Kyle Baker: Pushing Diversity

By Jason Brice

Award winning comic book writer/artist Kyle Baker has some very definite ideas about where comics are at, and how diverse the audience actually is. Talking about his own books, the work for hire system, and TV sitcoms, Baker talks us through his approach to the business of making comics. And how to do it right...

Jason Brice: The biographical information on your website is fairly minimal, so could you please tell us something about who you are and how you got to be where you are today?

Kyle Baker: The biographical information is fairly complete. I'm a minimal guy. As for who I am, I keep my private life separate from my business life, so there's no mention of the fact that I'm a proud daddy and hubby, or where I live. As far as how I got to be where I am today (I assume you mean professionally, not geographically), I practice and study constantly.

JB: From what I can gather you started off doing more traditional comics fare, super-heroes and such, primarily as an inker. What made you want to move towards edgier content?

KB: I'm not sure what you mean by edgy. I think handsome muscular men in spandex beating each other up is a pretty edgy form of etnertainment. Most of these super-hero books are so violent I wouldn't let my kid read them. By contrast, my stuff tends to be boys and girls in love being chased by a villain, all drawn in a pretty commercial Disney style. I don't see it as very edgy at all. All sex and violence in my stuff is implied, done off-camera. I guess I have a few four-letter words, but everybody uses those words nowadays.

JB: Touché!

Edgier as in less likely to appeal to the traditional fan-base for comics, of course. But then again you are not aiming for that audience at all, I don't suppose?

KB: There are many kinds of comics available for many kinds of audiences. Mad, Groo, Bone, Sin City, Jimmy Corrigan and Will Eisner all have many fans. Tintin and Asterix are phenomenally successful. Gahan Wilson, Jules Feiffer, [and] Edward Gorey are all successful and have millions of fans. Spider-man may (or may not) have more fans than all the others combined, but who's to say that my characters might not someday become hugely popular? Who's to say that Dan Clowes might not someday become more popular than Matt Groening? I certainly never could have predicted Matt Groening's success back in the '80s, but his years of hard work in small-press comics paid off. My work reaches a wider audience each year, because I work hard to do the best books possible, and my books are getting better, and I'm winning awards, and I have a new website where people around the world are being exposed to my work.

The reason I stopped drawing other people's characters is that they are other people's characters. I own the characters I've created, and control how they are exploited. You will never see a Cowboy Wally TV show unless I approve it. And if I approve it, I will get a fair share of the profits. If a Spider-Man comic I've drawn is published in Europe, or made into a TV show or toy or whatever, I will receive not a dime. Why waste my talent filling some other corporation's pockets?

JB: Good point. Why then do you think that so many artists are willing to grind away turning out work for the big companies given the situation as you have described it?

KB: It's easier to work on someone else's cartoons, and also pays better in the short term. You have no idea how much work I had to do to get where I am. And I'm still working hard to get even further. I would make a lot more money drawing for Disney right now, though. My friends who draw Batman have bigger houses than I do.

JB: Talking specifically about your work, the art style in your graphic novels has more of an illustrator's air to it than most current artists try to evoke. Who do you consider to be your influences? How do you utilize your influences?

KB: I like anybody who can make good art. I even like artists who aren't famous.

There are millions of great artists and writers who aren't famous and who you've never heard of. And a lot of famous people who have no talent at all, but are able to serve a corporate machine much better than a talented "artist" who may feel he has a message which must not be compromised by an editor or publisher. Think for yourself. Most people think that just because someone's popular, that means they must be good, and that if someone isn't rich and famous, they must be bad. If you like someone's art, if it pleases you, even if it's just a watercolor done by your neighbor who never sold anything, it is good. And you can learn from anybody.

My biggest influence is Mother Nature. I can be inspired by a beautiful landscape or an ugly burned-out shack. I see a guy with a funny face, I want to capture it on paper. My car breaks down in a remote locale, it gives me an idea for a funny cartoon story. My book You Are Here was created in part because I wanted to try and capture sunsets on paper. I also wanted to spend a few weeks drawing in Central Park.

JB: Who do you make comics for? Yourself or your audience? Is there a difference?

KB: I make comics for people to read and enjoy. It's how I make my living.

