| Dormammu | |
|---|---|
 | |
| Publication information | |
| Publisher | Marvel Comics |
| First appearance | Strange Tales #126 (November 1964)[1] |
| Created by | Stan Lee (writer) Steve Ditko (artist) |
| In-story information | |
| Species | Faltine |
| Team affiliations | Mindless Ones |
| Partnerships | Umar |
| Notable aliases | Lord of the Dark Dimension The Great Enigma Lord of Darkness The Dread One Lord of Chaos |
| Abilities |
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Dormammu (/dɔːrˈmɑːmuː/) is a character appearing inAmerican comic books published byMarvel Comics. Created byStan Lee andSteve Ditko, the character first appeared inStrange Tales #126 (November 1964).[2][3][4] He is the extra and inter-dimensional demonic entity and deity brother ofUmar and the uncle ofsuperheroineClea who rules over the Dark Dimension.[5][6] The character has endured as a recurringantagonist of thesuperheroDoctor Strange.[7][8]
Dormammu has appeared in associated Marvel merchandise includingfilms,animatedtelevision series,toys,trading cards, andvideo games. He made his live-action debut in the 2016Marvel Cinematic Universe filmDoctor Strange, performed through motion capture byBenedict Cumberbatch and voiced by a mixture of Cumberbatch and an unidentified British actor.
Dormammu first appeared inStrange Tales #126–127 (Nov.–Dec. 1964),[9] but had been mentioned previously in dialogue, along with his realm the "Dark Dimension".
WriterMike Conroy said:
To Lee and Steve Ditko, the Lord of the Realm of Darkness and the associated invocations were just another piece of business, another way of adding depth to the otherwordly [sic?] nature of Strange's adventures. However, the readers were intrigued. They wanted to know more. "It seems there was something about that nutty name, Dormammu, that was keeping Doc's devoted disciples awake at nights trying to figure out who Dormammu was," Lee explained. "I knew I was in big trouble. I had made up the name—now I had to dream up a character to go with the name. But who? How?Ditko visualized the answer. "He gave the demoniac DD...a visage totally different from any villain I had ever seen in comics before," proclaimed Lee.[10]
After being established as the ruler of analternate dimension (later described as the god-tyrant of its denizens),[11] Dormammu became a perennial foe of Sorcerer Supreme Doctor Strange, who until this time had dealt almost exclusively with off-beat "one-off" mystical threats inStrange Tales #110–125 (July 1963 – Oct. 1964).[12] Strange's first encounter with Dormammu in the "Dark Dimension" also introducedClea, eventually revealed to be the niece of the villain (like Clea's name, this was not initially revealed inStrange Tales #126; Nov. 1964), and the monstrous and imprisonedMindless Ones.
The character's major appearances include starring in an epic fifteen issue storyline inStrange Tales #131–146 (Apr. 1965 – July 1966); the discovery that Dormammu has a sister,Umar, and both are in fact mystical beings calledFaltine inStrange Tales #150 (Nov. 1966); teaming with fellow villainLoki to instigate the "Avengers-Defenders War" inThe Avengers #115–118 (Sept.–Dec. 1973) andThe Defenders #8–11 (Sept.–Dec. 1973);Thor Annual #9 (1981);Doctor Strange, Sorcerer Supreme #1–2 (Nov. 1988 & Jan. 1989) and thelimited seriesDoctor Strange: The Flight of the Bones #1–4 (Feb.–May 1999) andHellcat #1–3 (Sept.–Nov. 2000).
After a major appearance inThe Amazing Spider-Man #498–500 (Oct.–Dec. 2003), Dormammu became the patron of small-time villain theHood inNew Avengers #46 (Dec. 2008).
