Real
Name: Gordon Gremlin
Identity/Class: Gremlin
Occupation: Mischief maker
Group Membership: None
Affiliations: Fingy, Drillem
or Killem, George, Ghosthunters (Joe Mole,
Moe Mole), Ghostman
Bat, Mummy's Boy, Slimer, Tiny, Wick Ed;
formerly Fairy Godmother
Enemies: Elsie, Elsie's
baby, Harold, Harold's
mother, several other unidentified unfortunates he taunted and
tormented;
Marmaduke (one-sided - Marmaduke
likes Gordon);
his relationship with his sister Zilla
is somewhat antagonistic
Known Relatives: Unidentified father, Zilla (sister), Marmaduke (cousin), unidentified fairy godmother
Aliases: None
Base of Operations: Unrevealed, but presumably somewhere in the U.K.
First Appearance: It's Wicked!#1/2 (20th May 1989)
Powers/Abilities: Gordon could detach his ears and even attach them temporarily to others. He can hover in the air, and can also turn invisible at will; given that he sat behind someone in a photo booth and made his picture appear rather than theirs, he might also be able to make other people and objects invisible. Assuming he had similar powers to the other Gremlins seen, he could survive being sliced up and would simply become multiple smaller versions of himself. He constantly broke the fourth wall, although this might have been simply a feature of appearing in a humor strip rather than an ability he personally had. He was also somewhat scientifically gifted (or maybe it was really magic) as he made a growth formula that transformed a budgie into a giant.
Height: 4' (by estimation)
Weight: Unrevealed (see comments)
Eyes: Orange sclera with white irises
Hair: Black (mostly bald)
History:
(It's Wicked!#1/2) - As per
his name, Gordon was Gremlin and delighted in causing chaos.
(It's Wicked!#14/3) - He was 4002 years old.
(It's
Wicked!#15 letters page) - Ghostman Bat
considered Gordon a good friend and they would
get together to discuss pranks and practical
jokes.
(It's Wicked!#1/2) - One day he went wig fishing, using a fishing line with extra sticky chewing gum on the end with the intention of tormenting anyone who looked like they might be wearing a hairpiece. Spotting someone who "looked like they had a dead cat on their head," Gordon used his line to snatch it off the man's head, jokingly asking "Toupee or not toupee, that is the question." As Gordon had suspected, the man was indeed bald and the gum snagged his rug from his head - but it turned out to be a very alive and very angry cat, none too amused by Gordon's antics, and the gremlin fled from the enraged moggy.
(Real Ghostbusters#49/2) - Gordon joined Slimer, the
Ghosthunters, Mummy's Boy and Wick Ed to promote the released of the
first issue of It's Wicked!
(It's Wicked!#2/2) - Gordon performed his poem, "Fings
Wot I Like," both reciting it and carrying out the actions with
appropriate props.
"I like detaching
my ears when I drank ginger beer, and eating a worm sandwich or two!
I like pulling funny faces, and
sneaking in places to fill up your wellies with glue.
I like chocolates
and sweets, all I can eat, and I'll probably steal them from you!"
(It's
Wicked!#3/2) - Gordon was lazing in bed at home when his
sister Zilla called from downstairs asking if he was getting up. When
he retorted that he'd sleep on it and get back to her, she roared back
ordering him out of bed. Literally shaken out of bed by the sound,
Gordon commented that his sister's name was short for Godzilla, and
that he wasn't claiming she was a big ugly monster, just that King
Kong kept phoning her asking for a date. At this Zilla's gigantic foot
came down next to Gordon, and she warned him that one more cheeky
remark would get him squashed like a bug. Undaunted, Gordon unleashed
his pet newt Tiny on Zilla, aware that she was terrified of small
lizards, and as she screamed and recoiled Gordon joked that he was a
"newty boy."
