Kyle John Baker[2] (born 1965)[3] 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.

[4] Their parents had both attended Pratt Institute in Brooklyn, New York, and their father, who, Baker said, "worked in advertising [and] made junk mail", would "draw pictures for us and entertain us.

I had paperback reprints of the early [Harvey] Kurtzman stories, illustrated by Wally Wood, Will Elder, and Jack Davis.

I remember making a 'King Kong' out of clay, and a drawing of a New York skyline, and I made a stop-motion film of King-Kong fighting model airplanes.

[4] In his senior year of high school, Baker became an intern at Marvel Comics, making photocopies and filing fan mail.

[5] He cited Marvel artists Walt Simonson, Al Milgrom and Larry Hama and writer and editor-in-chief Jim Shooter as providing him art and storytelling advice.

[6] While working for Marvel, Baker attended the School of Visual Arts, in Manhattan, studying graphic design and printmaking,[7] but dropped out after two years.

[5] Through that connection, however, he began freelancing with famed graphic designer Milton Glaser, an SVA instructor, assisting him on a set of children's books.

[8] 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.

[8] During this time, Baker also attempted to sell humor spot illustrations, but was rejected by the major newspaper syndicates.

[9] 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.

"[5] Baker achieved recognition and won an Eisner Award for his 1990 graphic novel Why I Hate Saturn, published by the DC Comics imprint Piranha Press.

Baker said in 1999 of his breakthrough work: I wrote Why I Hate Saturn at a time when comic books had stopped being fun for me.

So when I finally got permission to do Why I Hate Saturn, a book I'd been trying years to sell, I decided to write it like a sitcom and send it to Hollywood.

[citation needed] in 1994, Baker directed an animated video featuring the hip hop singer KRS-One, called "Break The Chain".

[10] That same year and next, he contributed to the four-issue Dark Horse Comics humor anthology Instant Piano (December 1994 - June 1995), including drawing the cover of the premiere.

[8] For another anthology, DC's Elseworlds 80-Page Giant #1 (August 1999), Baker drew, colored, lettered and with his wife, teacher Elizabeth Glass, whom he married July 18, 1998,[2] wrote the 10-page parallel universe story "Letitia Lerner, Superman's Babysitter".

[citation needed] Baker drew writer Robert Morales' Marvel Comics miniseries Truth #1-7 (January–July 2003), a Captain America storyline with parallels to the Tuskegee experiment.

[8][13] 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.