Fission Chicken

Fission Chicken is a comic book and webcomic character created by John Patrick (J.P.) Morgan (1957–2010). Fission Chicken is a short-tempered superhero chicken who can fly, is extremely strong, bulletproof, and can project power bolts from his hands.

Starting in 1987, Fission Chicken appeared in numerous stories published in the comic book Critters (Fantagraphics Books), as well as his own series from the same publisher. Other appearances over the years include Plan Nine from Vortox (MU Press), appearances in Furrlough (Radio Comix), Valiant Varmints and SFA Spotlight #14 (Shanda Fantasy Arts). Pages by J.P. Morgan can also be read on the Fission Chicken website.

Fission Chicken ("Fish" for short) fights a continuing battle against weird monsters and cultural brain death. Notably, he has battled the mind control attempts of Vortoxians (a malevolent race of alien marketing experts), the Ditsy entertainment empire (a parody of The Walt Disney Company), and Video Zombies. Some unusual opponents he has fought include the Ether Bunny (a rabbit bank-robber who uses airborne incapacitating agents on his victims), Percival Ulmer "P.U." Evolcraft (a somewhat deranged occultist and a satire on H. P. Lovecraft), ambulatory living toilets, the movie monster Ferdie Cruller (a pun on Freddy Kruger), the Dero (a subterranean race), an army of incompetent and dull-witted invaders from the planet "Ineptune", and his own evil duplicate. Other characters in the series include Monica Fether (his beautiful girlfriend—who can also fire energy bolts), Skip Squirrelhard (his P.I. friend, who aspires to be a children's book author), Dr. Lawrence Livergut and Crouton (a scientist and his assistant who often inadvertently create extra problems for our hero), and Norman Gnu (AKA Normannu the Gnostic Gnu, a free-spirited mystic who travels through time).

Unlike most superhero characters, Fission Chicken does not use an alias to hide his identity, and simply goes by the name "Fission Chicken". Several episodes reveal that his base of operations is an apartment in an unnamed city in New Jersey (creator J.P. Morgan was a resident of Keansburg, NJ), and his friend Skip Squirrelhard is his upstairs neighbor.

"Fission Chicken" creator John Patrick Morgan died December 30, 2010 at the age of 53. His final online strip, the conclusion of a story arc, had appeared on Christmas Eve that year.

External links

• Fission Chicken website (Archived at Internet Archive)
• http://www.home.earthlink.net/~johnpmorgan/FCindex.htm
• http://www.internationalhero.co.uk/f/fissionchicken.htm
• Overview of FC art (with some animation) on YouTube
• Cartoonist J.P. Morgan and his Fission Chicken at Pseudo Comments
• Obituary for John P Morgan

References

• Rovin, Jeff. "Fission Chicken" entry in The Illustrated Encyclopedia of Cartoon Animals (Prentice Hall, 1991) ISBN 0-13-275561-0 (incl. illo)