EARTH-90125
EARTH-90125
Type: Alternate Earth
Environment: Earth-like
Usual means of access: Vibrational attunement
Dominant Life Form: Humanity
Significant Inhabitants: "Fantastic
Four" ("Human Torch"/"Johnny Storm," "Invisible Girl"/"Susan Storm,"
"Mister Fantastic"/"Reed Richards," "Thing"/"Ben Grimm") (see
comments);
visited by Mister
Mxyzptlk
First Appearance: (Mentioned) Superman II#49
(November 1990);
(seen) Superman II#50 (December 1990)
History:
(Superman II#49 - BTS) - Fifth Dimension imp Mister Mxyzptlk visited Earth-90125
for a vacation (see comments) and took on a form similar to a miscolored
Impossible Man to torment the local version of the Fantastic Four. Still
wanting to annoy his favorite target, the Superman of Post-Crisis Earth (see
comments), Mxyzptlk took time out of his pranks to contact Post-Crisis
Lex Luthor and provided him with Red Kryptonite on the agreement that Luthor
would not reveal where he obtained it.
(Superman II#50) - Mxyzptlk took the form of a fire hydrant and "glopped" the "Thing" when he suddenly sensed that Luthor had broken his promise. Annoyed, Mxyzptlk froze time and hastened to Post-Crisis Earth to resolve the problem. Returning the same moment, relatively speaking, he was about to restart time when he remembered he was back in his most common form. He swiftly transformed into "Impossi-ptlk" again, but when time restarted the "Fantastic Four" followed "Mister Fantastic's" advice and ignored him. Deciding they were boring, Mxyzptlk departed.
Comments: Created by Jerry Ordway and John Byrne.
There's no Earth number given for DC's Post-Crisis Earth because (1) it's DC's, not Marvel, and we try to avoid numbering any other company or creator-owned realities unless they include Marvel content, and leave any reality designations to the people who own them; (2) the whole perpetual history rewrites at DC makes any attempt at numbering extremely confusing. For my money, Post-Crisis Earth is still pre-Crisis Earth-1, just merged with other realities (just like Age of Apocalypse/House of M/Age of Ultron/Excalibur: Weird War/etc. were 616 merged with other realities/with changed timelines until the mergers ended and they split off into their own realities and numbering while 616 mostly reverted back to the way it had been before). The way the merger was depicted in Crisis on Infinite Earths#12, the fact that some characters were confirmed to remember the old timeline (c.f. Psycho-Pirate, Earth-2 Superman, Superboy-Prime, etc.), and that some characters were eventually confirmed to originate from other pre-Crisis DC Earths but the timeline change had altered their histories/memories to make them fit their new world (c.f. Power Girl) strongly supports this IMO. However, since it is only my view on the matter, I've not used the pre-Crisis numbering.
Another, almost certainly unintended, repercussion of the Crisis in regards to this story is that it changes the meaning somewhat of Mxyzptlk calling this a vacation. AFAIK (and please correct me if I'm wrong), at the time of Superman II#50, DC's Earth was supposed to exist as a sole entity, with NO MULTIVERSE. Hypertime and the like would come later. So if there's no alternate realities, then how can Mxyzptlk be visiting one? Perhaps because the collapse of DC's multiverse into a single universe meant that Mxyzptlk had to go further afield for his break, out into the wider Omniverse and specifically into the Marvel multiverse.
Since it is an alternate reality, and since it appeared in a DC title that couldn't explicitly identify the group Mxyzptlk was pestering without turning a sight joke into a copyright infringement, neither the team nor the members were actually named. Hence the names above are in quotes; they could easily be called something else in this variation of reality.
The scenes depicted in Superman II#50 with the transformed Mxyzptlk are based on the story from Fantastic Four I#11, wherein the FF first fought the Impossible Man.
--Ron Fredricks
Profile by Loki.
CLARIFICATIONS:
Earth-90125 has no known connections to:
Four heroes who at minimum resemble the early Fantastic Four. Mister Mxyzptlk tormented them until their leader figured out that ignoring him would make the attention-seeking imp go away.
--Superman II#50
A Fifth Dimension imp who took pleasure in tormenting people from other dimensions using his vastly superior Fifth Dimension science/magic that allowed him to warp reality at will. After the Crisis on Infinite Earths collapsed the multiverse he was used to playing in into a single universe, he ventured into the wider Omniverse to avoid becoming bored by being restricted to just one playground and found "four" "fantastic new friend" on Earth-90125. He took on a form similar to a miscolored Impossible Man while annoying them, but they realized they could get rid of him by ignoring him.
Comments:
As mentioned in the main comments, this is the post-Crisis, pre-Zero Hour
Mxyzptlk; another partial DC timeline reboot happened in 1994's Zero Hour,
so I'm not sure if he's the same Mxyzptlk who appears alongside Impossible
Man in 1995's Bloodwulf#2 (Image) or 1996's Superman/Silver Surfer.
If they are considered the same person, then he might merit his own Appendix
entry some day, but for the moment I'm only looking at his appearances that
relate to this reality.
It's probably worth noting that when the post-Crisis Mxyzptlk first showed up, he used the alias Ben DeRoy (an anagram of Beyonder) and wore a form that looked a lot like the Beyonder's favorite appearance. So Superman II#50 wasn't the first time he's impersonated someone from Marvel.
--Superman II#50 and loads more in DC that don't involve this reality.
images: (without ads)
Superman II#50, p20, pan1 (main image)
Superman II#50, p29, pan4 ("Fantastic Four")
Superman II#50, p29, pan2-3 (Mxyzptlk and "Impossi-ptlk")
Superman II#11, p1, pan 1 (as Ben DeRoy)
Appearances:
Superman II#50 (December 1990) - Jerry Ordway (writer), John Byrne (pencils
for the relevant pages), Jerry Ordway (inks for the relevant pages), Mike
Carlin (editor)
First Posted: 01/31/2019
Last updated: 02/06/2019
Any Additions/Corrections? please let me know.
Non-Marvel
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Mister Mxyzptlk