It blew my mind when I discovered that Kyle Baker wasn’t white (I continue to worship at the altar of Cowboy Wally, a masterpiece in, ironically, black-and-white). White, male comics-artist was (is) my “default template”. :::sigh:::
Over the years I keep re-reading his work, re-assessing it. Nope. Nothing “particularly black” about it. Check a picture of the artist. Hunh. Still black. Golly.
Part of it is that his primary characters, outside of Family Baker, are white.
Aren’t they? I may be making some assumptions there. Have to go back and check. But, CW, Why I Hate Saturn, You are Here, Plastic Man. Looking at Wikipedia there’s a lot I haven’t read – including Nat Turner and a Captain America storyline based on the Tuskegee experiment. So, I have a limited exposure.
At any rate – there is nothing about his artwork that should signify race one way or another. He’s american, raised in america, working in an american medium - american comics. Japanese Manga has a different thing, and there are other comics mediums that dovetail to their own countries’ eccentricities. Perhaps continental-India or Sub-Saharan Africa have their own comic-book styles that might equate to race, but each of those area is a pretty large melting pot.
Hope I haven’t said anything too offensive in here. If I have, I’ll just top it off by saying that while I like Baker’s computer-assisted style, I still prefer the black-and-white of Cowboy Wally.