(It's Wicked!#4/2) - Gordon introduced his cousin,
the nice Gremlin Marmaduke, or "Smarmy Marmy" as Gordon dubbed him.
Enraged at the concept of a nice Gremlin, Gordon promised he'd do
terrible things to Marmy. While Gordon fetched some paint, Marmaduke
reassured the readers that Gordon wouldn't harm him, insisting he
was too nice a person. Seconds later Gordon emptied a paint bucket's
contents over Marmaduke's head and asked if he still considered
Gordon to be nice. Despite his dousing Marmaduke insisted that he
did, so a frustrated Gordon, determined to prove otherwise, hogtied
Marmaduke and put him in a mincer, then asked the readers to write
in before next week to let him know whether he should mince Marmy,
adding that he hoped they'd say yes.
(It's Wicked!#5/2) - Surrounded by piles of
letters a lounging Gordon revealed that hundreds of letters had
all asked him to do the same thing - mince Marmaduke! So he
happily obliged, activating the mincer. However, to his horror
this only served to split Marmaduke into four smaller versions,
"Marmites," all of whom continued to forgive Gordon and tell him
he was a nice person.
(It's Wicked!#6/2) - Gordon was
sick in bed with a cold, but his father believed he was faking
it and insisted that he needed to get up since there was nothing
wrong with him. Then Gordon sneezed so violently that it sent
his father flying through the bedroom wall. Smugly, Gordon
looked at the Dad-shaped hole in the wall and asked rhetorically
"You were saying, Dad?"
(It's
Wicked!#7/2) - Gordon read Marmaduke's Manual for
Good Gremlins, and was so annoyed by it that he tied up
Marmaduke and suspended him over a vat of stinky gunge. When
Marmaduke reassured readers that he knew Gordon and Gordon
would never drop him in the disgusting stuff, Gordon gleefully
released his hold on the rope, and laughingly told the readers
that Marmaduke didn't know him very well.
(It's
Wicked!#8/2) - Gordon revealed to readers that he,
like most Gremlins, could turn invisible at will, and
demonstrated, using the ability to trip up a passerby and
steal a boy's ice cream. He then explained that he could
also detach his ears and attach them to others,
demonstrating this and leading his victim to be taunted for
having big ear by a rude child. Unfortunately for Gordon,
the victim ran off, taking Gordon's ears with him, but
Gordon was philosophical about this, remembering the old
saying "Ear today, gone tomorrow."
(It's Wicked!#9/2) - Spotting a mother
(Elsie) out for a walk with her newborn son in a pram,
Gordon decided it would be funny to climb in the carriage
with the tot while the mother was momentarily distracted.
Elsie ran into a friend who was excited to see the new
child, but when she did so Gordon frightened her, pulling
a face to make himself appear even more monstrous than
usual. Perturbed, Elsie checked in the pram only for
Gordon to scare her too, puckering up and going "Kissy,
kissy Mummy." However, this was the last straw for the
infant, and as Gordon rolled around laughing the infant
rolled up his sleeves in preparation for delivering a
beat-down. After being bashed with the baby's racket,
Gordon was left behind wanting to locate a nurse for his
aching head while Elsie took her child to the nursery.
(It's Wicked!#10/3) - On
holiday with the family, Gordon took pictures of his
antics and sent them to the readers:
(It's Wicked!#11/3) -
Gordon presented "Gourmet Gordon's Krazy Kitchen,"
intending to demonstrate how to prepare three dishes:
Muck Burgers, Worm Sandwiches and Splat Pie.
Unfortunately the manure wasn't ripe enough for the
first and the worms had escaped, leaving only the
splat pie. He mixed a sockful's worth of rancid
custard and a pint of smelly jelly in a bowl, then
dunked it all over Marmaduke's head. Gordon then
promised that on the next show he'd add Marmaduke to a
pot of piranha fish pie.
(It's
Wicked!#12/3) - Gordon hung around a photo
booth waiting for an opportunity to get a laugh.
