Dormammu is a joke.
Seriously. He’s a joke. His existence at this point is to be really powerful so that Dr. Strange can kick his ass to show how powerful Dr. Strange is. And given that Dr. Strange’s existence at this point is essentially justified only to get his ass kicked so that other heroes can look good, that makes Dormammu the Duras to Strange’s Lt. Worf. How sad is that? One of the most massively powerful evil entities in comics is a punchline.
NO MORE!
Here’s the the most important thing about Dormammu that people need to remember: he is much, much more powerful than Dr. Strange. He is much older, much more practiced, has greater magical reserves to draw on, is just simply tougher than the Doc is. Dr. Strange’s reaction to seeing Dormammu should never be “oh, bother, it’s Dormammu again.” It should be “ohshitohshitohshit Dormammu.”
The reason Dr. Strange can beat Dormammu at all is simple: Dormammu’s very powerful and very learned, but he’s arrogant and not that quick-witted. Not dumb, mind you – you don’t get to be ruler of the Dark Dimension by being stupid. But Dormammu tends to think directly and simply and emotionally.1 Dormammu wants to beat Dr. Strange and prove that Strange is his inferior, which is why he always loses; Strange doesn’t care about proving a goddamn thing, he just wants to win. Preferably without getting killed. All of this adds up to Strange usually being able to outwit Dormammu, because Dormammu will give Strange time to lick his wounds or make a plan or do something to save the day. You can’t defeat somebody without humiliating him.
But what if Dormammu finally lost his temper once and for all? What if instead of wanting to beat Strange, he finally snapped and just started wanting to kill him? No subtle invasions, no deals with lesser mages, none of that bullshit Dormammu always tries to pull. Dormammu’s going to realize something: he didn’t trick and stunt his way to the top of the Dark Dimension, he conquered the fucking place. He killed everybody who opposed him and a whole lot of other people besides then brutalized the corpses to instill a neverending reign of fear. And if he wants Earth, he has to kill the Sorcerer Supreme first. It’s just that simple.
Imagine that Dormammu coming after Strange. He’d attack when Strange was absolutely exhausted, right after the Sorcerer Supreme had defeated some massive evil bent on destroying this entire universe. Just think about that, you’re Doctor Strange, you’ve just beaten back Chthon, you’ve used up half a dozen favours owed to the Outer Gods and you need a steak and a shower and then a week of solid sleep. You teleport back to the Sanctum, and there’s Dormammu waiting for you and he doesn’t say a goddamn thing, he just launches a massive power-blast at you that you barely deflect, and then it is on.
He doesn’t stop coming at you. He just follows you and keeps applying more and more mystical force at you, and bats away your attacks like they’re nothing because to him that’s pretty much what they are. He’s willing to drain the lives of most of the population of his dimension to kill you. But you’re Doctor Strange, and you’re a good man, and you won’t do that. And that’s why you can’t win this time.
You teleport away trying to buy time and he just comes right after you, tracking your magical trail; twenty seconds later he’s attacking you on the isolated Pacific isle you popped yourself to, and at least now you’ve put enough space between yourself and the rest of humanity that you can open up, but even attacking back at full power it’s only a matter of time, because Dormammu finally figured out that if he just keeps hitting you and never gives you a chance to try something, you’re a dead man.
And that is why it was a very good idea for Stephen Strange to find himself a group of apprentices. While Strange and Dormammu have a knock-down drag-out magical brawl to make Jim Starlin cry tears of sheer joy, his apprentices can desperately search for a way to outwit Dormammu. Because Strange is too busy trying to not die to beat him.
- An evil version of Mustrum Ridcully, if you like. [↩]
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Hell. Yes.
This is what’s lacking in so many villains these days: proper damn relentlessness.
Evil. Mustrum. Ridcully. You, sir, have given me an evilgasm.
