DRAWN INTO THE LIGHT
A 15-year quest to find the largely overlooked work of Black comic book artists becomes ‘Invisible Men’
Twenty years ago, comic book historian Ken Quattro began digging for information on an artist named Matt Baker.
“I couldn’t find anything about him anywhere,” Quattro says during a phone interview. “The only thing people knew, basically, was he died when he was young and he was Black.”
Quattro, a comic book fan since the early 1960s who has written thousands of articles on the subject, kept searching, and that quest resulted in his book “Invisible Men: The Trailblazing Black Artists of Comic Books,” published by IDW imprint Yoe Books.
“Invisible Men” profiles 18 artists who were primarily active during the golden age of comics, from the late 1930s through the mid-1950s. Quattro spent 15 years researching the book, which looks at the creative work of Elmer Stoner, Robert Pious, Owen Middleton and many more.
Quattro, who was a historical consultant for the film “Professor Marston and the Wonder Women” and is an expert on legendary cartoonist Will Eisner, eventually found out about Baker, who died in 1959 at age 37. A respected artist in his time, Baker was known for drawing women in the pinup style of the ’40s and ’50s, and his work became collectible in the decades to follow.
When Quattro began asking about the artist’s life, the common perception within the comic book world was that Black artists were extremely rare in the industry. But the more he researched, the more he discovered this assessment wasn’t quite accurate.
“I always just thought that was really strange, how it can be so segregated like that,” Quattro says, “especially being headquartered in New York City.”
A turning point came when Quattro sent a letter to cartoonist Samuel Joyner, who was known for his award-winning work with The Philadelphia Tribune. “Mr. Joyner wrote me back a beautiful ‘INVISIBLE MEN:
THE TRAILBLAZING BLACK ARTISTS OF COMIC BOOKS’
four-page letter,” Quattro recalls of the artist, who died in 2020 at age 96. Joyner also sent him clippings of articles that mentioned various Black comic book artists. Quattro, who is White, had spent most of his life researching the medium and yet was unfamiliar with some of these artists.
Meanwhile, Quattro expanded the scope of his research. His searches on Black artists in
comics turned up very little — until he dug into the archives of Black newspapers. That’s when stories emerged about comic book artists who were also fine artists or social activists. For years, he continued the research and in that time Quattro learned about the systemic racism that obscured the names of so many artists who contributed to the golden age of comics.
“Their careers were limited by being Black,” says Quattro. “Who knows what they would have been if they were allowed the same careers as their White counterparts.”
The work of Black artists was often diminished or erased. Quattro says Black artists were often employed by “shops,” essentially subcontractors that prevented
artists from having contact with the publishers.
As well, Black characters were largely absent from comics. Quattro brings up Voodah, a character drawn by Baker who, in 1945, became the first Black character with a feature in an otherwise white comic book.
“What was ironic about it is, on the cover, Voodah, the same character, was colored white,” Quattro says, saying the rationale at the time was that businesses might be reluctant to put a comic book with a Black character on the cover on the newsstand. “What they would do is, they’d have a white Voodah on the cover, but he’d be colored black inside it.”
But the era sure didn’t stop there for Voodah. “After six issues, inside he became White, too.”
Adding to the obscuring of Black accomplishments, these artists were largely written about in Black publications, which, Quattro says, were not as carefully archived in libraries as, say, The New York Times.
“It was a huge learning experience for me,” says Quattro, who adds that he has already heard from teachers who want to include “Invisible Men” in their classes.
“Invisible Men” has only “scratched the surface” of the lives of these historic Black artists, says Quattro. He uncovered more information that could fit into the book and plans to make more of that available online. There’s a lot more to learn. “I consider this a starting point,” he says, “not a finished product by any means.”