Mr. Jip

Mr. Jip is a sinister sorcerer and recurring villain in Marvel's street-level mystical corner, primarily menacing Cloak and Dagger. An ancient, grotesquely aged figure wielding dark magic, he schemes to possess a younger body to escape his decrepit form.

Few villains in Marvel's Copper Age arrived with quite the unsettling presence of Mr. Jip, who slithered onto the scene in Strange Tales #8 in 1987, conjured by the creative team of Terry Austin and Bret Blevins. His world is the shadowy corner of the Marvel Universe inhabited by Cloak and Dagger — Tyrone Johnson and Tandy Bowen — and the mysterious Night, making for some of the most atmospheric, street-level storytelling the era had to offer. Across 34 years of appearances, from Strange Tales through The Mutant Misadventures of Cloak and Dagger and into a handsome Omnibus collection, Mr. Jip has proven himself a figure of genuine staying power for a character with a relatively modest page count. If you're a fan of Marvel's darker, more esoteric corners, tracking down his key issue is well worth the hunt.