Legendary comic writer Danny Fingeroth is embracing a new challenge: a non-fiction investigative dive into one of the most infamous pieces of American history. Jack Ruby: The Many Faces of Oswald’s Assassin chronicles the life of the titular man who was responsible for killing Lee Harvey Oswald, the assassinator of President John F. Kennedy. This project represents the first time that the longtime Marvel scribe is working outside of the world of superheroes.
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“It started about 10 years ago as a graphic novel,” Fingeroth told ComicBook.com. “It was coming up on the 50th anniversary of the Kennedy assassination, and I wasn’t somebody who was obsessed with it, but I was interested in it and I wanted to try a nonfiction biography slash history comic.”
The print medium is not completely alien to Fingeroth. His bibliography includes titles likeย Superman On The Couch andย A Marvelous Life: The Amazing Story of Stan Lee.
“Everything I’ve written is somewhere around the world of comics. I guess it was a challenge to me and to whatever writing skills I might have, those various writing and researching muscles. Can I do something that’s out of my comfort zone?” Fingeroth continued. “Writing about Stan Lee, I’d sort of in a way been researching it since I was six years old. It was both as a fan and then working at Marvel and working with Stan. This was a challenge to see if I can write something nonfiction that’s not about comics or publishing. That was a big thing that was both scary and appealing about it to me to see if I could learn.”
While he has been developing Jack Ruby for a decade, the JFK assassination has been circulating in Fingeroth’s mind since adolescence. Fingeroth was 10 years old on that fateful day in Dealey Plaza.
“The thing is, when you’re 10 years old, you don’t know. ‘Oh, maybe this is just what happens.’ That was 1963, and then 1965 Malcolm X was assassinated,” Fingeroth recalled. “1968, Robert Kennedy and Martin Luther King. If it didn’t seem to me at 10 that this is just how the world is, it certainly was occurring to me by the time I was 15. It is sort of this cumulative cultural trauma that you’re a part of.”
Even 60 years later, the JFK assassination is still prevalent in modern media. Jack Ruby himself has been portrayed in multiple live-action projects including Ruby (1992) and most recently in The Umbrella Academy Season 2. If Fingeroth gets his way, his book will be the next to bring Oswald’s assassin to Hollywood.
“That is one of my hopes for it, and something that my people and my agent and lawyer are exploring those possibilities,” Fingeroth said. “I’ve had some interesting experiences already about that. It’s certainly open and I’m interested in doing something with it like that.
“No story I’ve written has been adapted for a Marvel movie or TV show, but there are bits and pieces, scenes or subplots that are stuff I’ve worked on,” Fingeroth continued. “That’s a weird enough out-of-body experience to see that happen when you’re in a theater or watching something on TV.”
Jack Ruby: The Many Faces of Oswald’s Assassin is now available in bookstores and online.
