot of Matt Baker, flanked by the kind of “Good Girl” art that he did better than just about anybody. Photo provided by Fred Robinson and Matt D. Baker, the artist’s half-brother and nephew—see the in-depth interview with them that begins on p. 39. [Photo ©2005 Fred Robinson.] (Left:) Logo and figure from the famous/infamous “headlight”/“bondage” cover of Fox Comics’ Phantom Lady #17 (April 1948). Featured in Dr. Frederic Wertham’s 1954 diatribe Seduction of the Innocent, this has become probably the mostoften-reproduced image by Baker. Most visuals in this article were provided by the author. [©2005 the respective copyright holders.]

(Below:) Ginger Maguire, a.k.a. Sky Girl, in what author Alberto Becattini calls her postwar “canteen-waitress” phase, in a splash page from Jumbo Comics #111 (May 1948). [©2005 the respective copyright holders.]

UTHOR’S NOTE: I had been wanting to write an article about Matt Baker for quite a while, and I was enthused when Roy Thomas suggested that I write it for Alter Ego. My aim, in compiling what has ended up looking more like an essay than an article, was to put some order in what had been hitherto written about Baker, scattered here and there, often incorrectly, as well as making my own points about his works. The result is a sort of cavalcade through three decades, during which I have deliberately taken the liberty of writing about people and facts connected to Baker that I thought deserved some attention, too. Whereas I’ve triple-checked each and every piece of information, errors and omissions are still possible, so I expect feedback from whoever can provide further data. For helping me build up the present essay I must primarily thank Jim Vadeboncoeur, Jr. for his enlightening insights, and Jim Amash for his invaluable tips. I am also grateful to all those who provided information, either directly or indirectly—Lee Ames, Jerry Bails, John Benson, the Baker family, Bill Black, Shaun Clancy, Bill Devine, Jay Disbrow, Steve Duin, Michael Feldman, Al Feldstein, Jeff Gelb, Stephen H. Gentner, Bob Lubbers, Michelle Nolan, Mike Richardson, Antonio Vianovi, Hames Ware, and Steve Whitaker, as well as the late Jerry Iger, Les Zakarin, and Ray Osrin, and—of course— Roy Thomas, for making it happen! —Alberto.

Beginnings North Carolina, 1922. It was there and then that one of the most talented artists that ever graced the comics field was born, an African-American kid called Clarence Matthew Baker, who would soon move with his family to Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, where he did most of his growing up. Though nature had bestowed an outstanding talent on Matt, the rheumatic fever he suffered from as a child left him with a weak heart. One can imagine that Baker’s precarious heart condition, preventing him from doing sports or other physical activities, in a way favored his “addiction” to the drawing board, i.e., his career as a comic artist and illustrator. On the other hand, it was that very condition that would eventually (much too soon, in fact) steal him from

An Appreciation Of Matt Baker, Good Girl Artist Supreme

Webb, Blum, and Baker (Top left:) Some of Baker’s earliest work was done assisting artists Robert Hayward Webb and/or Alex Blum on Fiction House’s “Sheena,” circa 1944. This splash from an issue of Jumbo Comics, probably from a year or more later, shows off Webb’s art on the most celebrated of all jungle queens. It’s even possible Baker may have drawn this Sheena figure—or the lady in the next art spot. Reprinted from Good Girl Art Quarterly (Spring 1991)—a black-&-white comic still available (as are most of its great reprint mags) from Bill Black’s AC Comics; see ad on p. 34. [Retouched art ©2005 AC Comics; Sheena TM & ©2005 Paul Aratow/Columbia Pictures.] (Top right:) “Shark Brodie” splash by Alex Blum from Fiction House’s Fight Comics #31 (April 1944)—repro’d from a photocopy of the original art, courtesy of George Hagenauer. [©2005 the respective copyright holders.] (Left:) This 1945 “Sky Girl” page—an early example of Baker’s World War IIera work—is from AC Comics’ slightly-renamed Sky Gal #1 (1993). [Retouched art ©2005 AC Comics.]

Baker Of Cheesecake his family and friends, as well as from all those who admired his craftsmanship and who had the privilege to publish his artwork.

