Mr. Mxyzptlk is a great character because he effectively inverts the entire Superman storytelling model.
Superman stories are in many ways about God. Superman can be capricious (as he often was with his tricks in the Silver Age). Superman can be merciful. Superman can be compassionate. Of course the Superman-as-God metaphor has been stretched awfully thin at this point so I won’t go into further detail on that score, but you get the point: most Superman stories are about a being more powerful than humanity ever can be.
And then Mxyzptlk comes along and now Superman isn’t squat. This is because while Superman is a dandy metaphor for God, Mxyzptlk, for all practical intents and purposes, is God. Mxyzptlk can’t be beaten, stopped or destroyed; he only goes away when you satisfy the rule he made up on a whim. And, like God, he’s basically unknowable; you can see aspects of Mxyzptlk but never the whole.
There’s Chubby Purple Bowler Hat Mzyzptlk, who’s probably the nicest and kindest version in the “trickster god as secret friend of humanity” model (and indeed that version of Mxyzptlk claimed to have been Anansi, Coyote and Loki). There’s Skinny Orange Skirt Mxyzptlk, who’s meaner, nastier, and inevitably self-impressed with his own schtick; where Chubby Bowler Hat will show up as often to help as much as play, Skinny Orange Skirt isn’t really interested in helping anybody. For a brief streak there was that version of Mxyzptlk that was an extremely evil and nasty pair of twins (which instantly reminded everybody that Alan Moore had a very terrifying point when he suggested that Evil Mxyzptlk would be the greatest of all Superman foes).
(The fact that Mxyzptlk is a good character for postmodern commentary on the story he’s appearing in is, if anything, a bit of a crutch at this point: it was cute to have Mxy chat with DC editorial once or twice, but at this point when you’ve got Mxyzptlk, Animal Man, Deadpool, the Joker, Squirrel Girl and god knows how many other characters all knowing they’re inside a comic book it gets old fast.)
And as has been demonstrated on other levels, Mxy works as a foil for just about any character. He’s best for Superman, of course, because of how he turns Superman stories inside out. But “placating a capricious god who will happily cause you to lose whatever dignity you might possess” is a story that works for anybody.1
You don’t want to overload on Mxy. He’s best in small doses, every once in a while, and he should never again be used as a prop to make somebody else look scarier. (“Emperor Joker” was enough, but then DC decided to let Superboy Prime beat up Mxy to get additional superpowers for some reason and that was just one more reason that Countdown was the worst thing DC has ever published.) You can’t downplay God if you want him to have full impact when he does show up, after all.
(Seriously, though, bring back the twins aspect. They were scary as hell.))
- Granted, Batman works better with Bat-Mite because Batman loses his dignity much faster with a super-fan rather than a super-foe, but that’s just tailoring. [↩]
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For the record, I don’t believe Squirrel Girl knows she’s in a comic; that’s possibly a skewed view on her thanks to her squirrel companion (Monkey Joe or Tippy Toe) breaking the fourth wall every so often.
Still, the rest is a valid complaint.
Uhm…yeah, Alan Moore’s point on Mxy as ultimate enemy was something he borrowed from “Superfolks” by Robert Mayer
Mr. Mxyzptlk is one of the characters who gets creepier the more that you think about him. However, Mr. Mxyzptlk doesn’t go away when you satisfy a rule that he made up on a whim. That is true post-crisis, but not pre-crisis. Pre-crisis Mr. Mxyzptlk was forced back to his dimension if he ever pronounced his name backwards. It was even the “spell” he used when he wanted to return to his own dimension voluntarily.
Interestingly, I recall some old pre-crisis comics where Superman tricks Mxyzptlk by making him think that Supes himself has abandoned the rules that HE has imposed on himself, particularly the not-killing rule. In that situation, Mxyzptlk becomes terrified of Superman and panics enough to agree to play by Superman’s rules – which turns out to by exactly what Mxyzptlk needs do to achieve his own goals. (This story is referencd in file above. It is the one where he turns the children of a mayor from his own dimension into chickens and marries Miss Bgbznz).
In short, I’d say that the Mxyzptlk described in today’s Who’s Who is mostly the post-crisis one. Great essay, though, since Mxyzptlk is a seriously creepy character when you think a bit about him.
