Kirby: King of Comics

I'd been looking forward to Kirby: King of Comics since I first heard about it a couple of months ago. I saw it over at Bookstop the other day. Most of the copies were in shrinkwrap but one was open. I don't think I'll be buying this, after all. The first sign of trouble was that it was oversized, at $40 perfect for a coffee table book. And from my thumb through standing in the aisle, that's in large part what it is, Kirby's art and the book design overshadowing Evanier's writing. I guess my disappointment stems not so much from what Kirby: King of Comics is as from the fact that it's not what I'd hoped and thought it would be: a mainstream but scholarly biography of Kirby's life. 

He's been dead over ten years and it's certainly time for such a dominant figure of comics and pop culture to get the biography he deserves, more in line with David Michaelis' Schulz and Peanuts from last year. Or Gabler's Walt Disney. Just think about what a Kirby biographer would get to play with, even in pop culture beyond comics:  the history of American animation from Kirby working as an inbetweener at the Fleisher Studios on Popeye cartoons in the 30s to his design work for television animation in the 70s. And in fine art, his work was "appropriated" by Roy Lichtenstein in the 1960s. The man grew up in a world that no longer exists, New York's Lower East Side, pretty much a real Bowery Boy, and he fought in World War II. Not to mention that his life pretty much is the history of the American comic book industry. To me, he screams out for a writer (don't laugh) capable of the depth Robert Caro has shown in his three volume LBJ biography. Funny enough, I still think Mark Evanier--who has always shown such an impressive grasp of comics history in his blogging and other writing---might be the person to tell such a big story; he worked with Kirby, and he himself has spent years in the industry, but I just don't think he had the space to do it here. 

Of course with all that said, I was just thumbing through it standing in the aisle so maybe I'm dead wrong.