Kulan Gath
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Kulan Gath is a fictional character, a villainous magician who was created at Marvel Comics as a foe of Conan the Barbarian and who was later fully integrated into the Marvel Universe and in 2006 was used in Dynamite Entertainment's revamped Red Sonja series.
The character's first appearance, in Conan the Barbarian #14 and #15, was a crossover between Robert E. Howard's Conan and Michael Moorcock's Elric of Melniboné. As such, determining the character's actual creators is difficult; Moorcock was credited as co-plotter with his long-time artistic collaborator James Cawthorn, Roy Thomas as scripter, and Barry Windsor-Smith as penciller. Despite his having originated in a licensed crossover comic book, the character is owned by Marvel, and has since fought several of Marvel's modern-day superheroes.
Kulan Gath was a sorcerer in Earth's Hyborian Era, the ancient time period in which Conan the Barbarian lived. At some point, he married the witch Vammatar in an alliance to obtain the power of the demon Shuma-Gorath. He had an apprentice named Razal Gulath, and was an enemy of the immortal vampire-like mutant named Selene. In his first appearance, he sought the power of the Melnibonéan sorceress Terhali, who had been exiled to Earth and placed in suspended animation; when Terhali awoke, she disintegrated Kulan Gath with a magical bolt of energy.
This proved to be only a setback for Kulan Gath, as he had achieved effective immortality by placing his life energy into a magical amulet. He eventually regained his body, allied with Vammatar, and fought Conan and Red Sonja. Kulan Gath and his bride were apparently destroyed when they attempted to control the demon Shuma-Gorath. Kulan Gath returned again in the miniseries Conan: The Flame and the Fiend, thanks to the efforts of his new wife, Armati, but he was decapitated by Conan. At some point, his body was restored, but his heart was cut out by Red Sonja; a silhouetted scene in Marvel Saga #1 suggests that this may have occurred with the assistance of Conan.
Millennia later, Kulan Gath returned to life in the modern world when the necklace that housed his essence turned up at a museum display in New York City. The necklace was donned by a night watchman; the sorcerer transformed the guard's body into a duplicate of his own, which he then possessed. He was defeated by Red Sonja, who had been temporarily reincarnated in the present day in the body of Mary Jane Watson, and her newfound ally Spider-Man. Spider-Man later tossed the necklace off of a ferry bound for Staten Island, but was found not long afterwards by a fisherman named Jaime Rodriquez; although Jaime resisted Kulan Gath, a mugger who subsequently killed him was considerably weaker in willpower, and when the mugger donned the necklkace, he was possessed instantly and transformed by the wizard.
Kulan Gath, now returned to the height of his power, transformed Manhattan into a likeness of his native time. Everyone trapped on the island believed that the transformed world was the true world, with the exceptions of his enemy Spider-Man and the modern-day Sorcerer Supreme, Doctor Strange. Kulan Gath mystically bound Strange, and transformed Professor X and Caliban into a hybrid creature under his control. He also took control of the minds of the Avengers, the X-Men, the New Mutants and the Morlocks, who hunted down Spider-Man. In the end, Spider-Man and several other heroes were killed by Kulan Gath, his enemy Selene, or the mind-controlled agents of one of the two. Strange and the New Mutant Magik used their powers to change time so that the mugger who had originally killed Jaime Rodriquez and had been Kulan Gath's host had instead been slain by the time-travelling android Nimrod, creating a new divergent timeline in which all the changes and deaths caused by Gath never occurred. In the process of the mugger's death, Kulan Gath's amulet was lost in the New York City sewers; Gath, however, still possessed the memories of the original timeline. In gratitude for saving his life, Jaime took Nimrod into his home, unaware of the Sentinel's true nature.
Yet another fisherman later found the amulet and was transformed into Kulan Gath's new host. Kulan Gath traveled to the Latin American nation of Costa Verde, and transformed the region inhabited by the fictional Kamekeri Native Americans as he had previously transformed Manhattan. The Avengers, accompanied by their ally Silverclaw, traveled to Costa Verde to stop him. He attempted to sacrifice Silverclaw's mother, the Kamekeri goddess Pelali, to his demonic gods, but Silverclaw was able to free her (though Pelali died from the effects of the ritual later). The gods, having been partially summoned, still required a sacrifice, and when no other victim was offered, they took the unwilling Kulan Gath to their native dimension.
In Paradise X, one of many alternate realities shown is a continuation of the original timeline in which Kulan Gath transformed Manhattan and killed Spider-Man. Gath went on to kill many other super-heroes, and reverted the entire world back to a primitive age which he ruled over, turning the population into a barbarian army under his control. He had just executed Mr. Fantastic, symbolizing his final triumph over the modern age of science and super-human heroes, when alternate universe versions of X-51 and Hyperion arrived hoping to warn the people of that reality of the Celestial seed in the Earth's core. When Gath stated that the Celestial seed was the source of his power, Hyperion killed him, allowing X-51 to pass on information to the people of that reality to help them save their world.
