Comics helped a lot in teaching me to read. Obscure science terms, made-up words, and things that sounded like made-up words but were actually real words after all littered my early comics reading experience. So, comics taught me a love of words.

Rap taught me to love wordplay. It’s about taking a phrase you know and turning it on its head. High School Me would hate me for being about to quote Young Jeezy, but this part from his verse on Put On is great and he’s from the next town over, so suck it, 2001-me.

Passenger’s a red bone, her weave look like some curly fries
Inside’s fish sticks, outside’s tartar sauce
Pocket full of cel-e-ry, imagine what she telling me
Blowing on asparagus, the realest shit I ever smoked
Ridin’ to that trap or die- the realest shit I ever wrote
They know I got that bro-cco-li, so I keep that glock with me

And yeah, it’s typical ignant thug rap– this is still Jeezy, after all. He makes the extended food metaphor work, and for some reason, it ends up being pretty clever. There are other great examples. Big Pun had that killer tongue-twister flow (Dead in the middle of little Italy, little did we know that we riddled some middleman who didn’t do diddly) and Ghostface is still rap’s very own Gabriel Garcia Marquez.

Another place where rap and comics intersected for me was in that they both portrayed heroes and role models for a very young David Brothers to take in. The difference between the two is that comics had heroes, black or white, who were generally written for white guys by white guys, while rappers were generally black guys who were usually aimed at a black audience.

The majority of black comics characters were, for years, either black characters filtered through an extremely non-black lens (Storm), unrelateable (Panther), parodies (Cage), or awful (Bishop).

Rap offered a slightly different perspective. I was just old enough to sneak in on the tail end of the pro-black movement of rap. Midnight Marauders hit when I was nine or ten (along with the Malcolm X movie). I had the Wu. I had Nas. I had a ton of people who taught me that being black is awesome, having money is great, and that crime is exciting. When it came down to choosing Iron Man or Tony Starks… I went with Ghostface Killah.

Most comics, with the notable exception of Milestone and occasional “outreach” books, aren’t aimed at me. That’s changed somewhat in recent years, but Marvel and DC are still relying on the same fanbase they’ve had for forty-plus years.

This brings me around to what I think are the two most important books in comics since… I dunno, the Jemas-era began. Nat Turner by Kyle Baker, and Sentences by Percy “MF Grimm” Carey and Ron Wimberly are books that are aimed at me. They’re by black people and aimed, if not at black people directly, at a wider audience than just “fanboys.”

Both aren’t necessarily the most marketable “comic books.” One is a book about a guy whose claim to fame was killing a lot of white men, women, and children after he was given a sign from Heaven. The other is about a rapper, but the greater message isn’t about “bitches and switches and hoes and clothes and weed,” which is what you’d usually see out of basically anything involving rap in the media at large.

Sentences was probably my favorite complete book out of ’07, including single issues, and it totally got robbed for that Eisner. I think it’s an important step in a lot of ways, and the least Vertigo-style title Vertigo has published. It isn’t a long and boring, goth-y, about vampires, religion, or your usual Vertigo cliche of choice. It’s just about a dude, his life, and the choices he made that got him to where he is now. It’s also about growing up black, falling into traps, and digging your way out of a hole you’ve dug for yourself.

There were any number of scenes and references in that book that I immediately got. I thought the bit with the mom in the beginning was hilarious. Why? Probably because I’d seen my mom swing on a grown man for messing with my little brother and any number of verbal sonnings while out shopping. I can relate to Carey’s love for his grandmother because we’re on the same level there.

In a very real way, it’s a book about me and my experiences. It’s about someone who looks like me, has gone through some of the same things I’ve gone through, listens to the same music, and even hung out with some of my own heroes. I don’t have to play down the obvious racial and class differences between me and most comics characters. I don’t have to worry about shocked stares when I say I haven’t heard of some apparently huge band. It’s the power of shared experience working in my favor. I finished the book feeling like I could go “Midnight Marauders or Low End Theory?” and “Ether or Takeover?” and get into an hour-long fight or an hour-long conversation, depending on the answer.

