The Balzac of Comics: Jack Kirby, World Building, and the Kirbyesque

For there to be a scholarly, analytical value for comics or any other endeavor, there needs to be a set of values. These are examples and abstractions that act as gravitational principles for what standards or benchmarks are the most conducive to advancing and developing the most fruitful modes of analysis. A canon, a pantheon of names, a set of eminences—whatever label one chooses to give them—are a natural by-product of this process. Lukács’s literary aesthetics is formulated according to the premise that humans make sense of the world through stories, and therefore it is to the benefit