Going into this, I knew the story wasn't going to be a strict biography of Jack Kirby. It says right on the cover it's "fictionalized" after all. I don't know that I was prepared for how this story rolled out, though. It takes place in a rest home for old comic book creators. Jack's there, of course, but also Steve Ditko, Bill Everett, Gene Colan, and Wally Wood among others. According to the workers, Jack's mind has been failing since the library he had spent years building up and been completely disheveled and disorganized thanks to Martin Flask. It's only when "Mike" begins to help clean up the library that Jack regains his vitality. Enough that he's able to resurrect Mike (killed by Martin to prevent the library's reorganization) and battle back Martin, who joins forces with power-monger Bolt Bisley, in an epic battle worthy of an entire movie unto itself.
The metaphors here are not subtle, and they're clearly not intended to be. Freitas and Pereira put a very clear stake in the ground on the matter of who contributed what in the Lee/Kirby debate and I don't doubt that, were Stan Lee still alive, he would be upset as his depiction as a parasitic, fame-obsessed villain. And he'd almost certainly point out that he had zero control in Marvel's creative or business dealings by the time the company was bought by Disney. But accuracy is hardly the point. I mean, the book starts with Jack being wheelchair-bound and living in a rest home, having outlived his wife Roz, so we're clearly well into fiction territory right from jump. The creators here are making a statement of ideas and opinions here; they're not trying to litigate reality.
I started this post by mentioning how often creators try to "do" Kirby when working on tributes to him, but that Pereira doesn't do that here. Not only does he avoid trying to imitate Jack's illustration style, but he also steers far away from even Jack's pacing and cadence in storytelling. There are two two-page spreads in particular which he plays with the flow of the panel sequencing in a way that (I'm nearly 100% sure) Jack never even attempted. Both spreads must have been very complicated to lay out and are actually rather dangerous to attempt, as either one would have absolutely killed the narrative if they weren't completely successful. In its own way, this type of approach does more to honor Jack's legacy than all of other people's superficial attempts; I think Jack would've thought the spreads very bold and powerful in ways he likely never considered.
While the overall story is fun and exciting, there are a couple of dark lines of dialogue if you're familiar with comics history. The allusions to some of the creators' actual deaths -- Everett's and Wood's in particular -- did briefly pull me out of the story, mostly by virtue of acknowledging the reality of their situations. I suppose they stood out to me because virtually everything else in the book has an additional layer of metaphors on top of it, and those couple references did not. It's a minor point in the story -- a couple lines of off-hand dialogue that are not germaine to the plot -- but it did catch me a bit off-guard. Fortunately, that's pretty early in the book before the action really gets rolling and doesn't cast a shadow over the remainder of the story.
I'm always a little skeptical going into tribute type books like these because of the reliance on the superficial pap I mentioned up top. But The Man Who Dreamt the Impossible does a great job of honoring Jack Kirby's work without resorting to, much less relying on, just trying to ape Jack's sytlistic quirks. The book came out from Image about two weeks ago, so it should still be readily available at your local comic shop, retailing for $9.99 US.
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