I guess the big Kirby event of the year was outside of the comics, the settlement between the Kirby family and Marvel that had the immediate visible effect of a co-creator credit appearing in many Marvel books. We’ll see in a few months if this also results in more prominent and more explicit credits in the films based on his creations.

In print, it was also a big year for Kirby:

Pretty tough choice for book of the year. I’d lean towards the S&K LIBRARY: HORROR from Titan, with a big chunk of prime 1950s Kirby, a lot of it never properly reprinted before.  The ART OF THE S&K STUDIO from Abrams isn’t far behind, though, with about 240 pages of Kirby work reproduced from the original art, plus another 120 pages by other S&K Studio artists. And certainly the NEW GODS ARTIST’S EDITION from IDW is worth a look if you can afford it. Jeremy Kirby’s JACK KIRBY: A PERSONAL LOOK is an interesting look into Kirby’s family life, with a large selection of never before seen photos, plus Jack Kirby’s manuscript “Frog Prince”. And of course a lot of interesting stuff in the two issues of THE JACK KIRBY COLLECTOR published in the year.

As usual, Marvel had a large number of Kirby reprints. Mostly stuff that has been reprinted multiple times before in whatever their latest format is (the newest being “Epic Collections”, colour softcovers featuring about 500 page runs of a title, numbered but published out of order).  I think the only substantial material not previously reprinted in a bookshelf format are the NOT BRAND ECHH stories, and those are currently only available in a $500 box set (the book will be released as a standalone in June, 2015). But the Marvel highlight, especially if you missed the prior hardcover, was obviously the DEVIL DINOSAUR collection.

As usual, you can check over here for an occasionally updated list of new releases, plus upcoming books.