Dormammu is first mentioned byKarl Amadeus Mordo, senior apprentice of theAncient One, who serves as the "Sorcerer Supreme" and protector of Earth. Secretly in the entity's service, Mordo attempts to slowly weaken the Ancient One as a means of enabling Dormammu to finally extend his rule to Earth, but is stopped when his fellow pupilStephen Strange alerts his master to the betrayal.[13]
The character later appears in person when sending a messenger to boast his renewed intentions of conquering his universe before his aging adversary. In response, Doctor Strange travels to Dormammu's "Dark Dimension" as the Ancient One does not consider himself powerful enough to defeat Dormammu and manages to overcome all supernatural servitors sent against him. Dormammu engages Strange in mystic combat and shows himself to be far more powerful, but, when drawing upon the realm's energies, inadvertently weakens the barrier containing the horde ofMindless Ones. Since they threatened Dormammu's subjects, Strange helped his enemy to re-seal the juggernauts by letting power from his amulet flow into Dormammu. Indebted to Strange for his help, Dormammu ends the fight, and in return Strange demands a binding vow to never enter the "Earth realm" again and to not harm Clea. Dormammu complies, but gains a burning hatred against Strange for the humiliation.[14]
Dormammu uses a loophole to his oath by granting Mordo vast power, whereupon the sorcerer leads his minions on a lengthy hunt for Strange and abduct the Ancient One as a bargaining chip. Dormammu's niece,Clea, assists Strange by weakening the barrier of the Mindless Ones, forcing her uncle to focus elsewhere. Dormammu learns of her betrayal, brings all three Earth sorcerers to a neutral realm, to let her see his disciple destroy Strange, and summons fellow "Lords of the Netherworlds" to watch the spectacle. When Strange begins to get an advantage against Mordo, Dormammu decides to face the sorcerer in a contest of pure hand-to-hand-combat. The physically stronger entity eventually falls to his foe's greater familiarity withmartial arts. To Dormammu's humiliation, before the gathered Lords, Strange forces him to vow not to menace the Earth even by proxy. The villain strikes a parting blow by banishing Clea and inciting another lord to attack Strange.[15]
In an apparent bid for power the character engages the universal embodiment,Eternity, in single combat, but is defeated and banished.[16]
Dormammu captures Clea, and overpowers and imprisons Strange. The sorcerer manipulates Umar into freeing him, and then surprises Dormammu by pushing him through a portal to the Earth. This makes the entity wither from the curse cast by his own power, when vowing to never enter the Earth realm, and he departs to his own plane.[17]
Dormammu enters into an alliance with theAsgardianLoki and tricks superhero teams theAvengers andDefenders into fighting each other for components of the artifact known as theEvil Eye of Avalon. The Eye is reassembled, and allows Dormammu to merge his own universe with all the planets of the "regular" Marvel Universe without breaking his vow. Dormammu imprisons the traitorous Loki and effortlessly overwhelms all of his other opponents, leaving only theScarlet Witch. When Loki escapes and distracts Dormammu, the Scarlet Witch casts a hex on the Eye that causes it to absorb Dormammu, and costs Loki his sanity.[18]
After being seen inflashback,[19] the character manages to reintegrate himself on Earth, but is recovering slowly to full strength. Together with Umar, Dormammu captures the elder goddess Gaea,[20] and seeks revenge against the Scarlet Witch by kidnapping her and her mentorAgatha Harkness from her wedding to theVision. After Wanda and Agatha remove the heat needed for his regeneration, he departs for his own realm.[21] Immediately afterwards, he attempts to destroy Doctor Strange and Clea. He is betrayed by Umar, who steals his power and allows the character to be banished from Earth.[22]
Dormammu tricks Strange into battling both the demonGhost Rider and the Bounty Hunter in an unsuccessful attempt to kill Strange.[23] Dormammu appears in a "What If...?"alternate universe story as Strange's master in that reality.[24]
Dormammu acts as the envoy ofLord Chaos and plays againstOdin in a cosmic chess match whose outcome decides the universal balance of chaos and order. Umar attempts to rig the game in her brother's favor by manipulating Odin's son Thor unsuccessfully, and the game ends in a draw.[25]