And now that I’ve got that moment of fanboyish awesomeness out of the way…
There are probably good reasons Dormammu hasn’t done something like this already. To show up out of the blue (red?), in one’s full majesty to start wrecking shit is a pretty serious escalation, not just with Strange, but with other extra-dimensional powers.
And while the description of Dormammu’s thought processes as being like an “evil Mustrum Ridcully” is a brilliant one, it’s important to remember that Ridcully is very smart, even though calling him a linear thinker is a grotesque understatement.
Dormammu showing up on Earth like that would be a nuclear damn event from a mystic standpoint. So, what would make him finally go for it?
Rest assured that I have already considered and answered this, even if I’m not telling you.
I know the whole comparison to John Constantine has been pointlessly done to death, but this really does remind me of when the First of the Fallen disposed of the rest of the Triumvirate and really turned the screws on John. That said, yes, sometimes comic books just need a straight-out hopeless smash’n’brawl and I does enjoy them. But this feels like it should be the prologue of an even bigger storyline — with Dormammu’s attack being the final big push that called down a whole spiderweb of treaties and allegiances down on each other, like a magical World War I.
I agree with the principal, but I think there’s a danger here of turning Dormammu into Magic Sabertooth, which I think would dilute the character’s menace in a whole ‘nother way.
Why hasn’t Marvel HIRED you yet?!
DC has him on an exclusive.
Grade A damn right!
With all of these ideas for comics, I don’t see why you don’t team up with an artist and break into the business by pitching something to Image. You’ve already got a following.
Hell, is Rex the Motherfucking Wonder Dog open for use? If not, go to the Alan Moore route ala Watchmen and just create a character similar to Rex the motherfucking Wonder Dog and go with that.
I love reading these things even if a good portion of the time I have no idea who you’re talking about. (The Pratchett reference definitely help though.) The -point is- they make me want to learn.
I was all set to say “yes, but..” to this. Because we know Strange is going to win in the end anyway. Even with the justification for why Dormmammu has been a punk in the past, newer more aggressive Dormmammu is still going to lose, and we know it, so in the end the status quo is reset anyway. And the big D still ends up looking like a punk in the end. (Your observation is correct, though – Dormmammu fills the same role that Martian Manhunter fills on Grant Morrison’s Justice League).
But then I read the footnote:
An evil version of Mustrum Ridcully
Truly, sir, you are a god among men. Cast Dormmammu in that light (even without the comedic overtones) and I don’t think it matters that we know that eventually the status quo is going to be reset. Because, frankly, evil Mustrum Ridcully is an awesome idea for a villain and I’m kind of pissed that I’ve never thought of it myself.
(Now excuse me while I see where in my current D&D game I can fit an evil Mustrum Ridcully villain…)
Dr. Strange as Harry Dresden, anyone?
Seriously, this is a very Jim Butcher-esque treatment…
I dunno. Dormmammu (parodied as “Rorkannu,” but it was him) was a pretty good punchline in “Nextwave”:
Rorkannu: “You have invoked Rorkannu. Dread Rorkannu, Lord of the Dank Dimension, prodigal scion of Faltine, ruler of all he does perceive.”
Beyond Rep: “Hello. I represent the Beyond Corporation. It’s come to our attention that you control an unusual natural resource, over there in the Dank Dimension. The Mindless Ones, I believe they’re called. Big hunched-over guys who fire death stuff from their faces? We would like to rent those, please. What do you want for them?”
Rorkannu: “… girls. Cash also works.”
Beyond Rep: “Um… I have a hundred on me.”
Rorkannu: “Yes. Give me your hundred. … YES! I have a hundred of the Earth dollars! .. Ahem… This is acceptable to Dread Rorkannu. Yes. And the girls. I like those ‘Suicide Girls’.”
Beyond rep: “Suicide Girls.”
