The Man Who Dreamt the Impossible // Review
Jack King is suffering a bit from lost energy. He’s not quite as lively as he had been earlier in his retirement. There are a couple of people who are discussing the state of his mind. He’s losing track of the library...the stories that he always told. Now things are beginning to reach a turning point for him in The Man Who Dreamt the Impossible. Writer Mario Freitas and artist Lucas Pereira deliver a heartfelt allegorical tribute to Jack Kirby ina tale that echoes some of the space fantasy that serves as his greatest legacy to literature and popular culture.
Jack might be. trying to remember. There have been many stories. There have been many things forgotten. There have been so many issues that have come and gone. And now there might be some part of him. trying to make some sense of it all. Or maybe it’s just other people looking back and wondering. In any case, Jack’s going to have to confront someone from his own past if he’s going to be able to understand what it is that’s going on. He’s in a retirement home so far away from those things that feel familiar. Maybe if he could just reach for one thing he might regain his youth enough to fight back against the darkness of his past.
Freitas uses historical figures from popular culture to piece together a story that feels deeply inspired by the man who created Galactus, the Eternals, The New Gods and so much else. The central conflict between Jack Kirby and Stan Lee plays out like some kind of cosmic struggle between different elements of creation that echo into actual history once Freitas introduces Hollywood’s influence on the comic book idustry in the form of a character inspired by Walt Disney.
Pereira’s clean-lined art style delivers some very vivid charactatures of various figures from comic book history who are all captured for the page at a very advanced age. The earthbound emotions of Jack and company are given a powerful exaggeration that never quite upstages the nuanced mythology that Freitas is rednering in the script. The cosmic-level action is a loving tribute to the work of a man who developed an art style that was breathtakngly unique back int the 20th centruy and continues to be very influential decades after his death. Pereira’s clever layout keeps everything deeply enaging from cover to cover.
The drama of the life of Kirby is something that is insanely difficult to distill dow into a single graphic novel. There’s so much that gets fdropped around the edges of the narrrative. And so it’s not quite as satisfying as it should be because Kirby had such a long and fascinating life. In the end, Freitas and Pereira’s work feels like a fascinating initial study to a much longer series that would be a hell of a lot more stasfying in the long run. As it stands, it’s a fun, little curiosity that celebrates the life of a great artist.
