Roald Dahl’s The Gremlins (1943)
Published in 1943, “The Gremlins” by Flight Lieutenant Roald Dahl was the first — and for a long time only — canonical account of gremlin lore in print. Disney illustrator Bill Justice did the research: gremlins wore mittens and Viking hats. It gets cold up there.
The story’s structure is worth noting: the gremlins’ forest home is destroyed when The Man builds a plane factory on it. Their sabotage of RAF aircraft is revenge for industrialization — an environmental origin story that predates Fern Gully by fifty years. In the end, a small act of British kindness (postage stamps) wins them over.
The Film That Wasn’t
Disney and Dahl developed a film adaptation, but it collapsed over competing claims to the idea of a gremlin — who owned the lore? The RAF wanted final say over any depiction. Dahl wanted compensation. Disney couldn’t square it. The unfinished film remains one of the more interesting artifacts of wartime entertainment history.
Dark Horse Restoration
Dark Horse Comics restored Dahl’s original story in 2006 with new illustrations by Dean Yeagle. Limited copies. Worth tracking down.
Why It Matters
Dahl’s gremlins are the hinge point in the mythology: before this story, gremlins were purely oral RAF folklore — blame-figures for mechanical failure. After it, they became characters with motivation, backstory, and moral complexity. The duality Dahl introduced — destructive but redeemable, dangerous but endearing — is what allowed the gremlin to survive into the Twilight Zone, into Spielberg, and into the present.