“Who’s a Good Boy?!”

It’s day 15 (about the halfway point) of 2025’s Jack Kir­by Trib­ute Month, focused on the Fan­tas­tic Four and relat­ed char­ac­ters. On this last day of a group­ing of allies and sup­port­ing char­ac­ters, today’s prompt is the Inhu­mans’ giant dog, Lockjaw.

Lock­jaw first shows up in FF #45, along with Crys­tal of the Inhu­mans. He’s large­ly Crys­tal’s pet (“large” being the oper­a­tive word), and is a strik­ing sight. All the Inhu­mans have spe­cial pow­ers, and Lock­jaw is no excep­tion. He’s able to tele­port him­self and oth­ers wher­ev­er he wants to go. In fact, there’s a peri­od where John­ny Storm and Wyatt Wing­foot accom­pa­ny Lock­jaw as he tele­ports around, hop­ing he will bring them to wher­ev­er Crys­tal and the oth­er Inhu­mans are trapped. It ends up being quite a jour­ney before they final­ly reach their desired destination.

I’ve been won­der­ing a bit about what inspired Jack and Stan to cre­ate Lock­jaw. This isn’t some­thing I’ve par­tic­u­lar­ly researched, but the thought of old paint­ed por­traits of nobil­i­ty or roy­al­ty came to mind, where they were some­times depict­ed with their pets. So why not a giant bull­dog befit­ting a roy­al fam­i­ly as unusu­al as the Inhu­mans? It’s only a guess, but maybe that was where Lock­jaw came from.

Tomor­row we move from allies and sup­port­ing char­ac­ters to the FF’s rogues gallery. Who’s going to be first? Check in tomor­row to see!