Rorkannu: “On the website. The girls with tatoos and piercings. I like those. No blondes.”
hey, just wanted to say that the more of these I read, the more I want to start reading Dr. Strange. The problem, of course, is that it necessarily won’t be this cool. Presumably, though, there’s something there worth reading or else you wouldn’t care enough to come up with these killer stories, yes?
Just from the description this sounds a lot like JMS’ Spider-Man stories involving Morlun, basically an unrelenting, supremely powerful enemy, that won’t rest, won’t let the hero even breathe for a split second until he’s killed said hero.
And yet, Morlun just wanted Spider-Man, Dormammu wants the entire dimension so Strange has significantly more than “I gotta save myself” going through his mind.
Actually, if you read past issues of Dr. Strange, you find that Dormmammuu derives the bulk of his power from the worship of him by his subjects. Thus, the easiest way to defeat him is to make him into something his people wouldn’t want to worship, and the easiest thing to do would be to change his appearance. Suddenly, instead of the Dark Lord of the Dark Dimension, who stands before you but Zippy the Pinhead in a Dormmamuu-muu….
(I am a bad person…)
I’ve got similar reservations, for the same reasons. Dormammu as a magical version of the Juggernaught might make him more horrifying from a “That blast came from the DEATH STAR!!” perspective, but there’s something about a seven foot tall flaming interdimensional magical ruler of the Dark Dimension just showing up to punch you till you stop moving still leaves me asking – what does Dr. Strange do once he’s done?
So lets say Strange fends him off, banishes him back, whatever. Do you just write Dormammu off forever? Or does he keep coming back to do the same Dormammu SMASH! routine twenty comic books down the line?
As a one-off escapade, it would be entertaining, but you’re going to have to do more with Dormammu in the long run.
I think Dread Dormammu does need rehabilitation as a character, hes a punchline, a joke just now. Even outside of his recoloured counterpart in nextwave he tends to get treated as a powerful idiot who exists primarily to be manipulated by his sister into being her stalking horse/magical muscle.
So while I would love to see this story (I’m a HUUUUUGE strange fan from when I used to read the UK reprints as a kid, but I dont like most of how he gets written in most current comics) I’d just like to mention that this one would need a slow build, by which I mean NO USE of dormammu at all for a while to regain a little bit of his threat level.
Should Doctor Strange die so that we can see what it means to be Sorcerer Supreme?
Knowing marvel though the new candidate will be the Emma Frost with black hair and less clothes.
“Emma Frost with black hair and less clothes.”
You say that like it’s a bad thing.
I thought Emma Frost just ran around naked at this point.
There are probably good reasons Dormammu hasn’t done something like this already. To show up out of the blue (red?), in one’s full majesty to start wrecking shit is a pretty serious escalation, not just with Strange, but with other extra-dimensional powers.
…
Dormammu showing up on Earth like that would be a nuclear damn event from a mystic standpoint. So, what would make him finally go for it?
I don’t think it necessarily has to be anything more than him finally saying “Screw those other extradimensional powers, I’m the God Damn Dormammu.” Hell, picking a fight with the rest of the otherdimensional gods is probably half the point. Maybe they even all go “oh goddamn, big dumb Dormammu’s picking a fight again,” show up on Earth to confront him, and Dormammu says “hey it’s cool I was just leaving, PS the instant you suckers showed up here my armies invaded your undefended dimensions. Seeya!”
The reason Dr. Strange can beat Dormammu at all is simple: Dormammu’s very powerful and very learned, but he’s arrogant and not that quick-witted. Not dumb, mind you – you don’t get to be ruler of the Dark Dimension by being stupid. But Dormammu tends to think directly and simply and emotionally.1 Dormammu wants to beat Dr. Strange and prove that Strange is his inferior, which is why he always loses; Strange doesn’t care about proving a goddamn thing, he just wants to win.
This sounds a lot like most good renditions of the Doom / Richards rivalry, which is interesting cause the plot concept itself sounds a lot like when Mark Waid had Doom show up at Richard’s door, imprison his family, and throw his son into hell. Which isn’t a bad thing.
