Willie Lumpkin

Willie Lumpkin
Willie Lumpkin demonstrates his ear-wiggling "power" in his debut appearance in Fantastic Four #11 (Feb, 1963). Art by Jack Kirby and Dick Ayers.
Publication information
Publisher	Marvel Comics
First appearance	(in daily comics): ? (1960), (in comic books): Fantastic Four #11 (February 1963)
Created by	Stan Lee (writer) Dan DeCarlo Jack Kirby (artist)
In-story information
Full name	Willie Lumpkin
Supporting character of	Fantastic Four, Spider-Man
Abilities	Ability to wiggle ears and nose

Willie Lumpkin is a fictional supporting character in the Marvel Universe, who is best known as the mailman of the Fantastic Four in their self-titled comic book.

The character was originally created for a syndicated daily comic strip by writer Stan Lee and artist Dan DeCarlo. Lee recalled in a 1998 interview that,

Mel Lazarus had done a strip called Miss Peach, which used not panels but one long panel instead. I liked that idea very much, so when Harold Anderson, the head of Publishers Syndicate, asked me to do a strip, I came up with Barney's Beat, which was about a New York City cop and all the characters on his patrol who he'd meet every day and there would be a gag. I did some samples with Dan DeCarlo, and I thought it was wonderful. Harold said it was too "big city-ish" and they're not going to care for it in the small towns because they don't have cops on a beat out there. He wanted something that would appeal to the hinterland, something bucolic. He said, "You know what I want, Stan? I want a mailman! A friendly little mailman in a small town." I don't remember if I came up with the name Lumpkin or he did, but I hated it. I think I came up with the name as a joke and he said, "Yeah, that's it! Good idea!"

Willie Lumpkin drew humor from the people and situations Willie would encounter along his mail delivery route in the small town of Glenville. The daily strip ran from December 1959 to May 6, 1961. A Sunday strip ran through May 28.

Lee and artist Jack Kirby then introduced their comic book version of Willie Lumpkin in Fantastic Four #11 (Feb. 1963). The comic book Lumpkin is depicted as significantly older than in the comic strip, though the character's good nature was retained, as were references to his past as a mailman in Glenville, which the comic book placed in Nebraska.

In his first comic book appearance, Lumpkin is represented as having befriended the Fantastic Four, to whom he makes regular fan mail deliveries at their Baxter Building headquarters in New York City. He half-jokingly requests to join the team on the grounds that he has the "power" to wiggle his ears.