Today, we look at how six of the original seven Justice League members (everyone except Green Lantern) had an other-dimensional imp involved in their life somehow!
In Drawing Crazy Patterns, I spotlight at least five scenes/moments from within comic book stories that fit under a specific theme (basically, stuff that happens frequently in comics). Note that these lists are inherently not exhaustive. They are a list of five examples (occasionally I'll be nice and toss in a sixth). So no instance is "missing" if it is not listed. It's just not one of the five examples that I chose.
As noted, a bizarrely common thing in the lives of the Justice League was their connections to other-dimensional imps!
THE PREMIER COMIC BOOK IMP MAKES HIS PREMIERE AGAINST SUPERMAN
In one of my earliest Look Back features, I wrote about the whole history of imps in popular culture, with Roald Dahl's Gremlins being the major inspiration in the 20th Century. In 1943's Superman #22, Jerry Siegel and artist Sam Citron actively did a riff on Dahl's Gremlins with Squiffles. A year later, in 1944's Superman #30 (by Jerry Siegel and artist Ira Yarbrough, Siegel introduced a more clever take on the concept, the mischievous Mister Mxyztplk (note the original spelling)...
WONDER WOMAN HAS SOME BAD LUCK WITH LEPRECHAUNS
Recently, I did a Comic Book Legends Revealed about how Joye Hummel, the first woman to ever write the comic book adventures of Wonder Woman, was "discovered" by comic book historian Jerry Bails decades after she last worked on the book (uncredited) for three years in the 1940s before the untimely death of Wonder Woman creator, William Marston. One of the interesting things about Hummel's run on Wonder Woman is that her stories had a lot of the same recurring themes, which is that she would often have Wonder Woman encounter fantastical beings, like fairies and stuff like that.
In 1945's Wonder Woman #14 (by Hummel and Wonder Woman's original artist, H.G. Peter, who drew the series until soon before he passed away in 1958), Wonder Woman, Etta Candy and Steve Trevor run afoul of three leprechauns in Shamrock Land...
It is kind of vague what is actually going on in Shamrock Land with the three mischievous leprechauns (Shaggy, Woggle and Hoppy), as the story ends with Wonder Woman and her friends wondering if they just imagined it all. The leprechauns mention being brought to America earlier in the story, but they're also CLEARLY magical creatures, so I think I think it counts as being from an other dimension (the world of magic) and they just then ended up in America.
BATMAN GETS IN ON THE IMP ACTION
Batman in the 1950s often got a bit of a rap as trying to ape the aspects of Superman that made that series such a hit with kids and, well, if editor Jack Schiff wanted to avoid those comparison, maybe don't introduce basically a Bat-version of Mxyzptlk, ya know? And yet that's just what happened in 1959's Detective Comics #267 (by Bill Finger, Sheldon Moldoff and Charles Paris)...
At least Finger threw in the twist that, unlike Mxyzptlk, Bat-Mite isn't actively trying to screw with Batman, but rather he is a FAN of the Dynamic Duo, and he just causes problems because he can't help himself.
AQUAMAN MEETS A SERIAL CHARACTER, QUISP
In 1962's Aquaman #1, by Jack Miller and Nick Cardy (the ongoing series that Aquaman received after being given a spotlight in Showcase, following decades of being a backup feature in More Fun Comics and Adventure Comics), Aquaman and Aqualad are doing some unusual underwater chores when they are shocked by a series of strange events. First, Topo's tentacles are tied into knots and then a skeleton starts moving on its own! They then discover that they are being moved by the magical powers of a water sprite named Quisp (not the cereal mascot with the same name)!
Like the leprechauns, Quisp nominally is from Earth, but that doesn't really track, right? Later stories have more definitively established him as being an other-dimensional being.
MARTIAN MANHUNTER FINDS HIMSELF STUCK WITH A ZOOK
One of the goofiest stories mentioned here (which is saying a lot), is the introduction of the color-changing creature, Zook, in 1963's Detective Comics #311 (by Jack Miller and Joe Certa). Martian Manhunter faces off against some criminals from another dimension and helps out a police officer from that same dimension. When the lawman came over to our dimension, he accidentally brought a Zook with him and at the end of the issue, when the lawman took the criminals back home, the Zook was left behind, with Martian Manhunter feeling obliged to take care of it...
Zook's not necessarily an imp, per se, but close enough!
FLASH NEEDS TO RAISE MONEY TO PAY BACK MOPEE, WHO GAVE FLASH HIS SUPER-SPEED!
Definitely THE goofiest story on the list is 1966's Flash #197 (by Gardner Fox, Carmine Infantino and Joe Giella), where Flash's powers suddenly start acting up. He is visited by Mopee, his "Heavenly Help-Mate," who reveals that it was HE who made the chemicals splash on to Barry and give him superpowers!
The trick, though, is that Mopee later learned that you can't just use chemicals to give someone powers, as that would be considered an improper gift. They would, instead, have to own the chemicals in question, so it would just be using their own chemicals. So the Flash had to raise the money to buy the chemicals so that he could keep his powers. He succeeded and Mopee was pretty much never mentioned again in the pages of Flash (and DC's Who's Who later wrote him out of continuity period).
Hilariously, the great Sholly Fisch (and the also great Chynna Clugston) did a story in DC Super Friends #11 in 2009 that saw Bat-Mite run afoul of these other imps, with Bat-Mite joking about Green Lantern's lack of an imp, with the Guardians of the Universe suggested as the Green Lantern imp equivalent, but come on, that doesn't count!
If anyone has a suggestion for a future Drawing Crazy Patterns, drop me a line at brianc@cbr.com!