Kyle Baker's two-volume history of Nat Turner, an African slave who led a bloody revolt in the American south, is gripping, heart-wrenching, and glorious. I first encountered Baker's work in his uproariously funny Why I Hate Saturn and I pegged him immediately as a deliriously funny, raunchy comic creator that I wanted to follow for the rest of my life.
But the Nat Turner books are nothing like Why I Hate Saturn and many of his other books — they've every bit as brilliant, but without a shred of whimsy. Instead, these expressively illustrated black-and-white pages, with almost no text (what text there is is lifted from Turner's confession before he went to his execution) are as savage a tale of the slave-trade as you could hope to find.
Great artists are often incredibly versatile and Baker is no exception. These books will haunt me.