JB: Can you describe the different ways you approached each of your books? For example, The Cowboy Wally Show seems like a strip, and Why I Hate Saturn is reminiscent of a situation comedy...

KB: The Cowboy Wally Show was originally created to be a syndicated newspaper strip, but no syndicate wanted to buy it. Doubleday Books made me an offer, and I took it.

Why I Hate Saturn was created between the time the syndicates rejected Cowboy Wally and Doubleday bought Cowboy Wally.

I stopped work on it to do Cowboy Wally. My contract with Doubleday gave them first option on my next book, which would have been Saturn, but they rejected it after Cowboy Wally didn't sell they way they'd hoped. I spent another year doing superhero books, then DC bought my proposal for Saturn. By this time, it'd been three or four years since I'd come up with the idea for Saturn, and by the time the contracts were drawn up, I had lost all interest in the project. The character of Anne had seemed quite interesting and perceptive when I was nineteen years old, but four years later seemed a lot like the whiny, self-absorbed nineteen year old who'd created her. So I created her sister, who was more pleasant and creative. The original title hadn't been Why I Hate Saturn. The title was created before I wrote the book, because you need to have a title to put on the contract. I had a rough proposal written, with a lot more car chases and stuff. I figured Saturn was a good planet because it makes a good trademark with the ring and all. Mars would make a lousy trademark, because it's just a red dot.

Anyway, after the contracts were drawn up and I finally was working on the book, I discovered that the characters were developing in an interesting way. I felt that the book was at it's best when the characters were just sitting around talking about themselves like a Feiffer strip. This wasn't in the proposal I had written, which was mostly car chases and gunfights like a normal comic book. Remember, this is the '80s, and adult-themed graphic novels were rare, except for Maus and Eisner. Cowboy Wally had bombed, so there was no such thing as a "Kyle Baker Graphic Novel". The editor of Saturn, Mark Nevillow, insisted I go back to the car-chase story I had proposed. So I did what I was told, since I had no clout.

Also, back in the '80s, DC didn't allow cartoonists to own their creations. Why I Hate Saturn and all the characters are registered trademarks of DC comics. I decided that since I was going to be told what to write and not own my characters, I should go to Hollywood and be told what to write, not own my characters and get paid six times as much. So Why I Hate Saturn was written in a sitcom style because I figured I'd use it as a writing sample to get a job in sitcoms.

You Are Here was created because, after ten years living in Hollywood writing sitcom pilots, I decided I wanted to write something good. I had this story in mind that I wanted to tell, and I knew from experience that if I'd sold it to one of the big Hollywood studios I was working for, the story would end up getting watered down and ruined. I loved the story too much to allow that to happen, and I had heard that the independent comic book publishing scene had grown, with companies like Image and Dark Horse. I was hoping to sell it to an independent publisher who would allow me to retain the copyright and ancillary rights, and had contacted some editors. DC comics contacted me and said they would like to publish me again, and that I could retain my ownership of the trademarks. So I went with DC.

You Are Here was created to be a graphic novel, not as development for a film or TV show. It's the kind of book I've always wanted to see someone make, so I made it. Nowadays, comic books are the one place where I'm allowed total creative freedom. You Are Here is exactly the way I wanted it, and nobody at DC attempted to change a word of it without consulting me.

There was a change made to the cover (some folks at DC felt my name was written too large), but I asked them to change it back, and they did. I've worked in advertising, magazines, newspapers, TV and movies, and DC Comics are the only people who have granted me this type of freedom.

JB: Making "Kyle Baker" into a brand name is a necessity I think I heard you mention before. Making sure bookshops shelve your work all together, and other small but crucial factors that lead to commercial success. How do you follow through on this commitment to your own work?

KB: I do the best work possible. The name "Kyle Baker" on a book has become a guarantee of top-quality cutting edge work. It's always fresh, I'm not repeating the same formulas, and I make sure it's always something you can't get anywhere else. Also, I'm trying to get these books out on an annual schedule, which is important. I was busy this year working on a movie, so I couldn't do a book.

I tried pitching a reprint book of my short stories, but I couldn't find a publisher in time. So two Kyle Baker books should be coming out in 2001. A reprint, and an original new Graphic Novel. And then another book in 2002.