I remember being sad at the recent Jokey Defenders series where Dormammu was a complete idiot and his sister Umar wanted to bang the Hulk for some reason. I would like Dormammu to be scary.
That’s my feeling towards Galactus, too. He shows up just so the insanely powerful new threat can beat him up to show how insanely powerful they are.
Strange slept with his sister.
I dunno. He could always have beaten the crap out of Wong and Strange’s apprentices while waiting around for Strange to show up. That way the apprentices are splitting their time and efforts between trying to come up with a way to help Strange beat Dormammu and trying to make sure the other ones don’t die–more tension to the battle! And even if we assume that none of them die, they could be paralyzed, lost a limb, etc.
That would be fixed later anyways, of course. I mean, come on–the status quo is always reset in comics. This is hardly unique to Strange / Dormammu.
*Havelock Vetinari gets up from his desk. he looks out the window and looks to Unseen University.*
“ye gods”
*channeling Dormammu*
Hear the words of the Dread Dormammu, human! It is not enough to merely kill the body of the sorcerer Stephen Strange! Any mage worthy of the title knows that death is simply a doorway to greater realms of being. Had I but wished it, he would be burning eternally in the Flames of Faltine now. No, he must bow to me, body and soul. He must acknowledge me as his better, his master. I have conquered the entire Dark Dimension! Not mere worlds, but an entire plane of existence! Untold throngs of beings tremble at the merest whisper of my name. But not he. Not the accursed Strange! And so, I must conquer him. I must conquer the so-called Sorcerer Supreme! He shall bow before my fell throne and wear my chain! So swears Dormammu!
*my head hurts now, also slightly singed*
So does this mean we won’t get to see The Captain beat him up? 🙁
Did you see his appearance in Marvel Adventures Super Heroes? The Ancient One beat Dormammu and drew up a twelve-thousand page contract to banish him and limit his powers on Earth. Since the Ancient One had been fighting for a month, it was also incoherent. The Mindless Ones can only be summoned when he is next to a red convertible. No affecting objects within ten feet of a mailbox. Manifesting on Earth with all powers only as a squirrel. No using magic on housecats, can’t teleport into a ballerina’s house, no dry-cleaning his clothes, eat hot dogs on Wednesdays, no green shoes with black shoelaces, no using magic while dressed as a schoolgirl, can’t name a pet dog after a musician, can’t draw mustaches on posters, can’t encase a grasshopper in peanut butter. He had to have a lawyer.
He did say he was more powerful than Seraphim. The Ancient one shows up and tells Strange that he’d had two thousand years of master sorcery under his belt before he faced Dormammu, and Strange only lasts seven seconds, getting beat pretty bad even when near a mailbox. He only beat Dormammu by having Franklin Nelson, Wong, and the Ancient One go over the contract and revealing that Dormammu had not paid exact change for that hot dog, as apparently revealing a breach in the contract sucks him back out of our dimension.
Isn’t Dormammu the being behind the Hood’s magic blanket?
“apparently revealing a breach in the contract sucks him back out of our dimension”
Or tricking him into saying his name backwards.
“Ummamrod!”
“oh wait, thats the other guy.”
I have to wonder how other Marvel Super heroes would respond to that kind of a fight. “There’s a being of immense power down the-Oh, Dr. Strange is already on it! We’ll leave it to him.”
“For God’s Sakes, HELP ME!”
“Um, Captain America, I thought I heard him ask for help…”
“Don’t be silly, he’s Dr. Strange! He’s doing fine.”
Or possibly: “Yeah. That’s a dark god fighting the guy in charge of all of the universe’s magical defenses. I’m sure these arrows will be very helpful.”
I haven’t exactly been keeping up with the Hood, but I remember it being a demon other than Dormammu. The name of the demon the Hood jacked and got his cloak from was “Nisanti.” (Somebody once pointed out that in BKV’s “Runaways,” one of the Minoru parents says Nisanti’s name when casting a spell, btw.)