Seeing an overly doting mother send her son Harold
inside to have his photo taken, Gordon slipped
inside invisibly and sat behind the boy, then
(possibly by turning the boy invisible without his
knowledge) ensured he appeared in the photos rather
than the lad. Seeing Gordon's ugly mug in the
pictures, Harold's mother assumed her boy had
transformed into a monster and fled. Gordon
considered it cheek on her part to describe him as a
monster, stating that Harold was the ugly one while
he was a vision of loveliness.
(It's Wicked!#13/3) - Invisible,
Gordon crashed a child's birthday party, diving
bombing into some jelly to splatter it on one
child, then hitting another in the face with a
plateful of whipped cream, and then pushing a
third child face first into a cake. Taking delight
in disrupting the part, he boasted that readers
should hire a "Gremlin Gram" if they want to liven
up birthday parties or granny's golden wedding,
but while doing so he forgot to maintain his
invisibility and so was surrounded by the angry
children and their parents, who pelted him with
what remained of the food.
(It's Wicked!#14/3)
- One Tuesday Gordon carried out an experiment,
trying out a new "super fast grow formula" on a
budgie down in the pet store and turning it into
a giant taller than a six-story building which
proceeded to wreck the store, stomp down the
main street as people fled in fear, and get the
army called out to deal with the confused avian.
Proudly recording these events in his diary,
Gordon noted that next week he might build a
giant gorilla from spare parts, since he liked
making new friends.
(It's Wicked!#15/3)
- Suffering from intense toothache Gordon
reluctantly went for treatment at the offices
of Drillem and Killem, despite being terrified
of dentists. When he asked the dentist whether
the procedure would hurt the dentist reassured
Gordon that as a Gremlin dentist of course
it would hurt a lot, explaining that he would
start with a nasty injection which would be
really sore, then he'd pull Gordon's teeth out
with clamps. Unwilling to stick around, Gordon
fled in panic, smashing through the wall to
get away.
(It's
Wicked!#16/2) - Gordon showed off
his pets, noting that he called his newt
Tiny by that name because it was "my-newt,"
revealing he exercised his killer shark in
the bath...even when his father was in
there, and showing off how he could smash
Fingy with a hammer. Picking up the still
living, somewhat annoyed, and now flattened
Fingy, Gordon joked that "fings ain't what
they used to be."
(It's Wicked!#17/2) - Gordon's fairy godmother appeared before him and offered to grant him three wishes. However Gordon found the whole concept ridiculous and rolled around the floor laughing at the idea of a fairy godmother, so she turned the ungrateful Gordon into a frog. Hopping around ribbiting, Gordon noted he knew what his first wish was going to be.
Comments: Created by unknown - the writer and artist (who may well have been the same person) were not credited.
It's Wicked! was a strange
departure for Marvel U.K. For those not used to British comics, while
Britain did have some comics whose format was much more akin to American
titles, the most common format for British comics was weekly titles
split into multiple ongoing strips. Adventure series would usually be
two or three pages per issue with an ongoing story, or story arcs, while
humor strips were frequently one page and usually each issue's
installment was self-contained. It was very common for humor strip
characters in a given title to randomly pop up in another character's
strip, as if they all lived in the same town, and breaking the fourth
wall was likewise commonplace. Marvel U.K. was predominately adventure
strips, based purely on the fact that they originally started with
material reprinted from American Marvel titles. Even when Marvel U.K.
