| Chthon | |
|---|---|
| Publication information | |
| Publisher | Marvel Comics |
| First appearance | (as The Other): Marvel Chillers #1 (October 1975) (as Chthon): Avengers #185 (July 1979) |
| Created by | Marv Wolfman Bill Mantlo Yong Montano |
| In-story information | |
| Species | Demon |
| Notable aliases | The Other, Demon of the Darkhold, He who holds the Darkness, The Wolf, Demon among Demons, The Great Shadow |
| Abilities | Mastery of black magic and chaos magic, vast mystical powers, reality warping, immense power within his own pocket universe. |
Chthon is a fictional character, a demonic Elder God in the Marvel Comics Universe. His name derives from chthon, the Greek word for "earth" and "earthly", especially pertaining to earth that was not life giving soil, but dark like that of the grave or the underworld. In some instances, Chthon is portrayed as the Marvel equivalent of the primal Devil of some kind predating that of Judeo-Christian teachings, as his creations, the N'Garai, were driven from Earth by the angel Lucifer before his rebellion against God;[1] and his opposing power, Oshtur, has been hinted to be an angelic being in Marvel Tarot.[2]
| “ | A long time ago, when the world was so new nothing had a name, something woke up. It learned all about what was and what would be... but most of all it learned what couldn't be, what shouldn't be. And it gave those things names, names it wrote on indestructible pages, because a namer has mastery of the named. | ” |
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—Diabolique, Darkhold #10 |
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Contents |
During the era in which the first single-celled organism formed on Earth, the Elder God Demiurge achieved consciousness after being formed and coalesced from the Earth's biosphere. As conditions on Earth began to support life, it became aware. Wanting to know itself, the Demiurge split itself into countless aspects, one of which evidently became Chthon. Consequently, Chthon is billions of years old.
The Elder Gods are the forerunners to the modern gods and demons of Earth. Other contemporary demons that would become known as the "Elder Gods" as well are Set, Belathauzer, and Y'Garon. Gaea came into being and was the "Protector of the Emerging Life" that began in the Seas. Oshtur, sister to Gaea and the other Elder Gods, left Earth in search of the mysteries of the universe. Chthon began devoting itself to the study and manipulation of mystical energies, becoming Earth's first master of black magic, even experimenting on his fellow gods.
Set, the "God of the Dead", spawned a number of offspring (e.g., "Sligguth" and "Damballah"). Realizing he could increase his own power by consuming the energy of his fellow demons, Set became the first being on Earth to kill another. By consuming the life energies of a fellow Elder God, Set started down the path to degeneracy. Other Elder Gods quickly began following Set's example, killing each other for more power. The more they consumed, the more they hungered for power. With more power, the hunger became insatiable. Many became corrupt and began warring to satisfy the thirst for power; the victor feeding off the other. After millions of years, all the Elder Gods, except for Gaea and Oshtur, had degenerated to less than their Godhood, becoming evil.
As the Elder Gods degenerated into violence, only Gaea remained peaceful. Seeking a way to protect the innocent life that was growing on the planet, Gaea mated with the Demiurge creating Atum, the first of a new generation of gods that would protect the world from the "Demonic Elder Gods".
Chthon (as well as many of the Elder Gods) had the talent of foresight. As the threat of Gaea's offspring came to light, he inscribed all his dark mystical knowledge (acquired through a millennia of practicing evil incarnate) onto indestructible parchments to leave in this dimension (should he be defeated) as a testament to his power and a link between him and this world.
Atum indeed became a threat to the Elder Gods, as he began destroying them for their evil and degradation, absorbing their energies into himself. The demonic energies he absorbed made him more and more powerful and caused Atum to undergo a metamorphosis into the form of Demogorge the God-Eater. Many of the Elder Gods fell to Atum, and those who were not destroyed fled to other dimensions.
Chthon and Set joined together to fight Atum, but were defeated. Chthon, sensing the end was near, cast a spell that allowed him an escape into another dimension before the Demogorge could slay him.[3] Before he left, Chthon left the parchment he had written behind, serving as a touchstone.
Upon learning what her siblings had degenerated into, Oshtur volunteered to leave the Earth dimension to prevent Gaea's spell from being weakened. After the demon-war, Gaea was the only original Elder God permitted to exist on the planet, and she infused her godly essence into the Earth and into all living things (becoming known as "Mother Earth"). The Demogorge released the energies he had absorbed, reverting back to the form of Atum. He then took residence within Earth's Sun. Atum returned to the Earth sometime later when Set threatened to invade the Earth with the rise of the dinosaurs. The struggle between Set and Atum was so great, that many believe the energy released during that period was responsible for the extinction of the dinosaurs. After that battle, Atum would father the Egyptian pantheon of gods and later return to Earth when he assisted the "Odinson" Thor, with whom Atum shared his maternal parent, Gaea. Together, Atum and Thor engaged and defeated the Elder God Set.