One of my favourite all-time comics is the one where Mr. M and Bat-Mite kill every single DC character in every single DC Universe just on a whim, then bring everything back at the end, with the implication that they do this ALL THE TIME.
Can’t remember the title though. Anyone remember?
Hm, this gives me an idea…
SFAEL ELPAM OTNOROT
…darn, didn’t work. (I guess THEY have to say it)
…okay, forgive me for my ignorance, but when did the Joker find out he was in a comic book?
“Superman/Batman: World’s Funnest.”
That’s the one! Thanks.
You know, one of the reasons they came up with the idea that the Fifth Dimension only comes into conjunction with Earth every ninety days was because they KNEW that Mr. Mxyzptlk worked best in small doses, and they were SCRUPULOUS about always spacing his appearances at least three months apart.
Of course, that was when you’d have at least three Superman stories in Superman and a couple more in Action every single month. These days, a Mxy tales takes three to six months to tell.
One of my favorite Mxy tales was his first appearance in the DCAU, with Gilbert Gottfried voicing him. The initial introduction, the backwards-name rule established — and then a rapid-fire montage of Supes casually outsmarting him in a matter of minutes, every ninety days.
Another nice thing about Mr. Mxyzptlk: He has to be outsmarted in some way. Superman can’t punch him to win. While Superman has never been regularly shown as dumb, in the pairing between him and Batman, usually Batman is the “smart” one, and Superman is kind of a brute in contrast, with little mention of his mind. So it’s nice that he has an enemy he has to defeat in a clever way.
You know, I’ve wondered more then once if Mr. Mxyzptlk would ever work in a Superman movie.I mean, if the Superman movies ever take off again and we manage to work trough some of his other villains then Lex (Brainiac, Toyman, maybe Doomsday), you’re bound to get to the point where it’s Mr. Mxyzptlk or, I dunno, The Puzzler.
I know it sounds ludicrous at first. Movie audiences see to be fairly dismissive of Silver Age ideas of late, and Mr. Mxyzptlk can come across as very Silver Age indeed. Still, as MGK pointed out, he inherently introduces a new element to traditional Superman stories, and he has the potential to be incredibly frightening and dangerous. It’s just a question of how you present him.
The bowler hat might have to go, but then again, maybe not.
I got your live action Mxy right here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TwVGyGgecPs
Has to be seen to be believed.
Mxyzptlk may think he’s god, but he’s still smart enough not to go up against Rex the motherfucking Wonder Dog.
@Brendan
Are movie goes really dismissive of Silver age ideals or is it that the people that make movies think people wont go for them?
I know some people turn their noses at silly ideals but then there are others that expect comic book to be silly.
Mister Mxysptlk would be a powerful foe a superman movie should have and worst comes to worst I could see him being toned down a little.
Superboy Prime didn’t gain any new powers by beating on Mxy, there just wasn’t Mxy could do to him.
There was a brilliant DCAU episode of Superman: The Animated Series that introduced Mxy. It demonstrates the real value of Mxysptlk as a nemesis to Superman: he forces Supes to THINK. Whereas every other villain in Superman’s rogue gallery can be punched or knocked into a Phantom Zone, Mxy sets up a game with rules and essentially forces Superman to puzzle things out.
And in that DCAU episode, Superman does indeed think: he proves himself an agile punster, quick on his metaphorical toes, and as the game progresses incredibly unflappable about the whole thing. And Supes becomes so badass about beating Mxy at his own game that his best victory – happening off-screen – becomes a hilarious crowning moment of funny without us even seeing it.
The biggest problem with Mxy as an opponent is, of course, he’s nigh unstoppable if he wanted to be. He’s only beatable because it amuses him. Movies (and the various TV shows about Superman besides the one I just mentioned) can’t do him justice.
Of course, if Mxy ever tries this on Rex The Motherfucking Wonder Dog, he’ll get his ass chewed.
I think this phrasing is a little unfair because that same episode demonstrated that Superman could not only out-think Mxy, but do it effortlessly. You don’t have to force Superman to think, you just have to force the audience to remember he can. That’s easy to forget when his greatest ally and his greatest enemy are both super-geniuses, but he’s still an award-winning journalist, a student of advanced Kryptonian science, and the one guy who can stay two steps ahead of Lois Lane.
