If you haven’t already grown tired of my recent batch of Doc Magus related posts, here’s another! Today I’m going to pick up where the last one left off. Knowing who the MC2’s current Sorcerer Supreme’s father is, now let’s work out the identity of Dormagus’ mother!
There are a few clues scattered throughout Doc Magus’
appearances which we should take a look at before the big reveal. Aside from
the aforementioned personal connections to Doctor Stephen Strange, there’s
a few clues in Doc Magus’ early appearances. In A-Next #3 we not
only get his real name Dormagus, and our first brief glimpse of him
unmasked (I previously misattributed this to J2 #4) but also this throwaway
reference from Deacon: ‘You can start by pulling your head outta the Dark
Dimension, kiddo…’
First appearing in Strange
Tales #126, the Dark Dimension is actually the name attributed to
the largest, most aggressive conquering splinter realm of the original whole Dark
Dimension. It has often been visited in various adventures by Doctor Stephen
Strange and is most notable as being ruled by the Faltine-originating
energy-entities Dormammu (who debuted in Strange Tales #126) and
his sister Umar (who first appeared in Strange Tales #150).
Looking at Dormagus’ unmasked appearance, it’s worth
pointing out he still has white streaks through his hair despite his youthful appearance
and demeanour. This is noteworthy because there is another character closely
associated with both Doctor Strange and the Dark Dimension who wields
great magical power and also has white hair: Clea, daughter of Umar,
the sometimes ruler of the Dark Dimension and wife (via extradimensional
ceremony) to Stephen Strange (as established in Doctor Strange,
Sorcerer Supreme #3).
Clea also first appeared in Strange Tales #126
but has yet to make any appearance in the MC2 to date. In fact, the
closest we’ve even come to an interaction between Dormagus and Clea
might just be the collective gathering of various Sorcerers Supreme from
across time and space briefly seen in Doctor Strange and the Sorcerers
Supreme #12.
So, is there any real reason to suspect that Clea is
the mother of Dormagus? Why, yes there is! Courtesy of a wonderful interview
on Chris
Chapman’s Comic Shenanigans podcast episode #744 we have this snippet
from MC2 co-creator Ron Frenz:
‘What’s funny is when you try to establish things, people
are slow on the uptake, like with Doc Magus. We wanted to do this second-generation
mystic and everything. Tom in the first issue has Doctor Strange call
him Dormagus which is the same prefix as Dormammu and there are
other suggestions made about who this kid might be and we had a lot of people
writing in and guessing who they are and Tom thought it was so obvious
he actually said at one point ‘when you add 2 and 2 do you always get 22?’ That
kind of thing. At this point, I guess we can say it, I don’t know how much it
was ever established, because I know Dormagus appeared in J2 a
few times. But he is the son of Doctor Strange and Clea. Because Clea
was from the Dark Dimension. She was from the same place Dormammu
was, so that’s why her son has the same prefix on the name. Tom also
wanted something that sounded like ‘magus’ so he could go to Doc Magus,
that kind of thing. That’s why his hairstyle looked a little like his mum’s. He
was given the responsibility of being the Sorcerer Supreme at such a
young age because of his bloodline. We thought it was pretty obvious but there
were a few fans that didn’t feel it was quite that obvious.’
I’m sure the informed and knowledgeable among you had
already made the connection but now you have it all spelt out from the co-creator
himself. What do you make of this reveal? Do you agree with it or disagree? Do
you have an alternative suggestion, given that this isn’t set in stone on the comic
page?
Until I reveal the heavily-guarded secret of the mysterious
entity known only as Deacon, I remain
frogoat
