Jimmy Morehead

Creation

Jimmy Morehead was created by writer John Ney Rieber and penciler Gary Amaro in Vertigo Rave in 1994. His first appearance in The Books of Magic was in issue 9 in 1995.

Major Story Arcs

Jimmy is one of Tim Hunter‘s best friends as a child. Before Tim’s mother Mary was killed, they would often hang out, and she would make them sandwiches with a lot of jam and no crusts, which he especially likes.

Once, Tim cries because the other boys pick Jimmy over him for a team, even though Tim is faster.

Tim later learns from his creation In the No that the other kids only played with him because Jimmy made them.

The two boys and Tim’s parents visit Brighton beach. They have fun, and Tim pulls an ankh out of a toy claw machine. Jimmy trades for it, and then a fisherman trades them free rides all day for it. He says he’s trying to catch a muddle-mullah with it.

They go on some rides, and when they imagines the ferris wheel coming loose, Tim’s magic makes it break down, so they sit and daydream in it.

Years later, Jimmy has been bringing girls to an empty lot to make out. This lot is a place where Tim, as a child, often played and, unknowingly, brought his imaginary friends to life. Jimmy and a girl found the head of a Narl like Tanger and Crimple, and heard weird voices, so they ran away. He sees Tim there soon after, and warns Tim to stay away from the lot.

Jimmy and Bizzie are huffing in an alley when Marya walks by. Bizzie considers harassing her, but she gives them an amazing golden apple from Free Country.

Later, Jimmy and another teen, named Bizzie, meet Reverend Slaggingham. Slaggingham tells them that they need to help the world against a menace to the working men of the world by catching Tim Hunter. However, since Jimmy was once Tim’s best friend, he tells the Reverend to forget it.

The Reverend, in revenge, shoots both Jimmy and Bizzie with a “gutta-percha gun,” which covers them with a magical version of the rubber-like material it is named after, freezes them in place, and then shrinks them down into tiny action-figure-sized dolls, killing them in the process.

Much later, Tim sees Jimmy’s figure in a sewing shop that Gwendolyn sent him to as an errand. Jimmy is now being used as a pin cushion. Tim freaks out. He says everyone thought Jimmy ran away from home, but feels responsible because it was obviously magic that turned him into this state.

Tim buys him from the store and takes him home. In the No, one of Tim’s magical creations, tells him that Slaggingham is the one who killed Jimmy.

Tim takes Jimmy’s statue-form to Brighton beach to reminisce about their childhood. He considers asking John Constantine to help Jimmy, but then starts thinking no one will care enough to help.

Tim runs into the fisherman still talking about the muddle-mullah, and Death is there as well. She explains that Jimmy is dead, and Tim symbolically leaves his statue on the shore.

Jimmy’s body later washes up on the beach, as if he had drowned.

Much later, Jimmy’s mother eats magic strawberries that grew from seeds that Death gave to Tim, and which he planted on Mary’s grave. Anyone who eats the berries will remember one of Mary’s memories. Jimmy’s mother goes there regularly to remember her son through Mary’s eyes. Gwendolyn castigates her and Sir Derek Sutler for eating Mary’s memories instead of leaving them for Tim.

Other Versions

In one alternate reality created by Tim, several Books of Magic characters act as members of a Teen Titans-esque team called the Mystic Youth. The white Jimmy was caught in a nuclear blast and somehow ends up in the body of a black teen, similar to Cyborg, leaving him to wrestle with his new strange racial identity. They are all killed by Tim’s alternate-reality self, The Other.