JB: Going back to something you mentioned earlier, is good writing and sitcom pilots mutually exclusive? I'm surprised to see you dismiss ten years of work like that!

KB: I think TV stinks. It's mindless, predictable, and unoriginal. Compare the best TV shows to the best books or theater. Are you telling me that Seinfeld is really the apex of comedy? Better than Twain or Shaw? Do these "Emmy-Winning" TV dramas really rival Chekhov?

Does Friends really capture the spirit of New York Gen-Xers better than Why I Hate Saturn?

Television is designed for one thing: To sell advertising time. Television by necessity celebrates and incubates materialism. The goal of a television writer is to put an audience in a frame of mind favorable to buying the advertiser's product. As writers, we are clearly instructed to avoid writing anything which may offend anyone. Phrases or situations that may seem tame or realistic to us are routinely cut from scripts because conservatives in the Midwest may be disturbed, and therefore may not buy detergent from the sponsor.

That said, I still work in television because the money's great and the exposure may help me sell more books. But I don't pretend that it's great art any more than I pretend my comic books are great art. I do believe that my books, while silly entertainment, exhibit a degree of craft and skill I have been unable to preserve in my work in other media, where dozens of people necessarily impose their own agenda on my product. My scripts are rewritten, my artwork redrawn, usually to remove anything original or creative. There is a reason all movies are basically alike. There is a reason you can predict the ending of a TV show after watching the first five minutes.

Compare Dorothy Parker's best short stories to her best screenplays, and tell me Hollywood doesn't diminish creativity.

JB: Was the critical attention you have garnered for I Die At Midnight unexpected?

KB: I didn't know I got any critical attention. Which critics? I don't read a lot of periodicals and we don't have a TV. We live in the woods, and the signals don't reach here. I'd love to know what critics said. Did they like it? Or was the attention negative?

JB: Here is a review! http://www.psycomic.com/database/idie.shtml

KB: It's nice everyone liked it. I thought it was a funny book and enjoyed making it. Wait'll you see the new one I'm working on!

JB: How do you feel I Die At Midnight fits in to your world as millennial project? Could it have been a story that occurred at any place at any time?

KB: I was specifically asked by Karen Berger and Cliff Chiang at DC to write a story that took place on New Years Eve 1999. That was the job, so I don't really know what else it could have been.

JB: Can you give me some insight as to your opinion on the Baby Superman debacle? It seems to have been one of those rare occasions where you have done work for hire in recent years and the whole scenario just went completely wrong on you.

KB: When I work on someone else's character, all I really care about is getting paid. Superman is the property of DC Comics and they have the right to decide how their character is portrayed. They can alter my drawings without consulting me, they can throw the whole story in the trash. I sold them the story, they own it. I had a new baby to feed and wanted some quick cash, so I wrote this story. I got my check, so I really don't care what happened afterward. I did get a nice Eisner award out of it, and Paul Levitz and I even shared a laugh about the whole thing after the award ceremony, where I publicly thanked him and the editors who worked on the book.

If DC or anyone tries to tamper with characters I own, it's another story entirely.

For example, if someone makes a You Are Here toy, and I dislike the art, or feel that my characters are being portrayed in a way that, in my opinion, would damage the commercial viability of my creations, I would have the toy destroyed. It's my right. I would hope, however, that I stop the offending project in the prototype stage, rather than waiting for them to manufacture thousands of them before I pull the plug. But accidents happen.

DC has enough money that they can afford to print and bind books before deciding they should be destroyed. It seems to me a wasteful and expensive way to do things, but it's their money, so who cares? It's not the first job I've done that never saw the light of day. I've done designs for TV and movie cartoon characters that were ultimately rejected, and I was paid for my time. I've worked for magazines that commission three illustrations for a story and only print one. But they pay for three. It happens all the time. Last year I was told to redraw the last page of a Gen 13 story I had illustrated, because someone important wanted the ending changed. I got paid to redraw it. This is all very normal.

JB: Well, thanks for all those insights Kyle.

I appear to have taken up quite a bit of your time, so thanks very much for the opportunity to chat. I'll be looking out for the new Kyle Baker projects this year and next, and hopefully for many years to come!

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