began producing its own original material, they generally stuck to the
adventure strip format, with humor strips normally only represented in
three panel strips (similar in format to newspaper strips), usually on
the inside front page. By the mid-80s there was tiny bit of
variation on this, with humor strips like Lew Stringer's Combat Colin
getting a whole page to work with. Then, out of the blue, and
overlapping the time that Marvel U.K. made tentative ventures into
American format titles like Sleeze Brothers and Death's Head, along came
the polar opposite, It's Wicked!, a humor title that was clearly
trying to mimic the art and layout of Britain's highly successful Beano
or Dandy comics, full of single or two page strips with anarchic but
child friendly humor. The headline character was Slimer, borrowed from
Marvel U.K.'s licensed title The Real Ghostbusters, but the indicia made
it clear that everyone else belonged to Marvel (so who knows, we might
one day see these characters again, like we have for the Star Comics
characters). It wasn't a successful experiment, lasting only four
months, but that didn't stop Marvel U.K. trying again later the same
year with The Bog Paper, whose literal toilet humor motif seemed to be
aiming more at luring in the audience served by Britain's Viz than the
Beano.
Gordon's stories are all black and white, but we
know his coloring from the two It's Wicked adverts he appeared in. The
advert in Real Ghostbusters#49 for It's Wicked! was told in the form of
a story, hence its inclusion in the history above. Both titles came out
the same week, and the advert might also have appeared in other comics
released by Marvel UK that week. The main image above was in black and
white, but I've colored it using the colors he has in those adverts.
Alongside Mummy's Boy and Wick Ed, stars of other strips in It's Wicked!, Gordon was featured in a free giveaway "tattoo" included as a free gift in #2. Interestingly, it seems to show Gordon with a tail, an appendage he doesn't have in his actual stories. An early design detail that got dropped? Or does his tail detach (like his ears can) or retract?
He's shorter than adult humans, but more than
halfway their size, though there are few decent reference images to
estimate his height more accurately. His weight is anyone's guess, as we
don't know the body density of gremlins.
This profile was completed on 08/05/2026, but its publication was delayed as it was intended for the Appendix 25th anniversary's celebratory event to represent It's Wicked!
Profile by Loki.
CLARIFICATIONS:
Gordon Gremlin has no known connections to:
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Fingy was Gordon's pet, a creature of unrevealed origins that usually just hung around watching while Gordon carried out his mischief, though one time Gordon revealed that Fingy came in handy when Gordon wanted to bash something with a hammer. He communicated by holding up signs. --It's Wicked!#1/2 (It's Wicked!#2-8,
10-11, 16-17
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Zilla was Gordon's gigantic sister. He claimed that was short for Godzilla, but that may just have been a joke on his part, as he also quipped that she was an ugly monster and that King Kong kept asking her for a date. When Zilla angrily threatened to squash him like a bug if he made another cheeky remark, Gordon had his pet newt Tiny run up Zilla's leg, causing her to scream in terror because she was scared of small lizards. --It's Wicked!#3/2
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When Gordon was in bed with a cold his father refused to believe anything was wrong with him, only to be blown clean through a wall when Gordon sneezed. Many weeks later when the family was on holiday and on a beach Gordon buried his father in sand right up to his eyeballs. Even later Gordon terrified his dad by putting George, his killer shark, in Dad's bath while he was bathing. --It's Wicked!#6/2 (10/2, #16/2
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Tiny was Gordon's pet newt. It liked running up people's legs and nibbling their knees. On one occasion Gordon used Tiny to scare his sister, who was terrified of small lizards. Gordon liked to joke that he was called Tiny because he was "my-newt." --It's Wicked!#3/2 (#16/2