To New York City After finishing grade school, Baker left Pittsburgh to attend art courses at the Cooper Union in New York City. Reportedly, his favorite artists included such great magazine illustrators as Andrew Loomis as well as such prominent comic book artists as Will Eisner, Reed Crandall, and Lou Fine. Although he never managed to work together with the latter ones, Baker started his comics career at the studio run by the man who had been Eisner’s partner, as well as Crandall’s and Fine’s coemployer, up until early 1940—Samuel Maxwell (“Jerry”) Iger (19031990). As Iger himself recalled, “[Baker] came to my studio in the early ’40s; handsome and nattily dressed, ‘looking for a job,’ as he put it. His only sample was a color sketch of (naturally) a beautiful gal! On the strength of that, and a nod from my associate editor Ruth Roche, he was hired as a background artist. […] When given his first script, he showed originality and faithfully executed its story line. His drawing was superb. His women were gorgeous!”

The evolution of Baker’s style, from his early “Blum-ish” phase to a more personal post-war approach, somewhat paralleled the evolution of “Sky Girl.” The splash-page caption to the “Sky Girl” story in Jumbo #87 (May 1946) read: “They mustered Ginger Maguire out of uniform, but they couldn’t muster her away from flying… Yet the nearest she can get to flying now is an airfield cafeteria, serving mustard to the better class of pilots!” With Ginger demoted and working as a waitress, the strip now decidedly veered towards comedy. Ever wishing she could go back to her previous pilot status, Ginger did manage to fly again, yet she was more often seen hanging from planes’ wings rather than holding the control stick, in a whole series of predicaments whose ill-concealed purpose was to allow Baker to highlight the girl’s long legs, regularly uncovered by pitiless turbulence, to the delight of male readers. Ginger’s legs were the real plus in these stories. Baker drew them from every conceivable angle, in positions that were often ungainly. Deliberately so. In fact, Baker was the first comic artist who had the

Although in The Iger Comics Kingdom (1985) Jay Disbrow writes that Baker joined the Iger studio “early in 1946,” it is evident that he was already working on staff at the office located at 250 West Broadway by March or April 1944. In fact, Baker’s earliest documented art appeared in Jumbo Comics #69 (Nov. 1944), published by Thurman T. Scott’s Fiction House, which was Iger’s best client from 1938-53.

The Early Iger Years Like other “comic shops” of the time, the Iger Studio provided story and artwork to different comic book titles issued by various publishers, including Crown, Fiction House, Fox, Green, and Gilberton, to name a few. As in other comic shops, art chores on the same story were often shared between different artists, and at the start Baker apparently penciled backgrounds and female characters for other studio staffers. Thus, his earliest efforts are often hidden within somebody else’s artwork—mainly Alex Blum’s and Robert Hayward (Bob) Webb’s—mostly in the “Sheena, Queen of the Jungle” stories published by Fiction House in Jumbo Comics during 1944. Blum—a former painter/muralist old enough to have been Baker’s father, having been born in 1889—was kind-of the dean at the Iger Studio. Acting as an art director during the early 1940s, Blum was an early inspiration for Baker, who also occasionally teamed with him on “Wambi the Jungle Boy,” which appeared in Jungle Comics. In fact, Baker’s apprenticeship did not last long. By mid-1944 he was able to stand on his own feet and had become the resident artist on “Sky Girl,” a regular feature in Fiction House’s Jumbo Comics. Script-wise, “Sky Girl” was attributed to “Bill Gibson,” one of the many by-lines used at the Iger Studio, behind which hid different writers, including Iger himself. The titular character, whose real name was Ginger Maguire, was a curvaceous, red-haired Irish girl (reportedly based on actress Ann Sheridan) whose early, semi-serious adventures took place mostly in the Pacific theater, where she acted as a ferry pilot, often helping out Air Force aviators on missions against the Japanese.

You’ll see plenty of photos of Matt Baker, his friends, and his family later this issue— but here’s a primo example of his early “Sky Girl” art, from a 1945 issue of Jumbo Comics. [©2005 the respective copyright holders.]

An Aesthetic Appreciation before and after. The variety of events depicted on these covers is incredible. Virtually no cover repeated any other cover, even slightly, not only in the events depicted but in composition. (Take a look through Gerber and note how many other titles have almost the same cover image issue after issue.) The cover images were strong, making the events clear at a glance, pulling the reader in to read the dialogue balloons and learn more. Unlike the panels in the stories, each of which was merely one of a string of scenes to tell a story, Baker created complete, detailed pictures for the covers. While the composition led one’s eye to the central characters, the background was fully detailed, creating a milieu and atmosphere that greatly added to the total effect. The events depicted sometimes illustrated stories inside, sometimes were original to the cover. They may have been suggested by the editors, but, just as likely, Baker may have come up with them himself, since he functioned as an art editor for a time at St. John. Though the cover scenes often had rather more detail than the usual comics cover, they never seemed cluttered; the detail always supported the drama, never overwhelmed it. The covers serve their purpose as an eye-grabber, but closer examination adds to one’s appreciation of both the event shown and one’s appreciation for Baker. Taken as a whole, these covers have to be considered a high point for four-color comics.