(Midnight Marauders and Ether are the right answers.)

Kyle Baker’s Nat Turner was my Sentences for when it came out. I recently re-read it on a long plane ride few weeks back, and finishing it prompted a few things. First, it made me realize that I had to do this essay. Second, I resolved to give the book (which I had just purchased a few days earlier) away the first chance I got, because people need to read it. And I did.

Nat Turner, the person, has been an interesting figure to me since I first heard of him. It could have been from a rap song, or from one of the footnotes in a school textbook that Baker mentions in his text pieces in the book. I know (off the top of my head) that he was mentioned on Wu-Forever, Sean Price’s Brokest Rapper You Know, and the Talib Kweli + dead prez joint off Lyricist Lounge.

Nat’s claim to fame, and I’m not embellishing anything here, is that he killed fifty-plus white men, women, and children. He led the largest slave rebellion in the States. Obviously, he was a murderer, and that isn’t something to be proud of. At the same time, though, he stood up tall and spat in the face of a system and country that believed him to be less than human. There’s a lot to appreciate in this story, though that probably makes me sound like a sociopath.

Baker’s approach to the book gives it a storybook kind of feel. There are only a few word balloons, leaving the action to stand on its own. The majority of the text is taken directly from The Confessions of Nat Turner. It comes in chunks and often relates to the scenes being depicted on the page, but its tone is jarring. The rebellion happened 160-some years ago, so the language and times are different. It’s like peeking into another world, or reading about a faraway land. The essay is very methodical and sometimes stilted. Premediated is an apt description, as well.

The art sells every emotion and scene perfectly. Sadness, determination, hate, and love all come through clear as a bell. One scene expertly shows a situation in which killing your own child is the greatest act of love you can perform. It’s depressing, it’s tough, and it’s a downer, but it’s a necessary one. It’s like medicine. You have to take it, and after you get past the taste, you’ll feel better.

I feel like it’s a book you should have to read at least once. It tells a story that doesn’t get a lot of attention, but is still well-known and loved by a lot of people. It’s a story that illuminates both universal rights and what happens when someone is pushed too far and too hard.

Nat Turner and Sentences were like comics dipping their toe into the pool. They were warning shots. They are saying “We are here, we have always been here” to the industry and “Don’t go anywhere, there is something here for you, too” to the audience. I really wish that these books had been around for when I was younger. They’re exactly what I was looking for, but didn’t know I was looking for.

It was the equivalent of one of my favorite images from the past.

Now, though, I just want more. My two loves are on speaking terms. Let’s keep at it, yeah?

Joe Kubert and Garth Ennis have spent decades and hundreds of issues demonstrating how the ultimate manifestation of man’s inhumanity to man reaches its peak during times of war. War puts good people into terrible situations, chews them up, and spits them out.

Serious war comics, all questions of quality aside, are really easy to find. They’ve been produced almost constantly since World War II. Funny war comics, though? Those are a bit tougher.

I’ve been describing Special Forces to friends as the greatest sucker punch ever written. Honestly, it’s a compliment. Let me explain.

Special Forces, and particularly Special Forces #3, is a fun comic. It’s got great action, excellent one-liners, a hot protagonist, and tons of well-choregraphed violence. In short, it’s got all the makings of success. It’s geared toward the mainstream audience.

The thing is, though, that I keep finding myself bopping along, reading and enjoying and grinning, and then I finish the issue and realize that everything I just read is based on real events. I don’t just mean the fact that the book is about the war in Iraq. I mean that the specifics of the book tend to have their basis in facts. Child soldiers? Maimed and wounded babies? Autistic army recruits? People from the wrong side of the tracks? It’s all real.