Huh. The older, purple-suited version is actually consistently spelled differently than the newer, orange-suited version.
Purple-suit is Mxyztplk (including spelled backwards in the soup spoon).
Orange-suit is Mxyzptlk (including spelled backwards on the eye-chart).
I wonder why they bothered to change it? (At first I thought it was must a mistake in the colored block lettering, which is easy to do when you’re drawing letters like that; but no, it’s consistently -tplk in all of the upper entry, plus that soup-spoon; and consistently -ptlk in the lower entry.)
So does Rex have a trickster character to contend with?
I find it awesome that a character who is essentially god? Only worth 95% of Rex the Wonder Dog.
See also: ‘Whatever Happened to the Man of Tomorrow?’
It’s not just the audience that forgets Superman can think, Jim Smith. Superman is remarkably lazy. Super-strengh is always his go-to. Super-speed, distance attacks, and actually using his brain are only last resorts to be considered after punching a problem out doesn’t work.
I just want to say: that background image in Mxy’s ‘Who’s Who’ entry is just FANTASTIC. Proof that Supes = the fucking man.
I agree with the animated 90s show being a great example for the character. I think it would take a very clever writer for this character to work over repeated stories or to be more than a gag. For a movie you have a lot to overcome; the fact that his name is all consonants, the fact that he doesn’t look threatening, and that you have to explain this extra dimension. It would be a tough sell to a movie producer.
Let me also note that Bat-Mite really makes the new Batman: Brave and the Bold cartoon shine.
Question for the masses, which do we like better the golden/silver age version where you have to get him to write his name backwards or the Byrne version where the name game was an arbitrary pick and he had other games (make me shave my head, make me paint my face blue…)?
@Holly: Supposedly a mistake in 1955.
It happened in the first appearance of Skinny Orange Skirt, so that may be apocryphal.
I think it’s worth noting that Dog is just God spelled backwards.
I liked the general idea. Superman and Myx battle in a fairly benevolent fashion. Myx pulls his tricks. Sups fights back. Reality is restored, and Myx is sent packing. However, the fact that Superman can manipulate someone as powerful as Myx implies that Superman could do significantly more harm if he so choose, simply by manipulating Myx to act as his agent. And that if a more nefarious individual – Joker, for instance – were to match wits with Myx, the end result could be far more dire.
I didn’t like the execution in the least.
That said, as cool as Myx is on paper, I do think it says something about Superman that the only way to give him an opponent he can’t bludgeon to death is to throw a deity at him. Personally, I prefer the “Superman losses his powers” stories when I want to see Big Blue get a dose of humility.
My favorite part of the Twins Mxy plot? When they were listing their accomplishments and one of them mentioned giving the (modern-day) Persuader his Atomic Axe.
Other Mxy: “Did we do that?”
First Mxy: “*Now* we did.”
That may have been the single scariest Mxy moment EVER, and I include WHttMoT in the list.
Also, StAS Mxy impresses me with the sheer depth of his determination to defeat Supes. If I was married to THAT Gsptlsnz, I would *never leave the house.*
I’ve actually read the issue of his first appearance, and at times it’s fantastically trippy. There’s a moment where an amazed swimmer, finding himself in an empty pool seconds after Mxy jumped in, simply stands there laughing hysterically on the basis that it’s all a dream…
I always thought Mxy was written a little too mean-spirited. I mean, he’s not behaving like some all-powerful supervillian who just happens to be nice right now. He’s behaving like a fourth grader who doesn’t know how to make friends. Sometimes it feels like he harasses Superman because he wants to be buddies and just happens to go about it like an utter dick.
That said, there was a story when Mxy discovered the concept of death and decided to give it a whirl and it was utterly hilarious. “If Doomsday can kill Superman, maybe he can kill me. But I’m way more powerful than Blue. He’ll have to be pointier!”
As always when I think of Mxy, I get a giggle from the “official” way his name is supposed to be pronounced. “Mix-yez-pittle-ick”. Who was it that expected kids to ever be able to get that right? (And whatever the medium has become, comics were mostly aimed at kids in North America once upon a time.) I remember horribly mangling the German and Russian that Nightcrawler and Colossus would occasionally spout, and those were actual words, even if they weren’t English. I’m impressed with how easily the pronunciation comes to Stacy Haiduk (Lana) in that “Superboy” clip.
