JACK KIRBY PASSED AWAY a little over 14 years ago, but the king of comics' work is thriving more than ever.

His works — both popular and obscure — are getting collected into fancy hardcover editions, his creations have been essential in some of the biggest comics stories of the year and characters he created are getting immortalized in plastic.

But perhaps the finest tribute to Kirby comes from one of his longtime friend, assistant and peers, Mark Evanier.

Evanier is in the midst of a comprehensive Kirby biography, but he's sated anxious fans in the meantime with an oversized art book, "Kirby: King of Comics."

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MOST PEOPLE ASSOCIATE the name Stan Lee with superhero comic books.

The 85-year-old writer is the co-creator of some of the most everlasting costumed heroes, from Spider-Man, to The Fantastic Four to The Incredible Hulk, and his name is synonymous with Marvel Comics.

But over the course of his career, Lee's work has appeared in a multitude of places, and his most recent hearkens back to a project from the early 1960s.

Lee's newest work is a political humor book called "Election Daze: What Are They Really Saying?," which is done in fumetti style — photographs with word balloons. The book's a lighthearted look at the current political season, poking good-hearted fun at the candidates, the president and other Washington insiders.

While it's a big departure from superheroes, this style of humor writing was something that Lee was all too familiar with.

"Years ago at Marvel, I did a book called 'You Don't Say!' and we had pictures of all politicians and celebrities," Lee said. "We did three issues of them. In fact we were even thinking maybe we'll just drop the comics and do these 'cause they're easier to do and they make more money because they're more expensive."

All was going well with the magazine-sized publication, which Lee said, "sold beautifully," until November 22, 1963.

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THERE IS A CERTAIN BREED of alternative cartoonists who try too hard. Their work, while skilled and often beautiful to look at, can be bogged down with overly pretentious stories that meander around with no point and aim for those buzzwords and topics that'll draw them the accolades of the intellectual elite.

Tim Sievert's debut graphic novel, "That Salty Air," from Top Shelf Productions, doesn't have those pretensions. It is a stunning work that recalls classic literature, telling a story that has a beginning, middle and end, with a clear dynamic climax and character development. It doesn't meander, it doesn't waste ink and it doesn't aspire to be anything that it's not. And that is so incredibly refreshing that it hurts.

The book is invariably going to be compared to Ernest Hemingway's "The Old Man and the Sea," and this lazy journalist is no different. You can't really read a book like "That Salty Air" and not think about Santiago. The story focuses on Hugh and Maryanne, a couple who make their living fishing. Hugh is shown in his beloved element, among the waves and sea creatures, hauling in his daily catch.

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WRITER MARC GUGGENHEIM has a resume so mighty you might imagine that he has some of the superpowers he writes about.

When he's not working on "Eli Stone," the new ABC drama he co-created, his words can be found each month in "Amazing Spider-Man," "Young X-Men" and "Marvel Comics Presents." He also has a new title coming up from Virgin Comics with Hugh Jackman, he's writing the script for the video game tie-in for the upcoming Wolverine flick and he's co-writing the script for the Green Lantern movie. That's a lot of stuff.

And if you're asking how he is able to get all this done, you're not alone.

"I don't have a good answer for it because I kind of don't know how I do it all," he said. "Somehow, by some miracle, it all gets done."

And just in case you thought he might be slacking off, he's got more.

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IN 1948, A GROUP OF SCHOOLCHILDREN in Binghamton, New York, organized a crusade against one of the most feared and controversial threats facing America at the time. They weren't after Communists or drugs or juvenile delinquency, but a greater force that allegedly served as a gateway to those ills — comic books.

The kids hectored business owners into curtailing their stock of lurid comics like "Wonder Woman" and "Crime Does Not Pay," boycotting and sometimes even picketing those who refused. In a particularly grim irony, when a student broke the boycott, he was beaten up by the mob of young protesters.

This is one of many outrageous stories recounted by pop culture historian David Hajdu in his exhaustive and fascinating new book, "The Ten-Cent Plague: The Great Comic-Book Scare and How It Changed America."