Dormammu's agent Baron Mordo travels back in time toLondon in the year 1943, where he allies with thearistocrats Viscount Krowler and Sir Anthony Baskerville. Dormammu possesses Krowler, and begins to manifest on the Earth plane by absorbing power from the destruction ofWorld War II, but he is banished by Doctor Strange.[26]
The character reappears during the "Inferno" storyline. Strange, following an arduous confrontation withShuma-Gorath, heals through a process that takes him through various mystical realms. This allows Dormammu to attach himself to his foe, and possess the sorcerer's body, which exempts him from the vow to not directly enter the Earth-realm. Summoning extraterrestrial sorcerers as his lieutenants, Dormammu vows to "burn" and replace theCelestials as the greatest power in the Earth's universe, but is distracted and tricked by Clea and Strange (his consciousness occupying arat), while their allyTopaz exorcises Dormammu's presence.[27]
The character reconstitutes again, regains control of the Dark Dimension from Clea by subverting her will, and summons her parents, Umar and Orini, from exile. Umar and Baron Mordo join forces with Clea and Doctor Strange. The enraged Dormammu threatens to completely destroy the "Dark Dimension" in retaliation, but Umar convinces him to accept a compromise as the ruler of a sub-realm, whereas his sister takes over rulership from Clea, with Mordo as her consort. Clea agrees to abdicate rather than see all of her people killed, but promises to return if Umar becomes a tyrant again. Dormammu finds that he has been tricked into becoming the ruler of the realm of the Mindless Ones.[28]
After two brief appearances,[29][30] Dormammu, in the guise of another of the Faltine, manipulates Clea into recruiting allies from the Lords of the Netherworlds to depose her mother. This frees Dormammu to reclaim his realm. He absorbs Umar and Mordo into himself, becoming more powerful than ever before, and he disintegrates the assembled entities.
Strange, at the time weakened without support from the "Principalities", confronts Dormammu with his allies Clea, theSilver Surfer,Hulk, andGhost Rider, but they are unable to cause any injury to the villain. Strange journeys into the core of Dormammu's essence and uses theEye of Agamotto to strip away his self-delusion, and make him acknowledge that his thirst for chaos, power, and conquest are unworthy of a being of his stature. Dormammu is momentarily shaken, and appears to be defeated, but this is only a mirage. The villain gloats that he has not shown "one tenth" of his true power against the heroes, but that he now realizes that rulership of "one puny" universe is beneath his notice, as he now has far greater and "more interesting" ambitions, and contemptuously dismisses the "insignificant mortals".[31]
The character observes theGuardians of the Galaxy—adventurers from the31st century ofEarth-691—travel to the mainstream era ofEarth-616. Dormammu follows them back to theirdimension, merges with his counterpart in this timeline, doubling his power, and attacks their headquarters, demanding the presence of the Doctor Strange of their time. Strange, now called the Ancient One, arrives with his disciple, the alienKrugarr, and battles Dormammu, assisted by the Guardians, the "Galactic Guardians", and thePhoenix Force. Dormammu kills the elderly Strange, and almost overwhelms his other foes, but is defeated when Krugarr summons the spirit of Strange, and they channel the combined power of everyone in the assembly to banish Dormammu to his home dimension.[32]
Dormammu appears as the guiding force behind an attack on the self-titledGoddess[33] during "The Infinity Crusade" storyline. DuringThe Flight of the Bones storyline the character is revealed as the instigator behind a series ofspontaneous combustions of criminals and an attack on an ally of Strange by cultists.[34]
Dormammu uses the demon lordSatannish (revealed as his creation) andwarlockNicholas Scratch to lead his Demonic armies to capture five of the inter-dimensional places ofHell, in a plot to eventually conquer all life and afterlife. Dormammu, however, is thwarted when the heroineHellcat rallies the powers of Hell to weaken the character by engineering a complete absence of mystic flame.[35] Dormammu also allies with the entityMephisto to drive an attacking force out of their respective dimensions.[36]
