Whatever Happened to Frankie King

Jay Neugeboren (Imagining Robert) and his son, Eli, buck the tortured genius trope by locating the brightness in this crackling graphic biography of wayward basketball prodigy Frankie King. The Jewish “baby-faced” teen from Brooklyn was scouted by the New York Knicks and the Washington Generals in the 1950s but suddenly quit the sport. Rumors flew that he’d been institutionalized or gone to work for mob boss John Gotti—in reality, he entered the military, went AWOL, and ultimately became a writer. Through a pleasingly chaotic assortment of quotes from family and friends, readers learn that the “wise scribe and wild card,” with “Brooklyn street smarts and the language of John Milton,” displayed self-destructive tendencies and a desire for “erasing himself.” He also churned out dozens of novels, including a bestselling cozy cat mystery series under a pen name, and popped by New York basketball courts to win cash against players deceived by his squat physique and street clothes—including a young Kareen Abdul-Jabbar. King stands apart from other sidetracked prodigies in this account—a man who fought to remain himself no matter what the world demanded. Art by Eli is appropriately jittery and grubby, rendering King’s roustabout life as a chain-smoking barfly, street philosopher, and autodidact. It’s a winning portrait of an unforgettable personality. (Nov.)