Kyle Baker

Kyle John Baker is an American cartoonist, comic book writer-artist, and animator known for his graphic novels and for a 2000s revival of the series Plastic Man.

Baker has won numerous Eisner Awards and Harvey Awards for his work in the comics field.

Biography

Early life and career Kyle Baker was born in Queens, New York City, the son of art director John M. Baker and high-school audiovisual-department manager Eleanor L. Baker. He has a brother and a sister, Edwin Baker and Cheryl Baker, and now, three daughters and a son - Lillian, Jacqueline and Madeleine Baker, and Isaac Baker.

Other influences included the Charlton Comics artwork of Jim Aparo and Steve Ditko. Part of his duties involved photocopying, and he would take copies of John Buscema penciling home on which to practice inking. but dropped out after two years. After a handful of inking assignments on issues of Transformers, The Avengers Annual #14 (1985) and elsewhere, Baker made his professional story-illustration debut as penciler and inker of the publisher Lodestone Comics' Codename: Danger #2 (October 1985), with a 23-page story written by Brian Marshall, Mike Harris, and Robert Loren Fleming. Cover penciling and more interior inking for Marvel and occasionally DC followed. His first story penciling for one of the two major comics companies was the three-issue Howard the Duck: The Movie (December 1986 - February 1987), adapting the 1986 film Howard the Duck, and which he self-inked.

First graphic novel At the recommendation of freelance artist Ron Fontes, an editor at the Dolphin imprint of the publishing house Doubleday expressed interest in Baker's sample strips of the character Cowboy Wally, "and asked if I had any more. I lied and said I did."

He began scripting comics around this time: Baker penciled and inked First Comics' Classics Illustrated #3 & 21 (February 1990 & March 1991), adapting, respectively, Through the Looking Glass and Cyrano de Bergerac. While Peter David scripted the latter, Baker himself wrote the adaptation of the Lewis Carroll work.

Baker said in 1999 he was writing a Christmas movie for Paramount Pictures, titled U Betta Watch Out, and was animating a TV-movie title Corey Q. Jeeters, I'm Telling on You.

He is credited with writing and storyboarding on the Phineas and Ferb television episodes "Candace Loses Her Head" and "Are You My Mummy?".

2000s Baker drew writer Robert Morales' Marvel Comics miniseries Truth #1-7 (January–July 2003), a Captain America storyline with parallels to the Tuskegee experiment. He also wrote and drew all but two issues (#7 and #12) of the 20-issue comedic adventure series Plastic Man vol. 4 (February 2004 - March 2006), starring the Golden Age of Comic Books superhero created by Jack Cole for Quality Comics. Baker contributed to the Dark Horse Comics series The Amazing Adventures of the Escapist, a spin-off of Michael Chabon's novel, The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay. The New York Times reviewed the 2009 trade-paperback collection of the first four issues, calling it "the harshest, most serrated satire of the Iraq War yet published."

In 2008, Watson-Guptill published How to Draw Stupid and Other Essentials of Cartooning, Baker's art instruction book. That same year, Baker hosted the comics industry's Harvey Awards. In 2010, he became regular artist on Marvel Comics' mature-audience MAX-imprint series, Deadpool Max.

Most recently, he was inducted into the Eisner Hall of Fame at San Diego Comic Con on July 25, 2025.