Dormammu sends an army of Mindless Ones to attack the city ofNew York, and trick several prominent Marvel superheroes into unintentionally making him materialize on Earth by tricking them into combining dimensional energies in an attempt to dispel the Mindless Ones. Doctor Strange engages Dormammu in combat, and sends the heroSpider-Man back in time to a critical moment to stop his enemy from being able to re-enter Earth's universe, Spider-Man warning the heroes to delay in their attempts to stop the Mindless Ones long enough for the younger Strange to show up and banish them himself.[37]
Dormammu returns, now in a symbiotic link with Umar. Together they petition the "Pan-dimensional Oversight Council" (counting Strange andNightmare among its members) to perform apreemptive strike against Earth's superhumans, as "potentialweapons of mass destruction", and when the petition fails, Dormammu eats most of the present council-members, whereas Umar reduces the rest to "screaming blobs of mindless jelly". The siblings then attack and overcome the entity Eternity, and use the acquired power to remake all universes in their hellish image. The pair are opposed by a reuniting of some of the original Defenders (Strange, the Hulk, andNamor the Sub-Mariner), with Dormammu retreating when Umar steals his power.[38] The character also appears briefly during a storyline in which Strange contemplates his past.[39]
Acting in secrecy, Dormammu empowers criminal mastermind theHood, who in turn resurrects several dead supervillains and forms a crime army.[40] When the Hood asks for information about his "benefactor" from the demonessSatana, she claims that Dormammu disposed of his sister off-page.[41]
The character temporarily takes control of the "zombie" virus that decimatesEarth-2149,[42] and also takes advantage of the fact that Strange loses the title of Sorcerer Supreme, but the latter eventuallyexorcises his influence from the Hood together withDaimon Hellstrom andDoctor Voodoo.[43]
Dormammu briefly appears when the newly appointed "Sorcerer Supreme" Doctor Voodoo enters his domain. The villain dismisses Voodoo as an "unworthy" opponent and refers to his vastly inferior "gutter gods". This, however, causes Voodoo to strengthen the seals to the entity's realm.[44] The character also appears as one of the prospective "suitors" (holders of a slave-contract) for the hand of Satana.[45]
During the "Fear Itself" storyline, Dormammu attended the Devil's Advocacy where they talked about the threat of the Serpent on Earth.[46]
Dormammu appears inUncanny X-Men. AfterIllyana Rasputin is pulled into Limbo it is revealed that Dormammu is responsible for taking over the realm.[47] Dormammu is apparently killed by Illyana off-page.[48]
The entity reappears with a plot to turn humanity intoMindless Ones, but is thwarted by the plans ofPhil Coulson, with help from theAbsorbing Man and theHowling Commandos.[49]
During the "Damnation" storyline, Doctor Strange's soul encounters Dormammu in the Realm Between while Mephisto is causing trouble inLas Vegas.[50]
During the "One World Under Doom" storyline, Dormammu learns that Doctor Doom has become the new Sorcerer Supreme in the aftermath of the "Blood Hunt" storyline. Noting that Doom is shirking on some of the responsibilities of a Sorcerer Supreme, Dormammu states that now is the time for him to start an invasion from the Dark Dimension.[51]
Dormammu has been described as "something worse than a demon."[41] It is unknown exactly how ancient he is, as he inhabits a wholly alien realm, separate from the rest of theMarvel Universe, that defies the laws of physics as understood on Earth. He is known to have already existed at the creation of the current demonic netherworlds;[35] to have clashed with Agamotto hundreds of millions of years ago; to have served as the primary enemy of the Vishanti ever since; and to have been considered an extreme threat by the mages of "pre-cataclysm"Atlantis.[42]
