Mirkin the Mystic has only made one appearance so far, in the first issue of Paradax (1987), but to many he is considered to be their favourite Brendan McCarthy character. Mirkin is a member of the Mystics race who inhabit the Realms, a set of parallel worlds all derived from the source of ultimate reality, Realm One also know as Earth. In these Realms fictional characters free from the constrictions of ultimate reality come to life.

Brendan McCarthy: "When I have been drawing a lot, I am usually in a semi-trance like state and say about four in the morning, if I have been drawing all day my hand is very loose by that time, and its almost like you are drawing on automatic. Sometimes when I just stop whatever it is I am doing and my hand might be resting against a piece of paper, suddenly this character will just come through. I know for a fact that the difference in quality of drawing is that I don't draw the character, it draws me if you like. It just comes out from the bottom of my pencil and I think "good god, who is he or what is that?" and it gets filed away for future use. For example "Mirkin the Mystic" was a character that came like that. Mirkin has been floating about for about five years or more. He was not called Mirkin, he was just a drawing of this guy with a flat head and eventually I had written the name "mirkin" down for some reason and I saw the two pieces of paper next to each other and realised that that was his name. He then acquired his particular personality, through me reading a book by martin Amis, which had this fantastic character in it. I thought this is a perfect character for Mirkin's personality."

"So this creation of characters and how I come up with them. Sometimes it clinical and sometimes it comes through, if you like a trance. That's the best way I can describe it. I do actually believe that it's to do with the fact that I have somehow put my ego to sleep for a while, and things come through from the ether, I find that a interesting process. I think any artist worth his salt would know what I'm talking about, It's not just mystical mumbo-jumbo it is actually quite true and I think this whole area is just fascinating, about where things come from, and what you are tapping into. I'd love to be able to tap into it at will, but I can't. It almost catches me unawares."

"Mirkin, I think, was truly inspired. Pete's (Milligan) script was fabulous and the design of the character was original and the style of the strip, the kind of montage 'occult' psychedelia really came off well. I must say that I think the amount of actual ideas in the Paradax comic would probably be enough to keep some other creators busy for at least a few years...we really tent to tear through concepts as if they were going out of style. Because our work is funny and sharp, I don't think it gets taken as seriously as the more pedantically earnest offerings from the other crowd. A strip like Mirkin is to me far in advance of most of the waffle that is currently masquerading as 'literature' these days. I'd rather read just eight pages of sheer and utter bliss than all these huge, rambling (and to me, the worst crime of all) BORING tomes that are being churned out in the current climate of comics."