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COURTESY KYLE BAKER PUBLISHING

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Family man

Writer-cartoonist Kyle Baker uses
talent to make fun of himself in
a relatable way

It's not enough that writer-cartoonist Kyle Baker has made a spectacle of himself his entire career. Now he's dragged his wife and kids into the picture.

The New York-born Baker, who has his own publishing company on top of his contract work for DC/Vertigo and Marvel Comics, started featuring his personal misadventures as a husband and dad in the second volume of his "Kyle Baker: Cartoonist" collections.

The recently released "The Bakers" is the offshoot of that, and the project really plays to the strengths of Baker's delightful animation-type drawing style. (It's no surprise that he's even directed new "Looney Tunes" shorts for Warner Bros., and you can see more shorts from his own animation studio on his Web site, www.kylebaker.com.)

From playfully documenting his baby daughter's first steps, to dragging his two oldest kids on an emergency trip to the mall to buy his wife an almost-forgotten birthday gift, Baker's fluidly drawn cartoons should appeal to his widest audience yet. The quick, jokey humor is akin to what a personal favorite of his, Sergio Aragones, has done for decades in the pages of Mad magazine.

"I'm trying to focus on what's universal in our personal experience," Baker said in an interview with silverbulletcomicbooks-com. "Stuff like me trying unsuccessfully to dress the baby, or trying to watch an action movie without waking the kids are the kinds of things almost everyone can relate to. A lot of people read those strips and tell me that it's like reading about their own lives. ... I will also have some stories about being a cartoonist trying to work at home while surrounded by children who want to grab all my comic books and art supplies, but most of it is about stuff everyone experiences.

"(My wife) Liz asked me why I draw myself so fat. I told her it's because fat is funny. My daughter asked why I draw Mommy so skinny, I explained it's because Daddy's no fool.

"Most of the jokes are at my expense. I don't plan to embarrass my wife or kids. The strip is intended to be lighthearted family entertainment, so we won't really be getting into any of the 'danger' areas of our life. Besides, we're a happy family."

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COURTESY KYLE BAKER PUBLISHING

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"The Bakers" make for a great entry into the rest of Baker's work, particularly his stint on the "Plastic Man" title for DC. If there were a superhero tailor-made for Baker's talents, the elastic jokester is it. He's revamped the 1940s shape-shifting character to new heights of zaniness in sight gags. The first six issues are collected in a cleverly designed softcover collection, "Plastic Man: On the Lam" (complete with the goofy hero disguised as the book cover). I highly recommend it, as well as the ongoing series that have garnered him more industry award-winning accolades (it's DC's best-selling all-ages title).

Baker won his first couple of Eisner awards for a strip that almost didn't see print in the United States. "Letitia Lerner, Superman's Babysitter" first ran in a U.K. comic book, but DC's president nixed its initial American debut because he thought it was offensive to show the then-Superbaby being "cooked" in a microwave oven after crawling in it.

The strip finally ran in the U.S.-marketed Bizarro Comics collection, and Baker had the last laugh.

The cartoonist is also not one to shirk politically sensitive projects. He and writer Robert Morales purposely courted politics with their mini-series "The Truth" for Marvel, telling the origin of Captain America, this time with a black, instead of a white, WWII soldier.

And for Random House, he illustrated the satirical graphic novel "Birth of a Nation," co-written by "The Boondocks" creator Aaron McGruder and movie and TV producer-director Reginald Hudlin.

Baker's next self-published book will be a well-researched biography on Nat Turner, who led a bloody slave rebellion in Virginia in 1831 that most historians credit for starting the chain of events that led to the Civil War.

"He's one of my heroes," Baker said, "and he is a hero to all black people. ... When I was a kid, we didn't have any black comic book heroes that were created by black people for black people. I get a lot of letters from black folks who love 'Truth' and (my epic Biblical graphic novel) 'King David,' and that's who I do it for. And for my kids."