Titan Books know how to do Kirby reprints right. Employing the formidable talents of Harry Mendryk for art restoration and colors, this whopping 319-page collection of crime stories looks great, printed on matte (not shiny) paper that's vibrant white, making the colors pop.
Collecting 34 prime comics stories, mostly from the '40s, the collection really delivers. Like his romance material from the same time period, these are prime Kirby written, penciled and likely inked tales, each one driven with drama and human interest, like mini, pre-code Warner Bros. films. (Kirby extracted his new last name from James Cagney, the premiere Warner Bros. embodiment of crime-entrenched hoodlum-hood at the time). Read one of these and you'll want to read them all; the staging, body language, dialogue, and artwork is second to none. If Kirby had passed away in 1950, before the Marvel universe and everything else he created, we'd still be reading these comics.
