Didja Know... Jeff the Baby Land Shark

Didja Know digs into downright delightful details from across the merry Marvel Multiverse!

Didja Know digs into the fun facts, strange stories, and divine details that helped build the hallowed halls of the House of Ideas!

Hey, True Believers! We’ve said it before and we’ll say it again—we can do that ‘cause it’s our column—the Marvel Universe’s a wild, wooly, and wonderful place with a character for everyone! And thank the stars for that, otherwise we wouldn’t be able to continue with our month-long amazing animals theme this week!

That crazy ol’ Otto Octavius seems to be getting some help from the kids in the West Coast Avengers to knock this WAR OF THE REALMS thing on its big ol’ noggin in SUPERIOR SPIDER-MAN #8, but to be honest, we’re more concerned about celebrating a certain cute new character that’s become all the rage.

Who? It’s a baby shark, bunky! What? No! Don’t run away screaming! Not that kind of baby shark! It’s Jeff! Jeff the Land Shark! And we’re jawin’ about him right now!

Didja Know… what the heck a land shark even is?

No? Well, as it turns out, neither did we! Nossir, not us, so we looked it up in our Funk & Wagnalls and boy, what we learned!

Seems a land shark can be another name for a German Shepherd, which is fall-down funny if you think about it. It can also be a not-so-nice term for a real estate speculator, which is also kinda humorous, too. In addition, a land shark is the mighty mascot for the University of Mississippi—check our spelling on that, wouldja?—and a frightfully famous 1975 skit from equally famous Saturday Night Live!

But, for our pulse-pounding purposes here, a land shark is none other than that ginchy, groovy Gwenpool’s new pet, and the blistering bane of her titanic teammates.

Didja Know… how Gwenpool found Jeff?

Another thing we love about the Marvel Universe revolves around the terrific teams that live in it, those garrulous groupings of persons and pets that really make our world go ‘round…like Kitty Pryde and Lockheed, Crystal and Lockjaw, Aunt May and whatever that dog of hers was called…heck even Man-Thing and Howard the Duck! And now we have Gwenpool and Jeff—aww!

Gwen found the little lost land shark in WEST COAST AVENGERS #7, just as the team was wrapping up another amazing adventure, that time in a marvelous monster mash with the Masters of Evil. It’s a match made in heaven: There was Gwen, there was Jeff—boom! Fast friends! Don’t believe us? Just look at ‘em playing together in WEST COAST AVENGERS #8!

Didja Know… which other WCA-er loves Jeff, too?

As long as you don’t tell anyone else, we’ll tell ya, Charlie… but keep it on the QT, ‘cause he threatened to turn our brains into scrambled eggs if we told another soul. Pssst: It’s Quentin Quire!

So, when Gwen first showed off Jeff to the team in WEST COAST AVENGERS #7, not everybody was thrilled about him. In fact, nobody was thrilled. We mean, Jeff’s short little shark with legs and a mouth full of teeth, right? Besides that, he goes RRRRN RRNNNNN, and that’s enough to freak anyone out, Frances!

But, for whatever reason, Quentin digs him a little and Jeff looks fairly fond of him. Go figure. We’re just glad the little dude’s on the team—they need to take a bigger bite out of crime.