Kenk: A Graphic Portrait

By Richard Poplak

Illustrated by Nick Marinkovich

$27.95 CAD Pop Sandbox Inc., 304 pages, 2010

The story of Igor Kenk is now legendary. Labeled the “most prolific bike thief in the world” by the international press, Kenk was released from a Toronto jail this March after serving 15 months for drug and theft charges. By the end of his “career,” Kenk had hoarded nearly 3,000 bikes, mostly stolen, making him the arch-villain of cyclists everywhere. It is fitting that this sordid yet fascinating tale has been made into a novel-length comic book.

Kenk settled in Toronto after emigrating from what is now Slovenia in 1988, leaving behind a country struggling to remake itself after the collapse of Communism. Appalled by the excessive consumerism and wastefulness of his new homeland, Kenk quickly turned this into an advantage. He lived modestly, was obsessed with recycling and scoured yard sales for everything from scissors to shoes; and yes, he collected bicycles, lots of them.

In 1992, Kenk opened a second-hand shop called the Bicycle Clinic and stocked it with salvaged bikes and those he bought off the street. He gained the attention of police after some cyclists recognized their stolen bikes in his store. Kenk was unrepentant. You see, technically he was following the law. A second-hand license merely required that Kenk record the bikes he purchased and who he bought them from, no questions asked. After three weeks, Kenk became the outright owner even if a bike was hot. Remarkably, this loophole served him well for the next 16 years!

Artsy, edgy and sophisticated, Kenk: A Graphic Portrait is part biography, part documentary. In fact, the photocopied images in the book are lifted from film footage taken of Kenk in the months leading up to his arrest. Richard Poplak and his design team provide us with a captivating look into the making of a chronic bike thief and the community that helped let it happen.