Chthon added the Demogorge page to the scrolls to ensure that any future Demogorge on Earth would be at his own behest. He also added a counter-spell to stop the Demogorge that could only be cast by someone non-mystical in nature. The parchments would one day be bound together in a single volume and aptly titled, the Darkhold, the Earth's first tome of black magic. In his new dimension, Chthon spawned the race of demons known as the N'Garai, who would return to Earth though he himself could not.
The Darkhold was discovered by human sorcerers in pre-Cataclysmic Atlantis. These sorcerers (including Varnae) founded a cult of Darkholders and used the power of Chthon to become vampires in a bid to attain immortality. Over the next millennia, many people came to use the Darkhold and were corrupted by Chthon, including Babylonian savants, Egyptian priests, and Hebrew scholars.
In the Sixth Century, the sorceress Morgan le Fey became leader of the Darkholders. Morgan and the Darkholders attempted to summon the Elder God to make him do their bidding, not knowing that a demon of his power and consciousness is uncontrollable by Earth's standards. When the Darkholders tried to send the demon "back to whence he came," they discovered they were incapable of banishing him altogether, and so they bound him (with the aid of the text itself) to a single Earthly location, Mount Wundagore, in what would become the Eastern European nation of Transia.
Having seen the evil that can consume all, Morgan's lover, Magnus, renounced the Darkholders and took the Darkhold for safe keeping, hiding it where "none with negative intent" could be corrupted by its inherent evil, in a magic tower on the Isle of Wight. However, an apprentice called Modred the Mystic sought the power of the Darkhold for good reasons. The Other, Chthon's host on Earth, tried to corrupt Modred, but he resisted until Chthon threatened the soul of his beloved Janice, for whom he sacrificed his own soul.[4]
In the late 1940s, Herbert Wyndham, the man who became the High Evolutionary, made his laboratory base at the foot of Wundagore Mountain with the assistance of Doctor Horace Grayson (the father of the 1950s superhero Marvel Boy).
In the 1950s, a young Philip Masters (the Puppet Master) obtained clay from the mountain that had been granted mystical power by Chthon's presence. He would use this clay in his attempts to conquer the Fantastic Four.
A colleague of Herbert Wyndham's, Jonathan Drew, with his wife Miriam and daughter Jessica, arrived during this time. The werewolf Gregor Russoff, a Darkholder whose grandson (birthname Jacob Russoff, legal name Jack Russell) would become the Werewolf by Night, attacked and killed Drew's wife. Jonathan Drew was possessed by the ghost of the magician Magnus, who had fought the Darkholders for centuries. Wyndham, to protect the Drews' daughter, put her in suspended animation.
The High Evolutionary also created a race of artificially evolved humanoid animals called the New Men. He was convinced by Magnus (in Jonathan Drew's form) to pattern their codes of action and conduct after medieval knighthood. They named the elite members of the New Men the Knights of Wundagore.
During this period, a pregnant gypsy woman named Magda arrived at Wundagore, on the verge of giving birth. Unknown to all, she was the wife of the man who would become Magneto.
While Gregor Russoff attempted to summon Chthon, Magda was giving birth, with the assistance of a bovine female midwife, Lady Bova of the New Men. Chthon battled the High Evolutionary and his Knights of Wundagore, killing many, but was banished again when Magnus' spirit possessed Russoff's body and allowed the feedback from the Darkhold's magic to kill Russoff.[5]
As his presence faded, Chthon sent a part of his essence into one of Magda's twin children, Wanda, whose mutation was transformed into the ability to manipulate chaos and probability and, later, to manipulate reality itself. Magda died and her children were placed into suspended animation.
Several years later, Robert Frank and his pregnant wife Madeline (formerly the superheroes Whizzer and Miss America) came to Wundagore. Madeline died giving birth to a stillborn child that was deformed by the Franks' exposure to radiation at the hands of their enemy Isbisa. When Robert asked to see his child, Lady Bova, knowing that his wife had died in child birth and to spare his grief, presented the two children (born to the late Magda) to him as his children, but when he learned of his wife's death, he fled. He would for years believe that the twins were his own abandoned children, although the Franks also had one surviving son, Nuklo, who was in suspended animation in the care of the United States government.
The infant twins were returned to suspended animation for decades until Bova brought them to a Transian gypsy named Django Maximoff, who raised the children as his own. While the twins would become the Scarlet Witch and Quicksilver, Jessica Drew was also freed from suspended animation, eventually becoming the first Spider-Woman.
Chthon's influence amplified some years later thanks to a proliferation of Darkholders across the planet. Vittorio Montesi discovered he was sterile, but was determined to have an heir to guard the Darkhold that had come into his possession. Montesi gave in to temptation and used a Spell of Fertility from the cursed book. This allowed Montesi's wife to become pregnant; not with Vittorio's child, but rather Chthon's demon-spawn. The child was Victoria Montesi who would grow to lead a group of mystic investigators including Modred the Mystic, opposing the users of the Darkhold powers and incantations. Chthon mystically impregnated Victoria with his own life-force in an attempt to be reborn on Earth, but this was prevented by Doctor Strange.
In the modern era, Modred the Mystic and Magnus opposed the Darkholders and Morgan le Fey, respectively; with Magnus also becoming an ally of Spider-Woman.
