SHRIEK

 

SHRIEK

Real Name: Frances Louise Barrison

First Appearance: Spider-Man Unlimited (Vol. 1) #1, May 1993

Powers: Shriek is a mutant with sound-based abilities who, after being trapped into Cloak's Dark Dimension and driven mad, developed psionic abilities as some kind of an extension. Shriek is capable of generating sonic blasts of intense concussive force. Besides their offensive potential, the blasts can also be directed beneath her as thrust in order to propel her through the air for limited flight. She can also produce sonar waves which probe her environment and send back sonic imaging. This sonar is at least effective enough for her to pinpoint living beings inside a building, and distinguish superhumans with physical mutations from other people. She can also create a sonic buffer zone which acts like a skintight invisible force field, absorbing and displacing a certain level of force to protect her from harm.

Shriek also acts like a kind of "empathic echo chamber". She takes preexisting emotional energy in her presence (her own of that of nearby people) and amplifies it. Being around Carnage caused her to absorb the psionic energy in his insanity during the Maximum Carnage killing spree, broadcasting it into the environment to drive normal people all over the city into acting like a crazed mob. This is a natural and instinctive power, occurring without her conscious direction or activation. With concentration, though, she can intensify the effects on people even further. She can use her sonic blasts as a focus for her power, physically assaulting opponents while also turning their own emotions against them, such as when she assaulted Cloak with the grief and guilt he felt over Dagger's death, driving him to flee the field of battle. Inexplicably, Shriek also began demonstrating telekinetic powers after the Maximum Carnage event. She could levitate and fly through the air, or project a streamer of energy from her eye to lift other people off the ground in front of her. How these powers suddenly developed remains unclear.

DORMAMMU

 

DORMAMMU

Real Name: Dormammu

First Appearance: Strange Tales (Vol. 1) #126, November 1964

Powers: The Dread Dormammu is a renegade member of the Faltine, a race of immensely powerful non-humanoid beings composed of pure magical flame and energy. The Faltine are said to be on par with the Vishanti or Galactus. Dormammu is a renegade because he (and his sister, Umar) chose to experiment with and become matter, shaping humanoid forms for themselves. Dormammu took a human shape and appearance centuries ago, and gained control over the Dark Dimension. He has risen to the level of a god by tying his magical strength and power to his worshippers and so, like the Vishanti, draws strength from whenever someone casts spells or evokes incantations in his name. Even Doctor Strange used to unwittingly cast in the name of Dormammu before first encountering the villain. As a being of pure energy sustained by worship, Dormammu can never truly be destroyed. He can eventually reconstruct himself so long as at least one entity in the multiverse worships in his name.

Umar is much like her brother, but she experimented too much with the sins of matter, and became trapped forever in flesh after becoming pregnant and giving birth to Clea. Because of this, she can no longer easily ascend to the same levels of energy and power that Dormammu can. By resuming his energy state, Dormammu has a vastly greater storehouse of self-generated mystical energy than Umar can ever produce trapped in her human form -- she must rely on naturally-occurring sources of magic in her environment, or the invocation of other powerful forces. However, it has been decreed that the Flames of Regency will surround the head of whomever rules the Dark Dimension. During the times when Dormammu has been deposed, Umar has claimed that power and, with the flames, is nearly the equal to her brother without them.

Dormammu can confer mystical power upon beings who call upon him through spells and invocations, but he never does so without requiring them to pay some kind of price that will increase Dormammu's own power. Nor does Dormammu confer part of his own personal power from another, undisclosed source. Dormammu can bestow enormous quantities of power upon another, as he has done with Baron Mordo on occasion. Even Doctor Strange, early in his career, invoked the power of Dormammu before he learned Dormammu's true nature.

Dormammu can manipulate his magical power to accomplish a vast number of feats: interdimensional teleportation, size transformations, time travel, elemental control, telepathy, matter transmutations, energy manifestations from extraordinary powerful bolts of magically-constructed beings, and many other. Furthermore, he is of sufficient might to be able to cancel out or tamper with the magic of others. For example, he once caused Thor to revert to his former mortal guise of Don Blake in spite of Odin's enchantment.

CLEA

 

CLEA

Real Name: Clea Strange

First Appearance: Strange Tales (Vol. 1) #126, November 1964

Powers: Clea is the daughter of Umar and a native man of the Dark Dimension, making her half-Faltinian by nature. She had only meager training in the magical arts before coming to Earth, and lost much of her power in our dimension, forcing her to restart her training as Dr. Strange's disciple. Over the years, however, she has become a powerful sorceress in her own right, and even assumed the Flames of Regency (a mystical symbol of power for the ruler of the Dark Dimension) from her mother for a time.

She has been Sorceress Supreme of the Dark Dimension. As such, she possesses vast magical powers. Her abilities seemed to be derived from three major sources: Her own personal power of the soul/mind/body; power gained by tapping the ambient magical energy of the universe she inhabits and employing it for special effects (such as illusion-casting and energy projection); and finally, powers gained through the tapping of mystical energy from other dimensions by invoking entities of objects of power existing in those dimensions. The latter means of power is usually gained by the recitation of spells, either ritualized ones found in various mystical text or original spells invoking extra-dimensional assistance.

She has exhibited such abilities as forming and throwing magical bolts of energy, conjuring objects and energies, teleporting, telekinesis, controlling others’ minds, and casting illusions. Presumably, she is capable of replicating any spell performed by her former mentor, Dr. Strange. As she is descended from the Faltine race of beings, it is suggested that she can generate her own mystical energy like Umar and Dormammu and draw upon it to fuel her magic. She also possesses greater strength and body density than that of a normal Earth human. Her age is indeterminate, having lived for centuries but having the form and demeanor of a twenty year-old woman, and the rate at which she ages is unknown.