The Impossible Man, Loki and Mister Mxyztplk — three examples of the kinds of characters who drive comic book superheroes up the wall.
They’re also clear examples of something very old indeed — the trickster myth.
Superman, Thor and the Fantastic Four are figures of vast, responsible power, so the tricksters who confront and confound them are logically figures of vast, irresponsible power.
And the same trickster lies in wait for all of us in the submerged recesses of our minds.
“The figure works, because secretly it participates in the observer’s psyche and appears as its reflection. Though it is not recognized as such,” wrote the psychologist Carl Jung. “The trickster is a collective shadow figure, an epitome of all the inferior traits of character in individuals.”
The idea that the trickster is seated in our own psyches is reinforced by the universality of this mythic figure.
“The trickster myth is found in clearly recognizable form among the simplest aboriginal tribes and among the complex,” wrote anthropologist Paul Radin. “We encounter it among the ancient Greeks, the Chinese, the Japanese and in the Semitic world.”
And in popular culture, we trip over tricksters every time we turn around — among many others, Prof. Harold Hill in The Music Man, Bugs Bunny in Warner Brothers cartoons, Harvey the pooka, Captain Jack Sparrow, Batman’s archenemy the Joker, the title character in Doctor Who, Bart Simpson, Q in Star Trek and Pseudolus in A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum (and in the 2,200-year-old plays by Plautus on which that musical is based).
The first Impossible Man tale by Stan Lee and Jack Kirby (Fantastic Four 11, Feb. 1963) is a particularly satisfying use of the trickster figure, even though some young readers at the time may have regarded the story as not “serious” enough.
The prankster from the planet Poppup was just looking for amusement, but causing chaos in Manhattan with his limitless powers of self-transformation — powers far more formidable than those of the FF. The dilemma provided the opportunity for a Marvel counter-intuitive plot twist. Superhero comics are about direct, combative action, but resident genius Reed Richards understands that that only inaction will resolve this conflict. So the FF merely ignores the childish Poppuponian, no matter what crimes or chaos he causes, until he becomes bored and flies away.
“Coyote, a favorite hero in Shoshone stories, was a bit of a rogue, but he knew something important, something other people needed,” noted British author Monica Furlong. “Coyote is a great folk hero, but is contradictory in nature, because his approach to issues of good and evil is an ambiguous one. When he performed ‘good’ actions, they had a way of turning out wrong. When he was ‘bad,’ and he was often bad, goodness seemed in some mysterious way to emerge. He resisted the categories beloved of moral majorities; what had appeared comfortingly simple until he came along was thrown into comical confusion.”
The same applies to the trickster antagonists of comics, whose vast powers might logically to pose a major threat to the world, and yet somehow end up being only an amusing annoyance.
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