THE ART OF JACK KIRBY

THE ART OF JACK KIRBY Ray Wyman Jr. (Blue Rose Press, $46.95 hardcover, $28.95 paper) Called the ''Picasso of comics'' for his stamina-he turned out more than 20,000 pages of artwork-the late Jack Kirby, who died Feb. 6 at 76, was more a dime-store Michelangelo, forever cramming contrapposto cape wearers into forced-perspective landscapes that burst off the page. He drove editors nuts, forgetting things like how many buttons belong on Thor's uniform, but they loved his knack for character: He launched Captain America in the '40s with writer Joe Simon, and co-conjured the warhorses of the Marvel lineup (Fantastic Four, the Incredible Hulk, X-Men, and his strongest graphic achievement, the broody Silver Surfer) with Stan Lee in the early '60s. This handsome survey-cum-bio highlights the bad and the indifferent as well as the good in Kirby's 53-year career, but it always captures the heart he brought to his imaginings. B+ -Steve Daly