This is why Special Forces is a sucker punch. The quality of the book is through the roof. It’s fun, clever, action-packed, and entertaining. And then, at the end, the hammer comes down and you realize the actual nature of what you’ve been enjoying. It makes me pause each time, and it’s happened to me three issues in a row so far. I know, in the back of my head at least, that it’s all real, but it never sinks in until I read the news reports or see the pictures at the end of the book.

It’s a lot like the old Bugs Bunny cartoon where he’s playing bullfighter. He holds out the red cape, the bull charges, and Bugs pulls back the cape to reveal an anvil. The action in Special Forces is the cape. The reality of Special Forces is the anvil.

Special Forces is amazing, and the third issue is better than the ones before it. Baker touches on children, “civilian contractors,” and internet videos with deft skill. The comedy and action are window dressing that serves to both educate and entertain, though you don’t realize it’s doing the former until it has accomplished the latter.

I don’t know that this is my favorite of Baker’s works, since I have an almost obscene amount of love for Nat Turner. It is, however, one of his absolute best, and one of the best comics being published right now. The art is up to Baker’s usual standard, with a mix of traditional comic book storytelling and a picture book aesthetic. It’s easy to follow, the colors are bright and expressive without being garish, and the action genuinely makes sense. Where Special Forces really shines, though, is in opening your eyes to reality.

Kyle Baker

Also: An MP3 of the Black Panel at Comic-Con!

Kyle Baker

Part 1: In depth on Nat Turner

So I was watching Amistad and all these movies and I didn’t have to worry; they all just completely, deliberately missed the boat. I mean, there’s gotta be a thing where whenever you’re adapting a real-life story, you’re looking for the most dramatic episode. If I’m doing Lawrence of Arabia, you’re gonna pick the most dramatic parts of his life, with the most action, the biggest fights of his life, right? That’s what he’s famous for: ‘Oh, I hear he blew up a train! Oh, you gotta put that in the movie; that’s gonna be a good movie!’ So you have people reading these stories and somebody goes, ‘Hey, sharks were following the boats.’ ‘Oh, we better not put that in.’ [laughs]

Part 2: On marketing and sales

I think if they’re smart, the retailers get behind what they think they can sell. Some of them are dumb. An example I always use – I hate to repeat myself, but it’s a great example – if you went to Tower Records or Virgin Megastore and you said, ‘You have the new Eminem album?’ and the owner says, ‘Y’know, I don’t like Eminem, so I didn’t buy it!’ [laughs] …You did see a little bit of that on the Captain America thing [Truth: Red, White and Black], which is really funny. You wouldn’t know it, but that book was actually popular, if that makes sense… [Marvel] said, ‘We’re trying to get the cool kids. The hip-hop crowd. You’re the Vibe magazine guy [Robert Morales]. You’re the guy who does KRS-One videos. That’s what we want.’ The people that they were trying to get, they look at it and go hey, that looks like a KRS-One video. That’s cool…

“…And these people that like the movies – you know, you’re talking to a friend of yours and he goes, ‘Oh yeah, I thought that Batman movie was really good. I don’t really like comics that much.’ Oh, you like Batman? Well, maybe you should pick up DC comics. And they pick ‘em up and it’s not the same product, y’know?

“And that’s the other thing – if I see Snoopy in the newspaper and I like Snoopy and I go to the Snoopy movie, it’s the same Snoopy. I buy the toys, it’s the same Snoopy toy… I don’t wanna sound like a crazy person, but the fact that we’re debating about whether Batwoman should be gay, how does that come up in a DC comic? I got no opinion on gay comics at all, but I don’t think it’s what I wanna see in Batman. In The Lone Ranger it never came up! It’s a kid thing!

