About the illustration

Matt Baker is one of the greatest comic book illustrators ever. So if I’m going to be reproducing his work I should be doing it with the utmost respect. I don’t see any artist can put in this much detail on cover and still complete the rest of of a 30+ page book.

The took a fairly long time to re-ink, but it wasn’t all that difficult, I think that’s because Baker has very fluid technique it’s almost like doing line-art. The ink just need to float in blobs and lines. The only way I can describe it that it’s like drawing water.

About Matt Baker

Clarence Matthew Baker (December 10, 1921 – August 11, 1959) was an American comic book artist and illustrator, best known for drawing early comics heroines such as the costumed crimefighter Phantom Lady, and romance comics. 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 St. John Publications’ digest-sized “picture novel” It Rhymes with Lust (1950), the first graphic novel despite that term not having been coined at the time.

Baker was inducted into the Will Eisner Comic Book Hall of Fame in 2009. His influence can be seen in artists such as Dave Stevens and Adam Hughes.

Later in the decade, Baker freelanced for Atlas Comics, the 1950s forerunner of Marvel Comics, beginning with a five-page anthological story generally, if unconfirmably, credited to writer-editor Stan Lee, in the omnibus title Gunsmoke Western #32 (Dec. 1955). At some point during this period, working through artist Vince Colletta’s studio, Baker went on to draw stories for Atlas’ Western Outlaws, Quick Trigger Action, Frontier Western, and Wild Western; more prolifically for the company’s romance comics Love Romances, My Own Romance, and Teen-Age Romance; and one story each for the supernatural/science fiction anthologies Strange Tales, World of Fantasy, and Tales to Astonish (“I Fell to the Center of the Earth!” in issue #2, March 1959). Baker also supplied artwork for the Dell Movie Classic edition of King Richard and the Crusaders.

In the late fifties he branched out into illustration work, for instance for the 16 page illustrated condensation he did of Howard J. Lewis’ The Complete Guide to Better Bowling (1956, Maco Magazine Corporation) for the General Motors’ Information Rack Service number 1R-58-46 and the early issues of the St. John detective pulp digest Manhunt.

His last known confirmed work is the six-page “I Gave Up the Man I Love!” in the company’s My Own Romance #73 (Jan. 1960). His last known work as generally credited but unconfirmed is the first page of the six-page story “Happily Ever After” in Marvel’s Love Romances #90 (Nov. 1960).

He died of a heart attack on August 11, 1959.