There are some comic book characters out there who break the fourth wall…that’s to say, they show an awareness that they’re comic book characters and interact with the reader directly.
The Marvel mercenary Deadpool, for instance, points out how comforting it is that his thoughts show up in yellow thought boxes, and when asked by another character he hasn’t seen in a while, “How long’s it been?” is able to provide the title and number of the comic they last appeared in.
She-Hulk has been known to argue with the writers when she’s in a situation that she thinks is unrealistic or unfair, and she’s introduced comic books into evidence to help prove her case (she’s a lawyer).
On the DC side, there’s most famously the Flash, who accidentally ended up in our world/dimension, and had to meet with his writers in order to find a way to get back home.
The fairly unremarkable Animal Man ended up going into another dimension where characters who were no longer in continuity lived, where Grant Morrison explained to him that he was being canceled because he had become nothing more than a soapbox for Grant Morrison’s advocacy of animal rights and that he was no longer interesting the readers.
Minor note: Animal man wasn’t being canceled. It was just that Grant Morrison had decided to quit the title. Morrison explained, in comic, that he thought he was getting too preachy. I forget how long Animal Man continued (that was around the time I quit comics entirely), but it did go on for awhile under new writers.
Cerebus was a series that had a LOT of breaking the 4th wall. I never read all of it, but I know the main character had extended conversations with the writer (Dave Sim) multiple times. Based on decades old memories, I think there were at least five or six times it happened. The first time had a 25 issues storyline who’s main purpose was the lead up to this conversation.
Ambush Bug broke the fourth wall occasionally. As did the Elongated man. Sandman came kinda close once or twice but I don’t think it ever actually outright did.
She’s torn the page to get out of a cell, leading fellow escapees across a two-page advertisement before tearing through to another comic page. And someone barked their shin on the staple when they crossed the crease.
You can’t get a much more broken fourth wall than that.
I don’t know if this counts, but I remember from when I read comics as a kid that the X-Men used to take turns answering fans in the letters section. For example, I remember Wolverine explaining that Marvel’s depictions of Japan were so accurate because he sent the writers lots of photographs from his visits there.
In D.C. land, if I’m not mistaken, the Joker has shown an awareness that he was a comic book character. I don’t know if he ever actually reached out to the audience and tried to interact with it, however.
Squirrel Girl of the Great Lakes Avengers (and her squirrel companions, the late Monkey Joe and his replacement, Tippy Toe) would address the readers frequently. She was also able to defeat villains way outside of her weight class by having access to their trading card stats.
This happens in the current issue of Doom Patrol, which opens with Ambush Bug singing a song to recap the plot line. He mentions the number of panels on the page and sneers at any “cheapskates” reading the comic in the store.
The lead character Jack in Jack of Fables used to break the fourth wall all the time. They did a crossover with Fables where Jack became angry at the other characters in his own book, announces that he’s leaving for the main Fables title, and shows up Fables, with this breaking the fourth wall cover in Fables 84:
The gimmick of Superboy-Prime is that he’s not just a comic-book character who knows it, but that he grew up hereabouts in the real world before winding up in the comic-book reality of the DCU with full awareness of his backstory, occasionally popping back into our world to read DC’s online message boards and see what folks think about his latest exploits.
You’re right; the Jack of Fables stories do this frequently. Some examples that come to mind:
– Using a narrative box (like a voiceover), Jack always addresses the reader directly at the end of each issue, telling the reader what to expect in the next issue. However, he is always wrong about what’s coming.
– In one of the storylines involving the Snow Queen, Priscilla Page, who states she is doing this in her “role as a librarian and educator,” uses a flip chart and a pointer to explain to the readers how things work in the Snow Queen’s land.
– An entire storyline is hosted by Eliza Wall, who has three siblings (she is literally “the fourth Wall”). Again, Eliza directly addresses the reader at the beginning and end of each installment.
It’s not that Cerebus broke the fourth wall but that Dave Sim did. Cerebus is eventually approached by the disembodied voice of Dave Sim in the ‘Minds’ story arc. But it was Sim who initiated it and had to prove to the character that he was the author. It’s not a matter of the sort of ‘tongue in check’ fourth wall breaking that pops up fairly often. It’s not a process that Cerebus enjoys.
While Superman first started looking at (and winking at) the audience at the end of the early 1940’s Fleischer Studios cartoons, this moved pretty quickly into comics – indeed, there’s an early 1940’s Superman story in which Clark has to get Lois out of the movie theatre playing a Fleischer cartoon before his secret identity is revealed on-screen (!). Clark winks at the reader at the end of that one.
‘Fourth wall’ breaking pretty much goes all the way back in comics – The Yellow Kid addressed the reader, as would characters in later early strips like Bringing Up Father (which was extraordinarily self-reflexive) and Krazy Kat and Thimble Theatre.
As to Animal Man…Grant Morrison would actually bring Comic Book Limbo (just called ‘Limbo’) into ‘official’ DC continuity in the FINAL CRISIS: SUPERMAN BEYOND 2-part miniseries, with the Inferior Five and others appearing in Limbo to help Superman.
Also, couple of years back JUSTICE LEAGUE OF AMERICA, while written (I think) by Dwayne McDuffie, tried to explain the entire self-reflexive ANIMAL MAN storyline as having been perpetrated by the African trickster-God Anansi on Animal Man.
Actually, that’s why I consider it probably the most notable example of breaking the 4th wall. Unlike pretty much every other example brought up (except Animal Man), it was not a gag. It was actually relevant to the plot and had real significance to how the story went.
The bit with Superboy-Prime had relevance to the plot and significance to how the story went; it’s a big part of why he was so cavalier about killing and dismembering assorted comic-book characters who got in his way, sure as “got in his way” relates to his role in a plan to reach out into our reality for the win, restructuring the comic-book universe as easily as writers and publishers do. (Which, though it of course could have been done in “zany gag” style, was played fairly straight.)