When Modred the Mystic transcended into loyalty to Chthon, the Elder God had him delude Magnus into absence when he was to rise again. Modred captured the Scarlet Witch and performed the ritual allowing the Chthon to use her as his vessel on Earth. While trying to purge the form of the last of Wanda's humanity and conscience, Chthon appeared before Lady Bova and Wanda's brother, Pietro, warning them to leave or be killed. As Chthon began to grow more powerful in Wanda's earthly form, she attacked Pietro and their adoptive father, Django Maximoff.
When the Avengers arrived, Modred vanquished them easily, but was knocked unconscious by the Wasp. Chthon easily bested her. The Avengers (with Django and Pietro) were imprisoned in a mystical circle that would allow Chthon to bring the rest of its demonic essence to Earth. However, Beast, dressed as one of the Knights of Wundagore, arrived at the last minute and was actually able to damage the Darkhold using a weapon designed by the High Evolutionary.
The distraction freed the Avengers (along with Pietro and Django) and Django (just before he died of a heart attack), knowing that Wanda's soul still existed, had crafted a doll in her image as a vessel to shelter her from Chthon's possession and he gave it to Pietro. Using the doll as a focal point, the Avengers joined their wills against Chthon's, returning Wanda to her body and trapping Chthon's essence in the doll. Pietro threw the doll down the mountain and Wanda caused an avalanche to bury it, leaving the Elder God once again trapped in the dimension.[6]
With no Sorcerer Supreme protecting it, the Demogorge slain in combat with the Skrull deities, and the defenders of Earth still bearing the scars of the devastating global Secret Invasion, Chthon seizes this chance to resurface. Knowing about Chthon's activities and how they have taken down most superheroes, Loki, under the guise of the Scarlet Witch, helps to reform the Mighty Avengers to combat him. However, Modred successfully summons Chthon into the body of Quicksilver and Chthon arrives claiming that this reality shall "fall before him" in the blink of an eye.[7] Using Quicksilver's powers, Chthon alters the effects of the Chaos Cascade, caused by Modred reading the Darkhold, to whatever he desires.[8] Chthon is banished from Earth and expelled from Pietro's body due to the combined efforts of the Mighty Avengers.[9]
Chthon is one of the most powerful of all Elder Gods, but has degenerated into a demonic state. He possesses enormous ability to manipulate magical energies for a variety of effects, and is further empowered when in his own realm. He has telepathic abilities enabling him to read, control, and communicate with the minds of others, even across dimensional barriers. He has manifested himself in humanoid form, but can take various forms; his true appearance, if he has one, has not been revealed.
Despite his great powers, Chthon cannot freely teleport between dimensions because it takes such an enormous inter-dimensional rift to accommodate the massive magical forces within him. Moreover, Gaea has erected magical screens, reinforced over millennia by human sorcerers, which prevent him from traveling to Earth unless he undertakes highly elaborate preparations. The Elder Goddess Oshtur and her Vishanti are also set against Chthon, having protected the Earth dimension for eons from beings such as he, and have created the office of Sorcerer Supreme to help battle his threat. Hence, Chthon prefers to manifest himself on Earth by taking possession of mortal host bodies, although it appears that he cannot easily (if at all) exercise his full mystical power through such bodies.
Chthon has an extraordinary knowledge of the dark mystical forces of the cosmos, being the Marvel Universe's first known native practitioner of black magic, and catalogued the evil spells of the demonic Elder Gods of Earth in the Darkhold, a virtually indestructible collection of evil mystical knowledge and spells that he intended to serve as the medium through which he could return to Earth. The Darkhold can apparently change its form, since Chthon created it millions of years before the rise of humanity, to whom it appeared as a set of scrolls with human writing upon them. Most people who use the Darkhold's spells fall under Chthon's mental control as a result. Only humans with great spiritual strength (or aided by great mystical expertise), like Doctor Strange and the members of the Montesi family, can successfully resist this mental enslavement. The Darkhold's power is so vast that it took the combined power of Merlin and Brendan to contain it; and even together they were unable to destroy it.
When Chthon possessed the body of Quicksilver he wove a series of spells at superhuman speed while running around the Earth. These caused a river of blood to flood New York City, encased San Francisco in solid amber, made Oklahoma disappear, placed the city of Asgard in an other-dimensional prison, boiled the seas of Atlantis, created and activated volcanoes, overwhelmed Philadelphia with vegetation, incapacitated the New Avengers, melted vibranium ore, summoned swarms of flesh-eating insects in Toronto, reduced the Fantastic Four into television signals, transformed the Young Avengers into stone, and called an intense snowstorm to strike the Arizona desert. The cosmic being Eternity later likened Chthon to a "cancer" threatening the universe when talking to Hank Pym.
However, Chthon is neither omniscient nor invincible. He fled from the Demogorge when originally entering his otherworldly prison after his own effort (further bolstered by the aid of the other Elder Gods) to defeat the God-Eater failed. The Hulk has struck him to the ground; and he can be bested by superior strategy, cosmic or mystic prowess, or scientific expertise which he is unaccustomed to, such as when Pym banished him from Earth.
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