Now whether Nisanti might be Dormammu in disguise, or whether Nisanti might work for Dormammu, I do not know.
Speaking of people who work for Dormammu…Dormammu could wait until Strange was exhausted and strike then, sure. But the waiting game sucks (not nearly as much fun as Hungry Hungry Hippos). So if I were Dormammu and I wanted to KILL STEPHEN STRANGE, here is what I would do:
I do some of the bullshit I used to do first: deals with lesser mages. I’d tell somebody like Mordo or whoever Strange’s big rival is these days, “Kill Dr. Strange for me and I will grant you blah blah blah.”
The difference here is: I’d know he’d lose. It doesn’t really make much of a difference to me, though; all I want is for him to succeed in tiring Strange. I’d make other deals with other people who hadn’t been able to defeat Strange before but would succeed in wearing him out some more. Kind of like the original Spidey vs. Sinister Six battle, which IIRC required Spidey to run a gauntlet and face each villain one on one, with each fight taking more out of him.
I’d watch those battles. Best case: somebody else does my dirty work for me. Worst case: Strange gets softened up. Eventually, in all likelihood, everybody working for me will be defeated and Strange will need some rest.
And THAT’s when I ambush him. He’s exhausted himself against the midcarders, and now he’s gotta take on the main eventer.
My plans for Dormammu included:
* Returns as Dr. Strange’s basement prisoner, bound in a straitjacket of lost consciences and suffering from cosmic delirium
* Decides to become gritty anti-hero, forms “Dormammu & The Disasters”
* Returns by possessing the body of Zombie Human Torch/Sunfire
* Becomes “Kenny” of Marvel’s magic community. Continually asks why MODIK has forsaken him.
And then cames wolverine stabbing the Hood in the back, distrcting Dorm enough to do something.
“no using magic while dressed as a schoolgirl”
See, that would be a deal-breaker for me.
butbut I LIKE joke Dormammu!
http://www.comicbookresources.com/?page=article&id=5196
http://www.amazon.com/Defenders-Indefensible-Marvel-Comics/dp/0785117628
Actually, this reminds me of the first Dormammu storyline, in all the right ways. He was constrained from physically coming to Earth back then, by dint of certain agreements with the Ancient One, but that didn’t stop him from lending so much power to Mordo that he was basically unstoppable (especially to a much younger Doctor Strange.)
What followed was one of the great epics of the 1960s, as Strange fled all over the world, constantly trying to stay one step ahead of Mordo and Dormammu while looking for something that would let him fight on an equal footing. If you could evoke the excitement of that story (without just repeating it, of course) I think you’d create a whole new generation of fans.
Strange is smart. In a situation like that why would he waste time just running? Once he’d teleported say twice and realized Dormammu was following you go to where there would be help.
Even unexpected help. They pop up in Latveria Doom’s going to react.
Maybe Dormammu wasn’t supposed to be the guy behind the Hood originally but he is now.
“Imagine that Dormammu coming after Strange. He’d attack when Strange was absolutely exhausted, right after the Sorcerer Supreme had defeated some massive evil bent on destroying this entire universe.”
I did imagine that. I believe DC called it Knightfall.
Point well taken however. Dormammu needs a personality makeover in the worst way. It was like Mojo, who was, in my opinion, a complete joke until the Exiles two-parter So Lame.
Well, I’ve never read Dr. Strange . . . but I would read YOUR Dr. Strange. For sure.
“Now whether Nisanti might be Dormammu in disguise, or whether Nisanti might work for Dormammu, I do not know.”
Yeah, Nisanti has been revealed as Dormmammu in disguise (New Avengers #49 or 50), and is getting pretty pissy with The Hood for not delivering the world to him yet. It’s conceivable that Dormmammu could abandon The Hood pretty soon and look for a more direct approach to taking over the world (and thus opening the door to whatever MGK has planned for him).
