Kirby - King of Comics

Mark Evanier Kirby - King of Comics (2008)
I've read several versions of the story of how Stan Lee created Marvel Comics and is directly responsible for more or less everything, ever, and it seemed like high time I took a look at what was happening on the other side of the wall, Jack Kirby being the man who drew a humongous number of those comics which Stan may or may not have written. I found Kirby's art a bit weird when I was a kid and resident of the age group for which they were intended. There was something about his art, but I found the figures weird, forever reaching forward out of the page, smiling hard like John Wayne with that single dazzling white tooth spanning the entire width of the grin. All the same, he obviously made a huge impression judging by how much I loved some of those strips, even though his style had become the standard - from where I was stood - which is probably why 2000AD seemed like such a breath of fresh air.

However, my appreciation has grown in recent years, partially through a better understanding of what Kirby was doing, when he was doing it, and how starkly it contrasted with what everyone else had been doing up until that point. You may already know that Kirby created and even wrote a lot of the stuff for which Stan Lee has been given credit, and sometimes so much credit as to relegate his artist to some talented monkey who was able to hold a pen without dropping it on the floor; and if you're a regular working class person such as like what I am, you'll probably recognise the pattern because getting stiffed by the boss is the story of our lives. This isn't to suggest that Lee was without talent or failed to put in the work but, let's face it, it was mostly Jack. I'm not sure comics as we know them today wouldn't have happened without Jack in the right time and place, but at best it would probably be a completely different landscape.

Evanier's book, which may be one of the greatest things I've read on the subject of the comics biz, balances a sensitive, sympathetic biography with just the right quota of lovingly reproduced artwork to illustrate the tale without it becoming some luxurious portfolio, which most of the other Kirby books seem to be from what I can tell. As a friend and colleague of Kirby, Evanier is particularly well qualified to tell the man's story, and he does so with an incredible warmth which never slides over into sentiment or arse kissing. He paints Kirby as someone you would like to have known, with whom you would have wanted to hang out - or at least I would: imaginative, seriously talented, and above all just a regular working class guy trying to get by, who wanted to do a good job. Weirdly, Kirby puts me in mind of Ray, a former work colleague of mine - English, but the same generation, who bore a more than passing resemblance and who was likewise no stranger to getting stiffed by the boss. This biography accordingly left me with a few feelings I don't normally get from the accounts of the lives of people I've never met. It felt sort of personal, key to which might be Street Code, one of Kirby's very few - possibly only - autobiographical strips, eight pages shining a light on his having grown up under circumstances of grinding poverty during the depression. It's almost Harvey Pekar and has some of the same power.

I can't actually think of anything more useful, or even more coherent to say, but this is a frankly fucking incredible book about an incredible guy who, from my point of view, was one of us.