Posted in: Comics, Heritage Sponsored, Vintage Paper | Tagged: Jumbo Comics, Matt Baker

Matt Baker' Early Work on Sheena in Jumbo Comics, up for Auction

Identified as the publication containing Matt Baker's first published comic work, Jumbo Comics #69 features his art on jungle girl Sheena.

The name Matt Baker has become synonymous with beautiful women in comic book art, so it's fitting that his likely first work was on iconic jungle girl Sheena in Jumbo Comics from Fiction House.   The character created by Will Eisner, Jerry Iger, and Mort Meskin in late 1937 had become one of the most popular female characters in comics by the time Baker worked on the character in Jumbo Comics #69 in 1944.  While Matt Baker's involvement with Sheena as part of the Iger Studio team lasted only from about issues #69-75, it helped launch him on a nearly 15-year career during which he became known for drawing beautiful female characters like few other comic book artists could.  It all started with Sheena, and there's a Jumbo Comics #69 (Fiction House, 1944) Condition: GD/VG up for auction in the 2023 August 17 The Matt Baker Comics & Comic Art Showcase Auction #40233.

Sheena was created by Eisner, Jerry Iger, and Meskin at the behest of a publisher called Editors Press Service.  The character debuted in a one-page feature in the UK weekly tabloid Wags #46, which according to GCD is dated January 14, 1938.  It is perhaps worth pointing out that nobody seems to know of the current existence of a copy of this issue, and that the early issues of Wags (there's also an Australian version, which differs from the UK version) are sparsely documented at best. According to historian Denis Gifford in the International Book of Comics, which seems to be the best reference on this matter, Editors Press Service split with its UK agent, who took the British rights to many of the syndicated reprints that Wags contained with him, causing Editors Press Service to seek out original material.  Editors Press Service's founder turned to Jerry Iger, who he had apparently become acquainted with during the brief run of Wow What A Magazine in 1936.

Wags publisher Editors Press Service was founded by Joshua B. Powers in 1933.  In a tidbit that seems to have been sourced from the comics history book Men of Tomorrow and widely repeated since, apparently Iger was under the impression that Powers was a former U.S. government covert agent who had operated in South America.  Based on a few surrounding facts, this does not seem unlikely, though perhaps not "former".  At its founding in 1933, Editors Press Service's editor was Carlos Dávila, who seems to have come to this job directly from his previous gig of having assumed power as the Provisional President of Chile in the wake of the anarchy that existed in that country following the resignation of President Carlos Ibáñez del Campo.  In a 1977 article on the CIA's worldwide propaganda network, the New York Times outed Editors Press Service as a CIA front for the dissemination of propaganda and Powers himself as a CIA officer.

Between the period in 1944 that he worked on that 12-page Sheena, Queen of the Jungle story for Jumbo Comics #69 and his untimely death in 1959, Baker would become a prolific artist whose work appeared from a wide range of publishers including St. John Publications, Fiction House, Marvel and Charlton among others.  It all started with Sheena, and there's a Jumbo Comics #69 (Fiction House, 1944) Condition: GD/VG up for auction in the 2023 August 17 The Matt Baker Comics & Comic Art Showcase Auction #40233.

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