Matt Baker (artist)
| Matt Baker | |
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Baker (left) and publisher Archer St. John at Grauman's Chinese Theatre (undated)
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| Born | Clarence Matthew Baker December 10, 1921 Forsyth County, North Carolina |
| Died | August 11, 1959 (aged 37) |
| Nationality | American |
| Area(s) | Penciller |
| Pseudonym(s) | Matt Barkerino |
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Notable works
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Phantom Lady |
Clarence Matthew Baker (December 10, 1921 – August 11, 1959) was an American comic book artist who drew the costumed crimefighter Phantom Lady, among many other characters. Active in the 1940s and 1950s Golden Age of comic books, he is the first known African-American artist to find success in the comic-book industry. He also penciled an early form of graphic novel, St. John Publications' digest-sized "picture novel" It Rhymes with Lust (1950).
Baker was inducted into the Will Eisner Comic Book Hall of Fame in 2009.
Baker was born December 10,1921, in Forsyth County, North Carolina. At a young age he relocated with his family to Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, and after graduating high school circa 1940, moved to Washington, D.C.. Prevented by a heart condition from being drafted into the U.S. military in World War II era, he began studying art at Cooper Union, in New York City. He entered comics through the Jerry Iger Studio, one of the 1930s to 1940s "packagers" that provided outsourced comics to publishers entering the new medium. Baker's first confirmed comics work is penciling and inking the women in the 12-page "Sheena, Queen of the Jungle" story in Fiction House's Jumbo Comics #69 (cover-dated Nov. 1944), otherwise penciled by Robert Webb and Alex Blum.
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Wikipedia