Note the wealth of detail on Baker’s cover for Wartime Romances #l7 (Sept. 1953): the drinks and the pack of cigarettes on the bar, the boxing pictures, the seltzer handles, the racks of bottles, the bored bartender reading a newspaper, the people in the background, even the bar’s front windows and curtains. Yet none of this distracts from the three figures in the foreground. The scene can be grasped in an instant, yet it depicts a narrative situation that suggests the events before and after the picture. [©2005 the respective copyright holders.]

NOT ALL ROMANCE COMICS ARE ALIKE! No tear-stained faces or plaintive thought balloons here! This anthology of romance comics from their golden age (1949-54) is actually fun to read! The heroines are lively, independent girls who do the most outrageous things, make all kinds of mistakes, and never suffer heartache or guilt, no matter what! Whether they're plotting to spend an illicit weekend with the boyfriend at a resort hotel or just trying to figure out how much to neck and pet, they're always in charge of their fate. Published by St. John and written by the until-now unsung Dana Dutch, these stories are a revelation!

Over 90 pages of prime MATT BAKER art! Edited by John Benson 160 pages – including 144 in FULL COLOR $22.95 at bookstores everywhere Or order direct from www.fantagraphics.com

“The ‘Matt Baker Woman’ Struck A Responsive Chord” MATT BAKER’s Loving Kinfolk Talk About A Truly Remarkable Golden Age Artist— And Their Talented Family! Interview Conducted by Jim Amash

Transcribed by Tom Wimbish

he Matt Baker story has always been a short and sweet one, but that was due to the lack of biographical information and not because of the material that he created. Matt Baker was a prodigious worker who was almost always at the top of his game, and while his countless admirers (pros and fans alike) may have been frustrated at the lack of insight into his life, they have rarely been disappointed by the quality of his work.

Matt Baker at his drawing board, probably at his apartment on 45th Street in the mid-1950s—and a previously-unpublished sketch from that same era of his Fiction House heroine Ginger Maguire, “Sky Girl.” Illo provided by Fred Robinson and Matt D. Baker. The original art is the property of Matthew D. Baker and cannot be reproduced in any form. [Art ©2005 Estate of Matt Baker.]

Matt Baker is one of the most historically important comic book artists ever—not just because he was one of the earliest AfricanAmericans to break through into the comic book industry, though that was a significant achievement, considering the times in which he worked. Baker is just as important because of his drawing style. He didn’t just illustrate a story—he kept the action moving at a brisk pace with varying camera angles, compelling compositions, and expressive body positioning. And he drew the sexiest women in comics! “The Matt Baker Girl,” once seen, is not easily forgotten, as evidenced by the many reprintings of his Phantom Lady covers, among other examples—and not just by Dr. Frederic Wertham. But I’m leaving the comic book analysis of Baker’s work to Alberto

Beccatini and John Benson, whose comments you can read elsewhere in this issue. Right now, it is my personal pleasure and singular honor to present an interview with Matt Baker’s half-brother Fred Robinson, and Matt’s nephew Matt D. Baker. Between the two of them, we get a good look into not just Matt Baker, but the Baker/Robinson family itself. Strong, proud, and successful people, raised by their remarkable mother Ethel, the family history of the Baker/Robinson sons makes a compelling story. One that you now get to read—accompanied by numerous photos (all of which they provided) and illustrations. All photos accompanying this article are ©2005 Fred Robinson and/or Matthew D. Baker. —Jim.

“Everyone Back Then Was Below Middle-Class” JIM AMASH: Matt, since you have your grandmother’s family Bible with you, let’s start out with some information about your family. MATT D. BAKER: My Uncle Matt Baker, whose full name was Clarence Matthew Baker, was born on December 10, 1921, in Forsyth County, North Carolina, and died on August 11, 1959, in New York City. My Uncle John Franklin Baker [Matt’s older brother] was born in Forsyth County on November 16, 1919, and died in 1980. My dad, Charles Robert Baker [Matt’s younger brother], was born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, on April 29, 1924, and died on April 17, 2003.

Interviewees Matt D. Baker (on left) and Fred Robinson.