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Marmaduke was Gordon's cousin. A rare nice Gremlin, Gordon disparagingly called him Smarmy Marmy and took delight in tormenting him, first dropping paint over him, and then when Marmaduke still insisted Gordon was nice too, threatening to grind Marmaduke into mincemeat. However, when he did so, instead of being killed Marmaduke was split into four tinier versions of himself, "Marmites," who still forgave Gordon and told him he was a nice person. Having either recombined or at least
one Marmite grew back to full size, Marmaduke later told readers
of his Manual for Good Gremlins:
However Gordon had done just that, and in retaliation for Marmy's goodness Gordon tied him up suspended over smelly gunge. Marmaduke reassured the readers that he knew Gordon would never drop him in the disgusting morass, at which point Gordon did just that. When Marmaduke went on holiday with
Gordon's family, during a visit to a beach Gordon buried him in
sand up to his ankles - which wouldn't have been so bad, if
Marmaduke had been the right way up at the time. Later as part of presenting a cooking
show, Gordon dunked a pie on Marmaduke's head, and promised to a
pot of piranha fish soup on the next show. --It's Wicked!#4/2 (5/2, 7/2, 10/2, 11/3
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Elsie was a mother taking her baby son for a walk in his pram. When her attention was momentarily diverted Gordon climbed in alongside the baby and then scared first Elsie's friend when she looked in to see the infant, and then Elsie when she checked to see what had frightened her friend. However, this was the last straw, and the baby bashed Gordon. With the Gremlin dealt with, Elsie took her child to nursery. --It's Wicked!#9/2
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Harold was out with his mother when they passed
a photo booth. Deciding she wanted some photos of her boy
because she considered him so handsome, the mother sent Harold
in, but Gordon hijacked the pictures so that he appeared in them
instead. Seeing these photos, Harold's mother thought her boy
had turned into a monster and fled in terror, pursued by a
confused Harold. --It's Wicked!#12/3
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When Gordon needed a toothache treated he reluctantly went to Drillem and Killem's practice. One of them treated him, promising that (as a Gremlin dentist) it would hurt a great deal, but his explanation of what he was intending to do scared Gordon off before the damaged tooth could be extracted. The dentist took this philosophically, noting he could help it if he scared his patients, since he always told "the tooth and nothing but the tooth." --It's Wicked!#15/3
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George was Gordon's killer shark, which he put in the bathtub to scare his dad. --It's Wicked!#16/3
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Gordon Gremlin's Fairy Godmather appeared to him and offered to grant him three wishes. When he laughed at the idea of a fairy godmother, saying it was the most ridiculous idea he'd ever heard, she turned him into a frog. --It's Wicked!#17/3
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images: (without ads)
It's Wicked!#1,
p3, pan1 (logo and headshot)
It's Wicked!#1, p3, pan2 (main image)
It's Wicked!#8, p3, pan5 (detaching ears)
It's Wicked!#2, attached to
cover (tattoos)
Real Ghostbusters#57, p8, pan1 (advert)
It's Wicked!#16, p3, pan5 (Fingy)
It's
Wicked!#3, p3, pan5 (Zilla - as much as is shown,
anyway)
It's Wicked!#6, p3, pan2 (Dad)
It's Wicked!#3, p3,
pan6 (Tiny)
It's Wicked!#4, p3, pan1 (Marmaduke)
It's Wicked!#5, p3, pan5 (Marmites)
It's Wicked!#9, p3, pan7 (Elsie and baby)
It's Wicked!#12, p3, pan2 (Harold and mother)
It's Wicked!#15. p3, pan4 (Drillem or perhaps Killem)
It's Wicked!#16, p3, pan4 (George)
It's Wicked!#17, p3, pan5 (Fairy Godmother)
It's Wicked!#17, p3, pan2 (Fairy Godmother headshot)
Appearances:
It's Wicked!#1-17 (20th May-9th
September 1989) - Helen Stone (editor0; other creators not
credited
First Posted:
09/29/2026
Last updated: 08/05/2026
Any Additions/Corrections? please let me know.
Non-Marvel
Copyright
info
All other characters mentioned or pictured are ™ and © 1941-2099
Marvel Characters, Inc. All Rights Reserved. If you like this stuff, you
should check out the real thing!
Please visit The Marvel Official Site at: http://www.marvel.com
Special Thanks to www.g-mart.com for hosting the Appendix, Master List, etc.!
Fingy
Zilla
Dad
Tiny
Marmaduke
Elsie and her baby
Harold and his mother
Drillem or Killem
George
Fairy Godmother