Gahan Allen Wilson was born on Feb. 18, 1930, in Evanston, Ill. His father, Allen, was an executive at a steel company, and his mother, Marion, did publicity for a department store. The “born dead” part of the documentary’s title refers to the story he recounts of his birth: His mother had been given an anesthetic that knocked her out but also caused him to be born seemingly dead. The hospital staff was prepared to “put me in some sort of box,” he says in the film, but his family doctor intervened.

“He used hot and cold water and slap, slap, slap,” Mr. Wilson told The Comics Journal in 2011. “He got me coughing and puking and breathing and that’s that: I was alive.”

Mr. Wilson was an only child and, he said, his parents drank too much, resulting in a bittersweet childhood. He turned to cartooning while very young, cultivating his imagination.

One cartoon done years later speaks to his upbringing. A child is emerging from an alley, surrounded by bizarre creatures. Two adults on the sidewalk can see only the child. “Here comes that Wilson boy — all alone as usual,” one says.

“And I wasn’t all alone,” Mr. Wilson says in the documentary, “which was the joys of imagination.”

Both parents had artistic abilities; his mother had attended the Art Institute of Chicago for a time. He found his father distant, but Allen Wilson did provide Gahan with a key to his future.