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Kulan Gath (Impostor) (Earth-616)

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The man who murdered Kulan Gath became a sorcerer in Earth's Hyborian Era, the ancient time period in which Conan the Barbarian lived.[1]

He was an enemy of Conan, and the immortal mutant Selene,[8] as well as Modern Age heroes, such as Spider-Man,[9] the Avengers and the X-Men,[10] and (alongside a timeflung Conan) Wolverine, Doctor Voodoo, the Punisher, Elektra, the Venom symbiote, and another unnamed symbiote,[11] and the combined forces of Doctor Strange and Doctor Doom.[12]

History

Early years[]

Kulan Gath was a sorcerer who bought a child slave and abused him. Sensing the sorcerer would eventually murder him, the boy preemptively slayed his master, fed his body to his hogs, and took his name and home. Vowing to never be a victim again, he tried to learn of the sorcerer's spell books but could only master so little.

He visited the Mekri Ra, the Sorcerer Supreme of his time, asking to be his student, but was rejected. Posing as a disciple of Thoth-Amon, he met with lesser sorcerers, asking them for help in the unlocking of a magic text, but was rejected and thus committed his most primal murder, killing a sorcerer with his bare teeth, his cannibalistic ways allowing him to gain power from the blood of his victims.

He eventually defeated Mekri Ra, butchered him alive and consumed him for his power,[1] and became one of the most powerful magic users of his time when he claimed the title of the Sorcerer Supreme.[6]

More than a century before the Age of Conan, he married the witch Vammatar in an alliance to obtain the power of the demon Shuma-Gorath.. While he was away in the north, Thoth-Amon usurped his primacy among the sorcerers of Stygia.[13]

He came to worship Shuma-Gorath, who he still coveted the power.[1] He had an apprentice named Razal-Gulath,[3] and was an enemy of the immortal, vampiric mutant named Selene.[8]

Hyborian Age of Conan[]

As the (unknowing) protégé of Xiombarg, he sought the power of the Melnibonéan sorceress Terhali, who had been exiled to Hyboria and placed in suspended animation. When Terhali awoke, she disintegrated Kulan Gath with a magical bolt of energy.[2]

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.[14]

Kulan Gath returned again,[15] 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;[9] possibly with the assistance of Conan.[16]

Modern Age[]

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.[9]

Spider-Man later tossed the necklace off of a ferry bound for Staten Island, but it was found not long afterwards by a fisherman named Jaime Rodriguez; although Jaime resisted Kulan Gath, a mugger who subsequently killed him was considerably weaker in willpower, and when the mugger donned the necklace, he was possessed instantly and transformed by the wizard.[17]

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.[10]

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 Rodriguez 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.[8]

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 Kamekeri Native Americans as he had previously transformed Manhattan. The Avengers, accompanied by their ally Silverclaw, traveled to Costa Verde to stop him.[18]

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.[19]

Kulan Gath (Impostor) (Earth-616) and Venom (Symbiote) (Earth-616) from Spider-Man Red Sonja Vol 1 3 001

Kulan Venom

Gath was able to return to Earth when the amulet came into contact with a corrupt U.S. senator, providing him with a new body that he subsequently used to transform New York once again. Knowing that Red Sonja would return to fight him, Gath attempted to negate that threat by enchanting Sonja's blade so that she saw Spider-Man as an enemy,[20] but Sonja was eventually able to overcome the spell and fought alongside the wall-crawler, encouraged to trust him by Mary Jane's residual memories. Seeking to enhance his power, Gath lured Venom to him,[21] subsequently stealing his symbiote and bonding with it to become 'Kulan Venom',[5] intending to then sacrifice Red Sonja and use her holy blood, blessed by a goddess, to complete his dominion over this plane and then expand to all others.[22]

Despite his attempts to delay his adversaries by pitting them against altered versions of Vermin, Lizard, Scorpion, and Hobgoblin,[5] the symbiote's attempts to rejoin with Brock distracted Gath long enough for Sonja to destroy the amulet and break Gath's spell, thus restoring the world to normal.[23]

City of Sickles[]

Displaced through time to the early 20th century, Kulan Gath travelled to the Savage Land and became the master of the City of Sickles, seeking to summon the eldritch god Jhoatun Lau to Earth. During World War II a Luftwaffe fighter pilot named Johan Richter was shot down over the Savage Land and came across him. Gath deemed the Nazi sufficiently evil to become his apprentice and indoctrinated him into the cult of the Marrow God. At some point, Kulan Gath captured a symbiote, intending to use it to lure Venom to the Savage Land, and his cult allied with wicked Egyptian priests and the Hand ninja to procure exemplary humans and powerful warriors to sacrifice to Jhoatun Lau. This backfired when the virtually-immortal mutant Logan was among those lured to the City of Sickles, and the also time-displaced Conan stole the Third Eye of Agamotto, which was needed to summon the Marrow God.[24] Kulan Gath managed to retrieve the amulet and summon Jhoatun Lau, sending the eldritch god to rampage through Shanghai. Afterwards, he revealed that he knew Jhoatun Lau would ultimately be defeated and had summoned it as a test of Earth's "immune system" to determine where it was weakest.[6] When confronted by the victorious Savage Avengers after Jhoatun Lau had been slain, he informed them they had been afflicted by a curse by it before departing to observe the effects from afar.[25]

Attributes

Powers

Sorcery: Kulan Gath was an incredibly powerful sorcerer, and could cast spells, including illusions,[citation needed] mental enslavement,[citation needed] and much more. He gained additional magical power by consuming the hearts of other magic users.[1]

  • Body Possession
  • Reality Warping
  • Transmutation
  • Mind Control
  • Time Manipulation

Notes

Trivia

See Also

Links and References

References

  1. ↑ 1.0 1.1 1.2 1.3 1.4 Savage Avengers #11
  2. ↑ 2.0 2.1 Conan the Barbarian #15
  3. ↑ 3.0 3.1 Savage Sword of Conan #189 ; Eye of the Storm
  4. ↑ Conan Saga #96 ; A Red Sonja Comics Chronology: This Sword for Hire
  5. ↑ 5.0 5.1 5.2 Spider-Man / Red Sonja #3
  6. ↑ 6.0 6.1 6.2 Savage Avengers #3
  7. ↑ 7.0 7.1 Conan: Flame and the Fiend #3
  8. ↑ 8.0 8.1 8.2 Uncanny X-Men #191
  9. ↑ 9.0 9.1 9.2 Marvel Team-Up #79
  10. ↑ 10.0 10.1 Uncanny X-Men #190
  11. ↑ Savage Avengers #5
  12. ↑ Savage Avengers #7
  13. ↑ Conan the Barbarian #258
  14. ↑ Conan the Barbarian #257–260
  15. ↑ Conan: Flame and the Fiend #1–3
  16. ↑ A silhouetted scene in Marvel Saga the Official History of the Marvel Universe #1 suggests this.
  17. ↑ Uncanny X-Men #188–189
  18. ↑ Avengers (Vol. 3) #28
  19. ↑ Avengers (Vol. 3) #29–30
  20. ↑ Spider-Man / Red Sonja #1
  21. ↑ Spider-Man / Red Sonja #2
  22. ↑ Spider-Man / Red Sonja #4
  23. ↑ Spider-Man / Red Sonja #5
  24. ↑ Savage Avengers #1–2
  25. ↑ Savage Avengers #4
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