30 days now of Jack Kirby Tribute Month 2025 (curated by Howard Simpson), and this year focused exclusively on the Fantastic Four and related characters. Today’s prompt is supposed to be the Hate-Monger, but I felt like going off-menu just this once and doing the Impossible Man! How could I resist?
The Impossible Man is another early character, appearing in FF #11. We find out that he comes from the planet Poppup, where the Poppupians have a born ability to instantly change into whatever form they want in order to protect themselves from all the dangers on their planet. When Sue asks him his name, he replies, “Name? We Poppupians have no names! We know who we are!”
I.M. explains that he got bored on Poppup, and decided it would be fun to come to Earth for a vacation. And not really understanding how things work on our planet, in amusing himself, he manages to create all kinds of havoc. Some of it actually quite dangerous! But there’s no malicious intent behind any of it, as he’s kind of childlike and more just mischievous.
“Impy” only shows up this one time during Jack and Stan’s FF run. Issue #11 was kind of atypically structured, in that instead of one long story, it contained two 11-pagers: this one, and the also-memorable “A Visit with the Fantastic Four.”
While typing this up, a visual association occurred to me. Back in the ’50s, there was a lower budget sci fi movie entitled The Man from Planet X. Someone put a little effort into designing the title character, as he manages to present a striking visual even on a more limited budget. I took a crack at drawing the character myself awhile back. Visually, he’s a got a similarly long head which comes to a point on top. I can’t help but wonder whether the Man from Planet x might not have been in the back of Kirby’s mind (maybe subconsciously) when designing the Impossible Man.
One more day left of Jack Kirby Tribute Month this year. What will I do? You’ll have to swing by tomorrow to find out!