Their mother, Ethel, was born in Kernersville, NC, on March 15, 1896; she passed away on February 14, 1968. Their father was Clarence Matthew Baker. He went by the name “Clarence,” and was born in Abbott’s Creek, NC, on December 5, 1895. He died on December 15, 1925.

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Title Comic Fandom Archive

Finding The “Inner Bud” ––Part 1–– Getting To Know The Owner Of Bud Plant Comic Art! by Bill Schelly [Interview conducted by telephone on June 26, 2004. Transcribed by Brian K. Morris; edited by Jeffrey Kipper.]

Introduction

s most of Bud Plant’s catalogues say in the front, “Yes, there really is a person named Bud Plant.” I guess some people think his name is “too cute” to be real. He had to have been ribbed about it a lot during the pot-smoking 1960s and 1970s, but the fact of the matter is that Bud Plant is really his name. Really. But who exactly is Bud Plant?

For most comics fans, his name is a household word owing to his mail-order bookselling business which has been going strong for forty-plus years. We know him as a businessman with an impeccable reputation, and when we do meet him in person, it’s usually at a booth at this comicon or that. Again, it’s Bud the Salesman we see. I’m a long-time customer and think it’s wonderful that such a nice guy is so successful with his life’s work, which has turned out to be disseminating books full of the wonders of comics, illustration, and related subjects. I am a book lover, so that puts Bud high on my list of favorite people. Still—I wondered…. What about the “inner Bud”? He obviously loves comics, and illustration, and pop culture in most of its many varied permutations, but… what does he collect? What comics did he love most as a boy? How much and in what way did he participate in the early days of comics fandom? Who are his favorite artists? How did he end up finding his life’s work? You get the picture. I wanted to get a picture of the comics world according to Bud. And, happily, he was receptive to my request for an interview, if a bit non-plussed. His public mode comes second nature; his private one is something he isn’t used to talking about. Not to worry, I found him an enthusiastic conversationalist and before long we were sailing along on uncharted—but relatively serene—waters. Did we find the “inner Bud Plant”? You decide! BILL SCHELLY: I would mainly like to talk to you as a comic book collector and fan, rather than as an entrepreneur. BUD PLANT: It’s kind-of hard to separate the two. BILL: Most people probably don’t know who you are as a collector. They know who you are as a book merchant. Can you tell me the early comics that you saw that you could remember? BUD: I think the earliest ones would be Walt Disney’s Comics and Stories. My folks had a subscription to it, I believe, in and around ’59, ’60, ’61, which would put me about 7, 8, 9 years old. And my earliest

(Top left & above:) Bud Plant, yesteryear and yesterday—at about age 15, shortly after discovering comic fandom—and in 2004, as the head of Bud Plant Comic Art—flanking the cover of his 1982 catalog, drawn by George Metzger. [Art ©2005 the respective copyright holders.]

memories of that are fighting over the subscription copies with my sisters. I have two older sisters. One’s four years older and one is six years older. I was born in 1952. BILL: What is your family background? BUD: My mom is from the east coast and my dad’s from Oakland, California. My parents actually met overseas during World War II. My mom was a nurse in the Nurse Corps. They were sending the wounded down to North Africa and she was caring for them. My dad was in the Signal Corps. Later he was in Motor Maintenance—he’s basically a maintenance guy. They met at a troop ship going to North Africa before the invasion of Europe. U.S. forces were in North Africa, then went into Italy after it fell. After that, they went northwest into France and Belgium. Dad was behind the lines. My parents got married in Cairo, Egypt. I have a lot of feeling about the whole World War II thing. I can see a movie like Saving Private Ryan and it really sort of chokes me up, because I just have this real great respect for people that went over there and put their lives on the line. It’s pretty amazing. So maybe some of that is just because my parents both were over there. BILL: World War II, in 1960, had ended just fifteen years earlier. And Combat was on TV, and there were lots of war comics being produced. We were really hyper-aware of the war. BUD: The post-war period was significant cultural change for everybody in the US. My folks came home to California and built a house in East San Jose, right up against the foothills of San Jose, and that’s where I grew up until I was about 19.

