PICTORIAL CONFESSIONS #1 * CGC 7.0 * Matt BAKER and the

Heading: Faux Beau: The Secret Life of Matt Baker
Author:
Title: PICTORIAL CONFESSIONS No. 1
Place Published:
Publisher:St. John [Indicia: St. John Publishing Co.]
Date Published: September, 1949
Description:

CGC certified: Fine/Very Fine (7.0). Off-white to white pages. Cover: Matt Baker. Scripts: Dana Dutch. Art: Matt Baker (3 stories). GPAnaylysis: A 7.0 copy sold for $700 in 2019. Only one other copy has sold since, a 3.0 for $300 in May 2020.

A mad dad bounces his daughter's beau. The bounced beau protests in vain. The blurb indicates that the girl sides with her dad ("I Threw Away My Reputation On A WORTHLESS LOVE"). Artist Matt Baker depicts the beau so sympathetically that it's tempting to think of him as a Baker surrogate. The father's absurdly mild rebuke ("You young scamp") is so incongruous with the scene's emotion that one suspects it's a stand-in for harsher and less printable terms of abuse. The entire scene seems to crackle with hidden tensions. What lies beneath the surface of Matt Baker's cover scenario?

Matt Baker, the best "Good Girl" artist in the business, was a handsome, charismatic black bachelor on the prowl in Jim Crow America. According to artist Bob Lubbers, "All the women, white and black, went crazy for him, and I know he had a bunch of gals on the hook." Baker's interracial adventurism carried a strong element of risk in those years, as any reader of Al Feldstein's Shock SuspenStories "preachies" knows all too well. One wonders if Baker's cover scenario presents a disguised expression of his own inner life — did he feel like an unwelcome outsider, shunned for qualities beyond his control, drawing white gals by day and wooing them by night, valuing them as proxies for the social acceptance that was denied young black "scamps" like himself?

Al Feldstein, discussing Baker's experiences as a black man in a very white industry, said: "I feel that Matt, personally, was acutely aware of the perceived chasm that separated him from the rest of us. And it may be that because of that perceived problem there is little known about Matt Baker, aside from his stunning artwork that speaks for himself [sic]."

If the enigmatic Baker embedded clues to his personal experiences in his comics, then Feldstein's remark that Baker's art "speaks for himself" might be closer to a Freudian slip than a mere malaprop. Baker's body of work might then be said to comprise a series of cloaked "Pictorial Confessions" of the artist's secret inner life, casting his endless parade of beautiful, unobtainable blondes and rebuffed Romeos in a curious new light. — For Bob Lubbers and Al Feldstein quotes, see Amash and Nolen's "Matt Baker and the Art of Glamour" (TwoMorrows: 2012).

A limited edition of 150 softcover and 15 hardcover catalogues is available. 400 lots, fully illustrated. Fun reference, great keepsake. Softcover $30, deluxe hardcover with dust jacket and limitation plate $200. Ten of the 15 hardcovers are pre-ordered and the rest will go quickly, so reserve yours now. To order, contact ivan@pbagalleries.com.

Consignments welcome for PBA's December 2021 Comic Book sale. Top prices for Pre-Code Horror, Golden Age, Silver Age, original art and ephemera. Send inquiries to ivan@pbagalleries.com.