“So you think, well, you’ve given it up because DC’s putting their marketing behind you and blah blah blah. I can now tell you from experience that DC is doing the bare minimum because I am doing the bare minimum. Just because I’m busy doing the books, I don’t have time to get out there and call up stores and hustle up sales and stuff. So just me sitting on my ass, I’m selling as many books as DC was selling, which means everyone there was sitting on their ass [laughs]. Like for example, this interview; I didn’t generate this. You generated it. I don’t have the time, y’know what I mean? I focus on making the product good.

“You got a good book called Nat Turner, someone will call you up. Libraries and stuff call me up: ‘I hear you got some kinda comic book about Nat Turner.’ They don’t know who I am. What everyone always told me in publishing [was], you gotta get out there and push your own thing. All the publishers that have gone and become successful, like that Chicken Soup for the Soul guy, [and] Toni Morrison, they were out there on the road, hustling their book. How did that guy sell a million books? How did Toni Morrison make it? She was out there with a car full of books on the road! Even somebody like Neil Gaiman, who’s very famous – Neil Gaiman’ll show up for anything! [laughs] I’ve seen him at awards ceremonies, I’ve seen him writing prefaces to books, he’s always pushing himself.

“I think if they’re smart, the retailers get behind what they think they can sell. Some of them are dumb. An example I always use – I hate to repeat myself, but it’s a great example – if you went to Tower Records or Virgin Megastore and you said, ‘You have the new Eminem album?’ and the owner says, ‘Y’know, I don’t like Eminem, so I didn’t buy it!’ [laughs] …You did see a little bit of that on the Captain America thing [Truth: Red, White and Black], which is really funny. You wouldn’t know it, but that book was actually popular, if that makes sense… [Marvel] said, ‘We’re trying to get the cool kids. The hip-hop crowd. You’re the Vibe magazine guy [Robert Morales]. You’re the guy who does KRS-One videos. That’s what we want.’ The people that they were trying to get, they look at it and go hey, that looks like a KRS-One video. That’s cool…

“Right on the cover, you look and it’s Captain America in silhouette and it’s got two colors. You can’t get simpler and more cartoony than that. You can’t open it up and go, oh, I thought from the detail on the cover, I was surprised that it looks like all of Kyle Baker’s other work! [laughs] I used to do Brian Bolland and then I started doing scribbling or something. I’m the scribble guy! Always have been. If you don’t like scribbles, there are guys that don’t do that. It’s always better to focus on the people that like ya. People that don’t like ya, they’re not gonna do anything for ya. [laughs]“

This time out, here’s a section where Kyle goes into further depth about Nat Turner.

“I like learning stuff… Like King David was a good opportunity to do research on that historical period. Or even Classics Illustrated – like I did Cyrano, I did ‘Alice in Wonderland.’ Because I wouldn’t have read those books otherwise. I’ve always been interested in Nat Turner, so this was an opportunity to do some research.

“I really thought the dialect would be confusing. Again, like with King David – the idea behind the King David book is [that] those Bible stories are pretty interesting but they’re really hard to read because they’re in gobbledygook. So I took the gobbledygook and turned it into English, and so you look at it and go ‘Oh, that’s what that book’s about. I didn’t know it was about him cheating on his wife and all that stuff; that’s cool!’ You know what I mean? I tell people, oh, I’m doing a Bible comic, they’re like huh? And I’m like no, man, on every page somebody’s getting killed or fucked! You just can’t read it because of all those fancy words, y’know?

“Even today, ‘cause I’m working on Nat Turner, I was listening to recordings of interviews with slaves. You ever hear any of this stuff? That’s what I did on most of my research, actually, ‘cause I didn’t want anyone to call me a liar. I made sure I wasn’t gonna have anything in these books that didn’t actually happen for real… You read books about slavery, very few of them are published by black people. [laughs] …Most of these books you read, they say great things like, ‘Yeah, they branded them, but it didn’t hurt!’ [laughs] I’m reading this and I can’t trust that stuff! So I listened to the WPA interviews when Roosevelt was trying to make work. They had hired all these out-of-work reporters and stuff to go talk to slaves that were still alive, all about 100 years old and stuff, and just tell their stories. These are awful stories. And I hope that people when they read Nat Turner will do their research because no matter how bad you think it is, it’s worse! It’s amazing, y’know what I mean?…

