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Baker Romance
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13,498 posts in this topic

10 minutes ago, comicnoir said:

I almost had a heart attack.

I’d post a pic of my wild boy 12 cgc 6.0 in celebration, but I didn’t love the book enough to spend 2 minutes taking a photo, so I don’t have one to post.  Do I need to put it in the $1,000 list now?.,,,

Probably not... I’d guess it was people chasing highest graded that are pretty unsafe highest graded copies.

Edited by szav
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On 7/15/2020 at 6:52 PM, Ricksneatstuff said:

In a pulp discussion group I am in someone showed this Greek magazine that pre-dates Cinderella Love 25 by 5 plus years and clearly shows where Baker got his inspiration.  
 

I don’t know much more than that regarding this.

89F791B2-81A6-476C-AA33-B4AD990B4EE2.jpeg

Where is this group?

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I have two observations about Baker and the Cinderella cover "swipe"  First, Ive never been an esoteric, horror, atomic age, GGA or Baker collector or fan. But -- in recent months looking at Bakers work here on the boards etc, Ive gotta admit, he's one of the best comics artists ever! I get it! 

and as for this cover being a swipe?  I thought so at first with the nearly exact pose of the girl and the mardi gras "fan" hat in the background.  But the more I look Is there anything REALLY in the greek mag that Baker needed to swipe? He redid the hair as he wanted, added  more emotion to the eyebrows, didn't keep the necklace, and is an off one shoulder dress something he needed to swipe? Or a flower in the hair?  Even the background doesn't take a lot from the greek cover: no car, he just drew another pretty gil and used streamers  and balloons.

Hes an extremely talented artist and would have needed merely a glance at the greek cover if at all to create his composition.  Im not saying that he like all other artists didn't use photos to perfect his realistic style. just not sure this is a swipe as opposed to a coincidence. He definitely didn't trace anything as swipe artists often do because they cant do it on their own and need a framework to build on...

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36 minutes ago, Aman619 said:

I have two observations about Baker and the Cinderella cover "swipe"  First, Ive never been an esoteric, horror, atomic age, GGA or Baker collector or fan. But -- in recent months looking at Bakers work here on the boards etc, Ive gotta admit, he's one of the best comics artists ever! I get it! 

and as for this cover being a swipe?  I thought so at first with the nearly exact pose of the girl and the mardi gras "fan" hat in the background.  But the more I look Is there anything REALLY in the greek mag that Baker needed to swipe? He redid the hair as he wanted, added  more emotion to the eyebrows, didn't keep the necklace, and is an off one shoulder dress something he needed to swipe? Or a flower in the hair?  Even the background doesn't take a lot from the greek cover: no car, he just drew another pretty gil and used streamers  and balloons.

Hes an extremely talented artist and would have needed merely a glance at the greek cover if at all to create his composition.  Im not saying that he like all other artists didn't use photos to perfect his realistic style. just not sure this is a swipe as opposed to a coincidence. He definitely didn't trace anything as swipe artists often do because they cant do it on their own and need a framework to build on...

This is literally one of the most direct swipes I have seen. This clearly was the inspiration for the focus of Cinderella Love 25. It remains to be seen how he found it, but without finding other examples of girls dressed the same way with the same look and same clothes and ribbons falling around her to show that that itself was ubiquitous at this time (and for years long), this is an incredibly important part of the Cinderella Love story.

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1 hour ago, Aman619 said:

I have two observations about Baker and the Cinderella cover "swipe"  First, Ive never been an esoteric, horror, atomic age, GGA or Baker collector or fan. But -- in recent months looking at Bakers work here on the boards etc, Ive gotta admit, he's one of the best comics artists ever! I get it! 

and as for this cover being a swipe?  I thought so at first with the nearly exact pose of the girl and the mardi gras "fan" hat in the background.  But the more I look Is there anything REALLY in the greek mag that Baker needed to swipe? He redid the hair as he wanted, added  more emotion to the eyebrows, didn't keep the necklace, and is an off one shoulder dress something he needed to swipe? Or a flower in the hair?  Even the background doesn't take a lot from the greek cover: no car, he just drew another pretty gil and used streamers  and balloons.

Hes an extremely talented artist and would have needed merely a glance at the greek cover if at all to create his composition.  Im not saying that he like all other artists didn't use photos to perfect his realistic style. just not sure this is a swipe as opposed to a coincidence. He definitely didn't trace anything as swipe artists often do because they cant do it on their own and need a framework to build on...

I imagine quite a lot of artists resorted to using photographs out of only knowing so many faces before it becomes noticeable that all the faces distractingly start to look the same. I suspect the faces of many of the men drawn in comics from the 40s resemble the men like Humprey Bogart, Cary Grant, and Jimmy Stewart, and the women like Katherine Hepburn, Bette Davis, and Audrey Hepburn.

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58 minutes ago, PeterPark said:

This is literally one of the most direct swipes I have seen. This clearly was the inspiration for the focus of Cinderella Love 25. It remains to be seen how he found it, but without finding other examples of girls dressed the same way with the same look and same clothes and ribbons falling around her to show that that itself was ubiquitous at this time (and for years long), this is an incredibly important part of the Cinderella Love story.

like I said, I thought so too in the beginning. but...  Maybe I don't know much about Baker? was he Greek? why would an obscure greek magazine be in his morgue of images? Seems like a stretch.  As I stated, no doubt he used photos as do all artists... but theres nothing brilliantly complete or unique about that girl and bkgnd that a talent like Baker needed to rely on.  Bob Kane maybe!

 

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58 minutes ago, Aman619 said:

like I said, I thought so too in the beginning. but...  Maybe I don't know much about Baker? was he Greek? why would an obscure greek magazine be in his morgue of images? Seems like a stretch.  As I stated, no doubt he used photos as do all artists... but theres nothing brilliantly complete or unique about that girl and bkgnd that a talent like Baker needed to rely on.  Bob Kane maybe!

 

Baker no doubt utilized swipes, as his friend & assistant Frank Giusto says in the book Matt Baker: The Art of Glamour, "...I'd be going to his apartment to work with him and collect swipes..." Did Baker use "swipes" in the strictest sense of the word? Probably not. He was more likely "inspired" by the items in his clip files, as evidenced by the differences you note between the Greek magazine and Cinderella Love 25.

I assume you're making a joke when you say maybe you don't know much about Baker and then ask if he was Greek. Matt Baker was African-American. He lived in New York City, aka America's Melting Pot, with cultures from all over the world. It would not be out of the ordinary for vendors to display Greek magazines, like the one that inspired Baker's Cinderella Love 25 cover.

 

 

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well, Im new to Baker and yes, I forgot he was African American while typing that...  BUT - - at this point seeing the panel taken directly from the sameGreek magazine, he clearly was using images from it...  Maybe he lived in or near to Times Square because there were always a few magazine shops that specialized in magazines and newspapers from all over the world, catering to international businesses as well the polyglot NYC melting pot of immigrant cultures..  not so much in all the other newsstands around the city though which carried local papers and national magazines.

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Hello, I just saw the Greek Baker cover pop up on my instagram feed via CBSI. I am actually the owner of it; i guess someone pulled it from my instagram which is all foreign comic related "interglobalcomics" I am not at all versed in golden age books and i guess i just got lucky buying a cover that visually appealed to me. If anyone needs any info from the book let me know. Its obviously in Greek so translating it is a bit of a pain but i can try. 

IMG_5679.jpg

Edited by steve566
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