Also, it’d be interesting to see if The Hood could keep his gang together without Dorm’s help.
1) Harry Dresden is over rated. Book three sucked and I could not finish book four.
2) Comic book characters are very similar to professional wrestlers in that in order to take a villain seriously they need to win once in a while. The Green Goblin was a fantastic villain because he killed Gwen Stacey. I think Doctor Doom is pathetic because he never wins against Reed Richards.
In Dormammu’s case he needs to make the big win, needs to lay a swath of destruction. And it makes perfect sense for him to pounce on Doc when he is at his lowest.
3) It is a good point when you consider how Strange would ‘port to help. The thing about dealing with a big comic universe is how little sense it makes for heroes to seek aid. DC’s Batman made no sense at all during the No Man’s Land storyline when Superman, Green Lantern (any of ’em) and Flash could rebuild Gotham City in 24 hours. All I can think of is for one reason or another Strange feels involving other heroes would be a bad idea but I cannot think of why off the top of my head.
“I did imagine that. I believe DC called it Knightfall.”
I picked up the trade for that a few years back, having never read it. The art was hideous, the “exhaust the Batman” had little to no reason behind it (Batman is driven, yes, but he’s not stupid), but worst of all was the art. And I’m not one who usually picks on art when criticizing a comic. However, it does begin to grate when you start noticing inconsistencies between panels right next to each other (one knife-wielding villain’s pants appear and disappear in one sequence).
Just sub Dormammu in for Mordru in a re-do of Earthwar. The ever-escalating structure of threats, victories, reveals, and reversals is exactly the kind of excitement that superhero comics needs.
This is extremely cool.
@ps238principal
Rorkannu is Master Shake gone magical? I have _got_ to read Nextwave!
Via avoiding school work, I’ve been rereading these and just had a thought. Nyarlathotep wouldn’t be the one responsible for Dormammus’ little epiphany, would he? He’s the one jumping around and getting all of Strange’s rouges together and pointing out what they could do if they just went about it all a new way. He sics Dormammu on Strange, pops over to Strange’s place to say, “Heads up”, then just as Dormammu shows up he pops over to Transyvania and tells Dracula that Strange is having a very bad day.
MGK your point is not for only Dormammu but many major villains who have no respect in comics becos of writers incompetence.Apocalypse is one of them,your column along with the rob weinberg Cable project run gave me ideas for the last stint of En Sabah Nur ,unlike Dormammu who’s abit of a vicious hothead, people forget why apoc should be the jaw dropping #1 x-men villain not only he (& sinister)have more potential as villains than magneto becos the core philosophy is bendable at will & he’s PATIENT & CLEVER.what if during his resurrection in c&d 27 (just ignore decimation) Cable taunted about his failure during the TWELVE & the fact that mutants & humans have a more peaceful relationship & that he’s irrelevent.Nur would rethink his plans thrice & steal Cable ‘informations about time travel to have his own device (he’d do that by attacking providence island & blowing the location thereafter,cable & deadpool bodysliding in extremis to agency x headquarters or to the local chimichanga stand)
then apoc would time travel spending 1000 years studying timestreams to penetrate the axis of time & then by another millenia of studying he ‘d discover the existence of the exiles & parallel earths.after 10000 years spent on perfecting himself he’ll come back but in glowing form ,sparkling with power(the x-men evolution style ) unleashing an army of dark riders on earth to test humanity,it’llbe up to the heroes avengers x-men defenders Cable & wade,spiderdad (well yeah in my canon norman is still wormfood,ben reilly is spidey in los angeles,venom is eddie brock & peter is a father so bite it 616 continuity) to stop En Sabah Nur ‘s utter domination
So what’d you think of that?
And then Dormammu blows up Herbert’s Taco Hut.
NOOOOOOOOOOOOO