Posted on Tue, Jul. 15, 2008

• Kirby: King of Comics. Mark Evanier. Abrams. 224 pages. $40.

Creator or co-creator of just about every Marvel character (Spider-Man, Fantastic Four, X-Men), as well as a ton of heroes and villains for DC and other publishers, Jack Kirby (born Jacob Kurtzberg) is King of Comics.

Award-winning animation and comics writer Evanier hosts this virtual tour of the Kirby Universe with gorgeous reproductions of the King's art and a loving but terrifically balanced biography serving as the narrative thread.

At less than $25 on Amazon.com, this beautiful book is a bargain for fans and art lovers.The breadth of Kirby's imagination still dazzles.

• Willie & Joe: The WWII Years. Bill Mauldin. Fantagraphics. 650 pages. $65.

As a kid, I used to leaf through my father's dog-eared paperback of This Damn Tree Leaks, Maulden's single-panel Willie & Joe cartoons drawn while he was embedded with U.S. GIs and printed in Italy in 1945. Many of those panels, along with a text, became part of a bestselling collection, Up Front, which was also adapted into a mediocre 1951 movie starring Tom Ewell and David Wayne.

Mauldin's funny and frequently poignant single-panel black and white cartoons, faithfully reproduced here, capture the human qualities of the fighting men and the more mundane aspects of their struggle without glamorizing the violence or minimizing the myriad sacrifices.

-- RICHARD PACHTER

rap@richardpachter.com