UNCLE McSLIPPERY SLIMER

Real Name: Unrevealed (see comments)

Identity/Class: Alternate reality/extradimensional (Earth-88326) presumably human ghost (Scottish) (see comments)

Occupation: Glutinous partying ghost, possibly specifically of Hogmanay 

Group Membership: None

Affiliations: Ghostbusters (Egon Spengler, Raymond Stantz, Peter Venkman, Winston Zeddemore), Slimer

Enemies: Requardillion

Known Relatives: Slimer (apparent nephew - see comments)

Aliases: None

Base of Operations: Highlands of Scotland

First Appearance: The Real Ghostbuster#134/2 (5th January 1991) (see comments)

Powers/Abilities: McSlippery floats through the air and can pass through solid objects. He has a limitless appetite for food and drink, and leaves ectoplasmic slime on anything he comes into contact with. 

Height: 3' (by estimation)
Weight: None
Eyes: Red
Hair: Varies between white and red
Additional identifying features: Green skin, no visible legs, and spoke in a thick Scottish accent

History:
(The Real Ghostbuster#134 (fb) - BTS) - McSlippery Slimer was an apparently Scottish ghost, and a "Slimer Free Floating Ectoplasm," per Egon Spengler's ghost rating category.

(The Real Ghostbuster#148 (fb) - BTS) - The "Class Three Free-Floating Caledonian" McSlippery visited New York City, and invaded some unfortunate homeowner's house to devour the man's food.

(The Real Ghostbuster#148) - The homeowner called the Ghostbusters, but since all of the human members, even receptionist Janine, were down with flu, Slimers answered the call instead, and was surprised to discover the guilty ghoul was his own uncle. When the actual Ghostbusters dragged themselves out of their sickbeds and reached the scene, Slimer introduced them to his relative.

(The Real Ghostbuster#134 (fb) - BTS) - On Hogmanay McSlippery and Slimer visited the Big Dipper Burger Bar on Manhattan's Fifth Avenue, unaware the entire facility and its staff were merely a disguise adopted by the demon Requardillion in order to lure the Ghostbusters into a trap. There the two glutton ghosts they swiftly devoured five hundred dollar's worth of burgers.

(The Real Ghostbuster#134) - Posing as the manager, Requardillion used the pretext of the two Slimers refusing to pay for their food as a pretext to call the Ghostbusters. Slimer insisted they had not eaten that much food, but McSlippery was more belligerent, insisting the bill was too expensive and demanding to know what was wrong with the man's sense of New Year's spirit. Moments later the Ghostbusters arrived, but Requardillion's trap immediately failed as Egon saw through his disguise (see comments). Requardillion attacked the humans, turning Peter Venkman into a frog while boasting that a medallion he was wearing rendered him immune to their technology, but upon hearing this utterance the two Slimers dived on him, coating and blinding him with their ectoplasmic slime. The younger ghost then snatched Requardillion's medallion and threw it to Egon. Realizing the Ghostbusters' proton packs could now harm him, Requardillion hastily vanished. As the clock's chimed twelve, heralding the New Year, McSlippery hovered over Peter, dripping slime on him as the frog transformed back into a man.

Comments: Created by John Freeman, Brian Williamson, Stephen Baskerville and John Burns.

   McSlippery Slimer first appeared (afaik) in Marvel UK's The Real Ghostbusters, a licensed title that included brand new tales of the titular characters. In McSlipper's case he appeared in a couple of text tales, in #134 and 148 respectively. Since the latter tale appears to discuss his first encounter with "his nephew" Slimer, and the former has them already knowing one another, it seems his two stories were published out of in-universe chronological order. I'm only aware of these two appearances, but it's feasible he has turned up elsewhere - if you know of another of his hauntings, please do get in touch and we'll update the profile!

