Frankie King was a precocious student and a promising basketball player at Brooklyn’s James Madison High School in the early 1950s. Sportswriters were comparing Frankie to the greatest college and professional players of all time, and he was recruited as a starting guard at the University of North Carolina. But Frankie dropped out before playing a single game.

This graphic novel follows King’s enigmatic life from its auspicious start in the limelight to his very reclusive existence in New York City, where he authored more than forty novels, including a popular series of cozy cat mysteries written under a woman’s pseudonym. Whatever Happened to Frankie King is the story of a unique and sometimes troubled life as well as a meditation on dreams realized, lost, and abandoned.

Visual artist(s): Eli Neugeboren