Imaginary Friend / Comic Books

• Depending on which story one believes, Bat-Mite is either an imaginary friend, an entity from the same dimension as Mr. Mxyzptlk, or a drug-induced hallucination. One story written by certified madman Grant Morrison implied he might be both by having Mite claim that the fifth dimension is the dimension of imagination.
• In Doom Patrol, the Reality Warper Dorothy Spinner had a group of disturbingly surreal imaginary friends and, because she had psychic powers, they could actually affect the world around them as though they were real people who just happened to be unpercievable by any sense. She had some who were good, who she used to help her be a superhero, and some who turned out to be evil, who she killed with an imaginary gun.
• Imaginary Fiends is a short-lived imprint from DC Comics that plays imps not as omnipotent, cartoony humanoids but Interdimensional Mental Parasites. They start off cutesy and fantastical when they bond with a human child, feeding off positive emotions like joy. If they get a taste for negative emotions such as fear however, they may greedily turn into monsters and establish cults to feed off of after making their kid their first victim or first agent in generating terror.
• Mr. Immortal had Deathurge in Great Lakes Avengers. Who isn't Imaginary at all.
• The Savage Dragon features She-Dragon, who, in a parody of She-Hulk's No Fourth Wall tendencies, had five or so imaginary friends, who many issues later turned out to be real people trapped in another dimension with a psychic link to her.
• A 1980s New Mutants storyline has Karma cursed into a morbidly obese form weighing nearly 400 pounds. When the New Mutants are cast across Asgard and she finds herself in a desert, Karama decides to literally lay down and die. She's roused by a young girl crying for help from a monster, using her powers to save her. Karma decides to care for the girl, forcing herself to fight and hunt for survival. After months in the desert, Karma has not only shed all that weight but even put on some muscle, to the surprise of teammates Cypher and Warlock when they find her (the team had been scattered across time and space). When Karma tries to introduce her friend, she's surprised to see the girl has vanished and there's a piece of string on her finger. It turns out the Norns took pity on Karma and created the girl as a way of inspiring Karma to embrace living again.
• John Wayne in Preacher. He first started appearing when Jesse Custer was a child in need of a means of coping with his Evil Matriarch grandmother's abuse, and would occasionally show up during Jesse's adulthood as well.
  • Jesse believes that at one point, Wayne conveyed information that Jesse himself could not have known. Jesse never figures out the full reality of Wayne, but considering the cosmic powers thrown around...
• Calvin and Hobbes: on the surface, a textbook case of a boy and his imaginary friend. But in execution, things are not quite so simple.
• Robin from the Belgian comic book series Sarah And Robin. He used to be the imaginary friend of Sarah's grandfather before she met him and he became her only friend. He borders on Not-So-Imaginary Friend since he can interact with the world around him (like grabbing objects or opening doors), even though only people that believe he exists can see him.
• Garfield has one of his own, known as Clive. Often, Garfield will blame eating food left out on Clive. Jon wises up to this, but sometimes it gets real confusing as to whether he exists or not.
• In Violine, Violine shows her new pet mouse her best friend, who is a drawing of one.
• In the comic series Rachel Rising, Aunt Johnny's mind has a tendency to distract her while working at her job as a mortician by conjuring up visions of famous visitors coming into the building. This happens regularly enough that when Johnny's niece Rachel, who Johnny doesn't know was murdered only to rise from her grave, comes into the place Johnny assumes the deathly pale Revenant with clear signs of damage from being strangled is just another vision and refuses to believe it's real for quite awhile.
  Oh, you'd be amazed at the people I've talked to in this building after midnight. Buddy Holly, Jack the Ripper, that beautiful ensign from New Zealand... God, I miss the Navy... one night Christ rode in here on a donkey, palm leaves all all over the place. That was a mess. I saw Elvis in the bathroom, go talk to him.
• Spencer & Locke, which parodies Calvin and Hobbes, reimagines a young boy as a Hard Boiled Detective with a seven-foot-tall blue panther named Spencer. The result of years of abuse, Spencer seems to be the result of Locke's Sanity Slippage masked by I Just Want to Have Friends... but when Locke's daughter Hero sees him in a critical moment, the line starts to blur.
• The alter ego of Italian comic book artist Zerocalcare is always paired with his imaginary armadillo friend (a cartoony version of the real animal). His first published book is even named "La profezia dell'armadillo", or The Armadillo Prophecy.
• Thorgal's son Jolan's Psychic Powers once managed to conjure up a friend for himself by the name of Alinoe. Unfortunately, it turned out to be an evil little bastard.
• Disney Kingdoms: In the Figment comics, the titular character is Blair Mercurial/Dreamfinder's childhood imaginary friend brought to life.

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