Kenk
A Graphic Portrait
Pop Sandbox
Available: 04/14/10
6.82 x 9.47 · 304 pages
9780986488405
CDN $27.95
· pb
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Kenk: A Graphic Portrait is a groundbreaking 304-page journalistic comic book detailing the life and times of Igor Kenk, "the world's most prolific bicycle thief" (The New York Times and The Guardian). In Summer 2008, Kenk was arrested and nearly 3,000 bicycles were seized in one of the biggest news stories of the year. Built from more than 30 hours of never-before-seen intimate footage taken over the year leading up to his arrest, Kenk is a thought-provoking and surprisingly funny portrait of an outsize neighbourhood figure and a city in flux, both wracked by the forces of gentrification and by a burgeoning global environmental and economic crisis that promises to define our generation.
Kenk: A Graphic Portrait is produced and conceived by Alex Jansen, based on footage shot by Jansen and filmmaker/designer Jason Gilmore. It is written by acclaimed journalist Richard Poplak, whose books include The Sheikh's Batmobile: In Pursuit of American Pop Culture in the Muslim World and Ja, No, Man: Growing Up White in Apartheid-Era South Africa with Penguin, and it is illustrated by Toronto artist Nick Marinkovich, who adapted Sony Picture's Underworldand has done various comics with Marvel, IDW and Image.
Pop Sandbox recently won the NFB-TVO Digital Calling Card forThe Next Day, an interactive graphic novel set to release in early 2011, and is currently developing a graphic memoir surrounding the Canadian residential school program with filmmaker/artist Nadia McLaren (Muffins for Granny). Pop Sandbox is a production and publishing company owned and operated by Alex Jansen.
