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Picture of Mopee
Occupation: Initiate Tenth Class of the Heavenly Help-Mates
First Appearance: Flash v.1 #167 (February 1967)

Imp-like “Heavenly Help-Mate” who claimed that he gave Flash Barry Allen his speed. Supposedly, Mopee directed the lightning bolt to hit his window. Years later, he was sent back to Earth to remove those powers because of a technicality: The police department, not Barry, owned the chemicals that splashed him. The Flash convinced Mopee to check the rule book, and he found a solution: if the Flash could buy the equivalent chemicals, he could keep his powers. However, he had to earn the money as the Flash, not as Barry Allen. The Flash succeeded, and Mopee restored his powers.

Mopee’s tale has (mercifully) been removed from continuity (see below).

Text by Kelson Vibber. Do not copy without permission.

Top of Page Primary Sources

  • Flash #167 (February 1967): “The Real Origin of the Flash,” Gardner Fox

Art

  • Flash (first series) #167 (February 1967) - Carmine Infantino and Sid Greene

Silver-Age Appearances

Flash #167 Cover
  • Flash #167 (February 1967): “The Real Origin of the Flash,” Gardner Fox

Significant Legacy-Era Flash Appearances

  • Ambush Bug #3 (August 1985): “The Ambush Bug History of the DC Universe,“ Keith Giffen & Robert Fleming

Notes

Mopee’s story is notable in that it was so thoroughly rejected by fans and creators alike that it was never mentioned again. Not in later issues of The Flash. Not in Secret Origins or a Secret Files book. Not in later re-tellings of the Flash’s origin. Not in books like The Kingdom or Infinite Crisis, which revisted obscure tales. Even The Flash II profile in Who’s Who #8 (1985) spares just one sentence: “An account alleging that the accident that gave Allen his powers was actually staged by a being named Mopee is entirely incorrect” (emphasis added).

The only subsequent references to Mopee in DC books have been in out-of-continuity comedies: The Ambush Bug History of the DC Universe (Ambush Bug #3, 1985) is full of goofy characters and story elements that, like Mopee, have been deliberately ignored by later books. (In this one, Mopee claims credit for the origins of Superman, Wonder Woman, Batman, Green Lantern, Supergirl, Spider-Man, the Hulk, and the X-Men.) He also appears in a one-off gag in Super-Friends #11 (2009) alongside other imps like Bat-Mite, Mr. Mxyzptlk, Qwsp, etc.

As for in-continuity appearances, there is an in-joke in The Life Story of the Flash. On the night of the fateful lightning strike, Barry Allen is analyzing a sample of a hallucinogen called monoglycetic peptide enzyme, known on the street as “mopee.”

He has, however, been spotlighted in Oddball Comics.

In fact, the term “Mopee” has become a label for stories that “purport to alter a significant fact in a character’s established history and [are] so universally reviled that mutual amnesia is engaged and the story is ejected from the canon, never to be mentioned again.”

Mopee’s appearance has been compared to Woody Allen, though it's reportedly based on long-time Flash editor Julius Schwartz.