   The Real Ghostbusters tales exist in both a Ghostbusters multiverse (c.f. IDW's Ghostbusters: Crossing Over miniseries which saw different incarnations of the Ghostbusters from across comics, movies and cartoons encountering one another) and a Marvel Megaverse, as evidenced by Death's Head sneaking himself into the background in Real Ghostbusters#42 and the Ghostbuster's encounter with the reality-hopping Gwanzulum. Thus, having been created for a Marvel title and with his reality connected to other Marvel-related ones, McSlippery is fair game for Appendix coverage.

   McSlippery Slimer may have once been a human before coming a ghost. If so, it's fair to say his real name while alive was probably not McSlippery Slimer. That might count as his "real" name as a ghost though - I suppose it depends on whether ghosts routinely retain their original human names, with monikers like Slimer being nicknames, or whether specters (at least the ones who have evolved away from their human appearances) are considered effectively new beings with identities separate from the ones they had while alive. Likewise, it's possible McSlippery and Slimer were related while both were alive - family members might well have shared similar partying vices and so taken on similar forms as ghosts - or whether they were unrelated as living people, but took their similar ghost forms as evidence of a post-death familial relationship.

   However, it's possibly that he was never human. He's described as Slimer's uncle, and the Ghostbuster tales that have delved into Slimer's origins (IDW's Ghostbusters Annual 2017 and Insight Edition's Tobin's Spirit Guide seem to suggest Slimer might not have ever been human, but rather a "true hungry spirit," a "semi-corporeal manifestation of gluttony." If Slimer is a never-human spectral manifestation of a human vice (the equivalent of Marvel's abstract entities such as Death, Mistress Love, etc.), then McSlippery is presumably also one, perhaps the rather specific vice of Hogmanay overindulgence. This would also mean his real name is actually McSlippery Slimer, and opens up the worrying possibility that there are similar Slimer entities representing overindulgence for other occasions, ghosts for other holidays, and ghosts representing other abstract concepts. Since we do know that in the Ghostbusters' multiverse there are never-human ghosts that represent Christmas (c.f. the Ghosts of Christmas Past, Present and Future who showed up in The Real Ghostbusters cartoon, and Sinterklaas and Krampus in IDW) and Halloween (Samhain in the cartoons and IDW), and an apparently never-human ghost tied to fear (the Fear Itself ghost), the possibility that both Slimer and McSlippery might be ghostly manifestations of abstract concepts isn't all that improbable.

   While Slimer spoke in a childlike manner, stretching out the e's at the end of words, McSlippery's speech patterns were more adult, but with a thick Scottish burr.

   Though the cover date of the issue was 5th January 1991, the actual on-shelf date of British comics was generally five to six days ahead of that date. Thus the issue in question would have actually come out around New Year's Eve, explaining why Uncle McSlippery was introduced in a Hogmanay story.

   Hogmanay is the Scottish name for New Year's Eve, and is traditionally a big deal in Scotland, for many Scots a bigger excuse for a party than Christmas. So it's not really surprising that when John Freeman decided to make a ghost associated with that holiday, he made said ghost Scottish.

   The Ghostbusters saw through Requardillion's trap immediately because in Real Ghostbusters#132, two weeks earlier, they had run into a later version of the demon who had fallen back through time; unaware of this crucial fact, he insisted he would not be beaten the same way he had previously, unwittingly informing the Ghostbusters of the time and location of the ambush his younger self was soon to set, thus ensuring its failure.

Profile by Loki.

CLARIFICATIONS:
Uncle McSlippery Slimer is the uncle of

but has no known connections to:

images: (without ads)
The Real Ghostbuster#148, p13, pan1 (main image)
The Real Ghostbuster#134, p10, pan1 (celebrating Hogmanay with Slimer)

Appearances:
The Real Ghostbuster#134 (5th January 1991) - John Freeman (writer), Brian Williamson, Stephen Baskerville and John Burns (art), Stuart Bartlett (editor)
The Real Ghostbuster#148 (13th April 1991) - Dan Abnett (writer), artist unidentified, Stuart Bartlett (editor)

First Posted: 12/31/2022
Last updated: 12/31/2022

Any Additions/Corrections? please let me know.

Non-Marvel Copyright info
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