Dormammu is presented as the most powerful and malevolent of "the Faltine",[31] higher-dimensional mystical energy beings. Not native to the "Dark Dimension", Dormammu and "his" sibling Umar were exiled for slaying their progenitor "Sinifer" and for their morbid/unclean obsession with physical matter. They journeyed to the Dark Dimension in search of experience, and assumed corporeal forms.[52] Dormammu merged with the local "Flames of Regency" to further enhance his power, and returned to an energy state, whereas Umar had grown accustomed to physical pleasure. After imprisoning the horde of marauding virtually unstoppableMindless Ones, Dormammu enslaved the entire realm and demanded worship as its sole deity. He continued to gradually merge other mystical universes to his own, while spreading his worship to any sorcerers throughout the multiverse who invoked his powers.[53]
The character is sometimes shown as incredibly patient, with certain plots to achieve his goals spanning billions of years,[35] whereas others are planned far more recently or even improvised through opportunity.[31] Although extremely intelligent, with tremendous knowledge of the mystic arts, he is overwhelmingly arrogant, generally does not adapt well to sudden confusion and unexpected developments,[32] and has a tendency to gloat over technically outmatched foes rather than swiftly finish them off.[15][18][31][44] What makes Dormammu different from other prominent Marvel supervillains is that he has been shown as fully capable of personally defeating cosmic entities, even without external power sources and outside of the "Dark Dimension".[32][38]
Dormammu and his sister Umar have an unpredictable love-hate relationship. Sometimes loyal and collaborative, other times they gladly betray each other or take the other's power for themselves.[31][38] Umar has an occasional tendency to sarcastically puncture her brother's obsessive histrionics with more pragmatic sadistic hedonism.[38]
WriterKeith Giffen has described them as "Donnie and Marie from hell. The brother-sister sibling rivalry relationship blown up to nightmarish, universe-shattering proportions." Nevertheless, Dormammu is "completely inhuman",[54] the kind of character that "commits mass murder... on a whim".[55]
Dormammu is acknowledged by Doctor Strange as his "most terrible foe."[56] He is described as a threat to "the life of the universe itself" that "at full power no one could stand against."[57] He has been displayed approaching a universal or even multiversal scale of influence.[38][58]
The character can project energy bolts and beams.[18][59] He is able to alter his size andteleport across dimensions.[60][61][62][63] He can use his powers to travel through time.[64][65] Dormammu can give a portion of his powers to others and turn them into powerful beings.[66][67]The Hood tapped the powers of Dormammu to resurrect the dead.[68][69] He is able to manipulate matter to alter and shape objects.[70][71] Dormammu has the power to manipulate reality.[72] The character can possess the body of another being.[73] He also appears to be immortal.[74]
Dormammu is seemingly stronger in the Dark Dimension, as he is empowered by the worship of his followers.[75]
Adam Holmes ofCinemaBlend included Dormammu in their "10 Awesome Marvel Villains We Need To See In The MCU" list.[76] Jamie Lovett ofComicBook.com ranked Dormammu first in their "5 Greatest Doctor Strange Villains" list.[77] Trey Pasch ofMovieWeb ranked Dormammu first in their "Doctor Strange: His Best Comic Book Villains" list.[78] Rachel Ulatowski ofThe Mary Sue ranked Dormammu fourth in their "Strongest Marvel Villains" list.[79] Chris Heasman ofLooper ranked Dormammu fourth in their "Doctor Strange's Most Powerful Villains" list.[80]IGN ranked Dormammu 56th in their "Top 100 Comic Book Villains" list.[81][82]
Screen Rant included Dormammu in their "10 Best Characters Who Made Their Debut In Doctor Strange Comics" list,[83] in their "Ghost Rider's 10 Greatest Enemies In The Comic Books" list,[84] in their "10 Most Terrifying Demons In Marvel And DC Comics" list,[85] and in their "15 Most Powerful Magical Beings In Marvel Comics" list.[86]CBR.com ranked Dormammu second in their "11 Strongest Doctor Strange Villains" list,[87] eighth in their "10 Most Powerful Comic Book Villains With Demonic Origins" list,[88] and ninth in their "9 Darkest Characters Doctor Strange Fought In The Comics" list.[89]
An alternate universe variant of Dormammu from Earth-2301 appears inMarvel Mangaverse.[90]
An alternate universe variant of Dormammu from Earth-1610 appears inUltimate Marvel.[91] After killing Doctor Strange's son, he is confronted by theFantastic Four and transformed into a powerless human.[92]
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