“I didn’t want to cover the same ground as Amistad. You just don’t wanna do the same things somebody else did. I hadn’t seen the movie, but I had to go and buy it because they had the boats and I needed the pictures, so I actually watched this thing. When I was doing the research, my biggest worry was gosh, I hope nobody’s done the sharks. Steven Spielberg, he’s got to know about the sharks – and his whole reputation is based on sharks [laughs], y’know? So now I’m really worried that I gotta top Steven Spielberg and sharks. And I look at the movie [and] there’s no sharks in the movie. And that movie was just as disappointing as Cry Freedom. That’s the one with Denzel Washington as Steven Biko, and he’s in it for about five minutes because they decided that Kevin Kline is more interesting – some reporter that [Biko] knew? [Amistad] is not about Cinque. That guy was interesting. I’m watching this movie – five minutes in, this guy’s got a sword and he’s beating up these guys and he’s cool, and I’m like whoa, I wanna see this movie! This guy’s cool! I wanna watch this guy for two hours! [laughs] But the movie’s about John Quincy Adams and Matthew McConaghey! [laughs] Who gives a shit? This is Spielberg; the guy knows better. The guy knows how to wring the most drama out of a situation.

“And I saw that time and again and I kept thinking, [like] when you see something like Maus or any Holocaust kind of movie – they’re going to repeat themselves, because the stories are all pretty much the same: the gas, and the ovens, and how many ways can you show gas? So they all have the same parts, whether it’s the Roberto Benigni movie [Life is Beautiful] or any of these movies that have the same scene in prison, and the showers – which I’m not knocking; my point is, that’s what I was afraid of. Like, aw, shit, I hope this thing isn’t gonna look like Glory.

“So I was watching Amistad and all these movies and I didn’t have to worry; they all just completely, deliberately missed the boat. I mean, there’s gotta be a thing where whenever you’re adapting a real-life story, you’re looking for the most dramatic episode. If I’m doing Lawrence of Arabia, you’re gonna pick the most dramatic parts of his life, with the most action, the biggest fights of his life, right? That’s what he’s famous for: ‘Oh, I hear he blew up a train! Oh, you gotta put that in the movie; that’s gonna be a good movie!’ So you have people reading these stories and somebody goes, ‘Hey, sharks were following the boats.’ ‘Oh, we better not put that in.’ [laughs]“

Kyle Baker

And look at this – here’s another Baker interview.

“The beloved Bible tale springs to miraculous animated life in this enchanting and inspirational cartoon directed by Kyle Baker”, to quote Kyle’s blog (where you can download a higher quality Quicktime version, with better picture & sound).

Or, to quote Denys Cowan lauding Baker’s abilities: “King David is THE TRUTH”.

Join Kyle Baker and family for A DAY TO BELIEVE: AUTISM AWARENESS DAY at Shea Stadium, New York Mets vs Atlanta Braves, Sunday, April 22, 2007 at 12 p.m.

Kyle Baker and family will be there! We are buying a giant block of $12 tickets for our group. The Mets have generously donated tickets, so all tickets sold in this fundraiser will benefit Autism Speaks and schools for autistic children.

The ticket prices are:
Upper Level Reserved – $12 each
Upper Level Box – $45 each
Mezzanine Reserved – $50 each
Exclusive VIP Tent Party
(Adult)- $250 each
Exclusive VIP Tent Party
(Child under 12) – $125 each

If you can not attend but would like to make a tax-deductible contribution, please let us know.

To buy tickets or for more information please contact Liz Glass: liz@kylebaker.com or 212-260-1712/646-287-3036

My family will be there, and I’m hoping to round up a few friends, too.

Also: A brief piece about the Silver Age western comic Lobo.