The Birth And Death Of The Golden Age by C.C. Beck Edited by P.C. Hamerlinck [Originally presented in FCA #15-17 (FCA/SOB #4-6), 1980-81]

Part I The Illusion of Action In Pictures Over a hundred years ago Eadweard Muybridge startled the world of art when he produced photographs taken in sequence. When these photographs were viewed one after another they created the illusion that the people in the pictures were moving … that they were in action. Muybridge projected his pictures on a screen and his first audiences were artists. Later, Thomas Edison perfected the projecting of “moving pictures” and the movie industry was born. As live actors were being captured on film by photographers in the early movie studios, artists were making the first animated cartoons. Drawing pictures to be seen in sequence, not individually, taught cartoonists the importance of the panel format or “strip” approach which developed into the comic strip, and within a few years every newspaper featured a line of comic strips, which became immensely popular. Cartoonists had long been producing individual cartoons, mostly political, but now they really came into their own with their daily and Sunday “funnies.” The public could see their favorite characters move and talk just as if they were alive! It made little difference that the characters were comic characters with potato noses and shoe button eyes; they seemed real to the readers. There were a few attempts made to introduce realistic drawing in comic strips, but they got nowhere. The world of comic strips was a world of illusion and fantasy where anything could happen; realistic drawing seemed out of place. In later years, after some comic strips had degenerated into soap operas, realistic drawing began to be used more and more. In the realistic strips the action was slow and dragged out and there was little or no humor. But both kinds of strips continued to be published in newspapers and still are to be found there today. The leading comic strips today, as in times past, are strictly comic, however. In comic books, which are a different thing entirely, the reverse is true today.

Although the early comic books looked and were intended to be read like the daily strips from which they were derived, there was pressure from their producers to get away from their “comic” look. It was this pressure which within a few short years caused comic books to lose the immense popularity they originally had at their start. By the early ’50s comic books were not comic, there was no action in them, and sales had dropped almost to the vanishing point. The Golden Age of Comics had ended.

Part II How To Kill The Illusion Of Action The early comic book heroes—Superman, Batman, Plastic Man, Daredevil, Captain Marvel—were drawn in comic style by cartoonists,

The Birth And Death Of The Golden Age

not by serious illustrators. Within a very short time these strips were expanded by their publishers to where dozens of artists and writers were employed in producing each of them. The new employees were not cartoonists but pulp editors and writers and artists from the fine arts and illustrative fields. They knew nothing about cartooning, which they regarded as childish and crude. The writers over-wrote their scripts, packing them full of outlandish action and long speeches which appealed to the editors, who then turned the stories over to be “illustrated” as they would have been in pulp magazines. The artists, anxious to impress the editors and writers with their knowledge of art, broke their comic pages into elaborate artistic layouts filled with captions and variously-shaped panels which would appeal to the eye, although they meant nothing to the reader. As a result, the illusion of action which the early comic strips had created by showing portions of an action panel by panel as if it were a movie was destroyed completely. Action is an illusion; it exists only in the viewer’s mind. No action can exist in a single picture; a picture is frozen in time and is as motionless as a piece of statuary or an exhibit in a museum. Cartoonists draw crudely and simply because they know that the more that is left out of a picture the more the viewer’s imagination will fill in the gaps. They know that a series of pictures leading up to an action is always more successfully shown than the action itself, which they usually indicate by a sound effect, a cloud of dust, or some other abstract symbol. The moments before and after an action can be drawn but the action itself must take place in the imagination. C.C. Beck, the original artist and co-creator of Captain Marvel, illustrates Muybridge’s photos The new editors and writers and illusof moving subjects. Art from Beck’s unpublished The Principles of Illustration. trators tried to show action, not to suggest From the collection of P.C. Hamerlinck. [©Estate of C.C. Beck.] it. They put in countless captions and panels filled with explanatory copy which led up to the action, then put the action itself into a drawing. Comic books became picture books – albums filled with all sorts of startling and eye-catching drawings, which looked attractive but meant nothing to a reader who was looking for an exciting story, not a collection of meaningless pictures. Far too many people, including far too many artists, believe that realism is preferable to non-realism. “I want to see everything just the And the action shown in the new style of drawing was forced and way it really looks,” they say. “None of your abstract art for me. It’s melodramatic. Characters gesticulated wildly while striking silly poses silly.” like ham actors. Backgrounds and props and costumes became so overelaborate that the reader was bewildered. “What is going on?” readers What such people don’t understand is that nothing is sillier than began to ask. “Where is the story?” realism where it doesn’t belong. It’s even sillier than non-realism in the wrong place. Pretty soon there was nothing going on. There were no stories, no action, and no more comic books. The Golden Age of Comics was over, Ordinary, everyday things like houses, cars, mailboxes, telephones, killed by the non-cartoonists who had turned them into non-comics. and the like are real objects in the real world. When an artist draws one

Part III The Deadly Dullness Of Realistic Art

Alter Ego #47