Personally, I will forever default to the pronunciation I got from a Superman storybook record (yes, children, Mr. Pennyforth was old enough to have listened to sound on vinyl, *gasp!*), which was also the first time I ever heard the name aloud: “Mix-pit-ulk”. I know that it pretty much ignores the “yz” in the written name, but it’s a helluva lot easier to pronounce and remember–I was never able to memorize the “official” pronunciation until Mxy appeared on S:TAS and Gilbert Gottfried’s distinctive voice burned it into my memory.
I’ve always pronounced it “Mix-YEZ-pit-lick,” no matter what DC tries to tell me. 🙂
As I recall, in the days of the Superfriends it was simplified down to “Mixelplick” (and Slipelskim backwards, never mind that it shouldn’t sound like that at all).
Ah yes, I forgot the backwards version. On the aforementioned storybook record, it was “Kult-tip-iz-ix-um”–somehow, their pronunciation gained two extra syllables when said backwards!
“As I recall, in the days of the Superfriends it was simplified down to “Mixelplick””
I believe it was and I still pronounce it that way, despite all evidence and spelling to the contrary.
Nobody’s mentioned my favorite Mxy story, where Superman goes to the Fifth Dimension and does to Mxy exactly what Mxy usually does to him, mercilessly humiliating him in front of the other inhabitants of the Fifth Dimension. And of course, mxy keeps trying to banish him by getting him to say “Namrepus”…
But it doesn’t work, because “Superman” isn’t actually his name, “Kal-El” is. 🙂
Whatever Happened to the Man of Tomorrow was a decent (but not great) Alan Moore story that just happened to use the wrong artist. I’m sorry, I know Curt Swan was *the* artist of the fifties for Supes, but he was limited. When it came time to “detail” a truly five-dimensional Mxy, he just ended up drawing a rather tall electrified Frankenstein monster. I dunno if it was Moore’s inability to describe a fully-five-dimensional creature in four-dimensional (height, length, width, time) terms, or Swan couldn’t draw a being with a layers-upon-layers method (just how would Mxy look through a tesseract prism). Or maybe it was just the limitations of the print medium then… either way, just wasn’t scary looking enough.
Where was the Twin Mxy story?
You know, I’ve wondered more then once if Mr. Mxyzptlk would ever work in a Superman movie.
He was very popular with audiences whenever he visited Star Trek and called himself “Q.”
Twin Mxy was during the Casey/Acouin run, I think.
“He was very popular with audiences whenever he visited Star Trek and called himself ‘Q’.”
Yeah, but getting him to say his name backwards was a bit TOO easy.
No mention of Mxy’s education in the Stooges school of comedy by Young Justice? That was a bizarre (but fun) story by PAD in the earliest issues of the title.
I wish I could remember where I read this, but I saw a humor piece in a magazine years ago that had a fake quote by Pat Sajak, describing Superman’s appearance on “Wheel of Fortune”:
“I think he was drunk or under the influence of Kryptonite or something. The answer was obviously ‘Mr Mxyzptlk’, but he kept trying to buy a vowel!”
Didn’t noticed the “marriage annulment” part until now. *Wonders if Zrifff(sp.?) has other similar laws to NY State.*
Nothing to add MGK spot on why Mxy is definitly in the top 5 superman rogues gallery & i liked most of his incarnations:
-joe casey’s mxy twins (his most terrifying appearance)
_simonson & bogdanove’s outrageous & coocoo for cocoapuffs screwy squirrel like mxy
-dini’s pretentious & obsessive mxy (srsly why bother with supes when you have gsplsnz)
-alan moore’s versatile psycho (though it was anti climatic,they should not have shown his true formp at all or only glimpses of it)
-loeb,kelly,dematteis crazy mentor like mxy( i dont care what you say emperor joker was afucking blast & pure fun the only lacking thing would be joker slapping morrison around with a fish for daring letting luthor slap him during rocks of age, the clown prince doesn’t tolerate disrespect to his theatrical person)
Mxyzptlk: Mix-yes-spit-lick.
Kltpzyxm: Kill-tip-see-zim.
There are no other answers.