A music critic for The New Republic who has written well-received books on jazz composer Billy Strayhorn and the Greenwich Village folk scene, Hajdu chronicles the controversy surrounding comic books, beginning with the uproar over newspaper strips like "The Yellow Kid" at the turn of the century and culminating with the Kefauver hearings in 1952, which effectively hobbled the industry and created an unofficial blacklist against comics artists and publishers.

"I knew going in that comic books were controversial," says Hajdu, "but I had no idea that they were as controversial as they were. There were over one hundred pieces of legislation banning or restricting the sale of comic books all around the country."

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IF YOU RUSHED TO THE TIDAL BASIN LAST WEEKEND for the first blush of blossoms, you may be wondering how to deal with the next two and a half weeks without tearing your hair out.

Easy: Get your jaded behind over to the Freer + Sackler Galleries for the 6th Cherry Blossom Anime Marathon. The lineup this year features two kids' films, a romance/drama and an action flick. Roland Kelts, author of Japanamerica, will introduce the films, which should help you get a handle on what these films are -- and what they're not.

"A lot of people who are unfamiliar with the Japanese art forms of anime and manga have, understandably, stereotypes about them," says Kelts. Such as? "The image of large-eyed, mini-skirted little girls with sometimes 'enhanced' body parts, fighting in outer space with massive mechanized robots." Not, perhaps, the most widely appealing image --so, luckily, there's nary a mini-skirt in sight in these movies.

First: "Jungle Emperor Leo," a tale of a lion cub who becomes king long before Simba was a mote in his mother's eye. (The original TV show and manga, or comic, were created in the 1950s by legend Osamu Tezuka -- this flick is a 1997 remake featuring the eponymous cub as a grown-up.) Leo's fight to preserve his jungle home from destructive humans will thrill kids and charm parents.

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WHAT IS MANGA, you ask? Why, it's a highly stylized Japanese illustration form, we reply. A form that happens to have met its match in the works of William Shakespeare.

The Manga Editions are four newly adapted and fully-illustrated versions of big Willie's plays: "Macbeth," "Hamlet," "Julius Caesar" and "Romeo & Juliet." Essentially, we're talking Will's words set to bold Japanese animation. Brilliant, wethinks.

Writer Adam Sexton and illustrator Yali Lin collaborated on the innovative project, and discuss their work tonight at Folger Shakespeare Library. Call for reservations or visit them online here — you wouldn't want another comic book geek/Bard enthusiast to snag your spot.

» Folger Shakespeare Library, 201 East Capitol Street SE; Monday, 7:30 p.m., $12 adults, $6 students; 202-544-7077. (Capitol South)

IT'S NOT OFTEN that a graphic novel gets considered for a major book award. It's pretty much the Pulitzer Prize-winning "Maus" and ... well, very little else.

So it was surprising when Gene Yang's graphic novel, "American Born Chinese" was nominated for the National Book Award for Young People's Literature in 2006.

And nobody was more surprised than Yang.

"When I first started publishing 'American Born Chinese,' it was a mini comic," he said. "I would finish a chapter, take it to Kinko's and Xerox it and sell it at different comic book conventions. My big plan was to just get it collected as a graphic novel and that would be it."

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ADRIAN TOMINE JUST CAN'T WIN.

The 33-year-old Japanese-American cartoonist, who has been creating comics since he was a teen, has for years faced questions about why he didn't address issues of his own heritage and background in his comics.

Now that he has, in his new graphic novel "Shortcomings" (Drawn & Quarterly), the results have been polarizing.

"There's some people who come up to me and say this is the first graphic novel or media in general they felt some kinship to in terms of portraying their experience with regards to being Asian American," said Tomine, who is appearing at Politics & Prose on Wednesday for a slide show and book signing. "And then there are other people who thought that it was distasteful, disrespectful or unnecessary."

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IN THE GRAPHIC NOVEL "Incognegro," author Mat Johnson introduces Zane Pinchback, a reporter whose pale skin allows him to pass as white to expose racial injustice in the early 20th century American South.

After barely escaping his last attempt going "incognegro," Zane wants to call it quits but he's forced out on a final assignment to investigate the incarceration of his own brother, who is to be lynched for the murder of a white woman.

Johnson talked to Express about his second project with Vertigo — he worked on "Papa Midnite" with Tony Akins and Dan Green — and his first graphic novel, which was brought to life by illustrator Warren Pleece.

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