Reading this comic makes me want to go back and read the entirety of Neil Gaiman's The Sandman, especially since these characters show up in the series, and their appearance there makes much more sense now that I've read an issue of their series. Of course, in true proto-Vertigo, 1980s fashion, the characters are changed and twisted into something much more monstrous and depressing than what we see in this whimsical Kirby silliness, but that's actually a pretty nice way of thinking through the ways that comics have matured. This story reads very much like the fantasy of a child, one of escape and heroism, one that is very much in line with the tenor of comics at the time. But Mr. Gaiman's take on the story asks the question of what it is exactly that young Jed is trying to escape in these Nemo-esque adventures? The answer is awful. I mean, really well-written and conceived, but awful nonetheless.
What we get here in a nice bit of inflectionary reading. Mr. Gaiman's series was much more popular than Mr. Kirby's, and continues to hold a good deal of influence over comics. So we can read this as innocent adventure comic from the Sixties, or we can read it as representation of the fantasy that Jed has to tell himself in order to avoid the abusive situation in which he finds himself. Both are valid readings, and there's good arguments for each. Which might sound nebulous and smacks of fence-sitting, but really that's what good writing does: it invites and support multiple readings. When we add in the fact of vast temporal distance and completely different creative teams, then the unintentional aspect of inflection makes itself apparent. Kirby could not have known of Gaiman's eventual rethinking of his story. Whether or not Gaiman's inflection of terror into these whimsical stories was intentional or not is much harder to say, but it happens nonetheless. Well, if you choose to read that way, I suppose.
More to come...
