Dominus’ time-bending powers make him potentially one of the DC Universe’s biggest threats, but he’s only recently reappeared.
WARNING: The following contains spoilers for Generations Forged #1, by Dan Jurgens, Andy Schmidt, Robert Venditti, Mike Perkins, Marco Santucci, Paul Pelletier, Norm Rapmund, Bernard Chang, Joe Prado, Colleen Doran, Bryan Hitch, Andrew Currie, Kevin Nowlan, Hi-Fi and Tom Napolitano, on sale now.
Superman’s rogues’ gallery is usually known for villains such as the scheming Lex Luthor, the tyrannical General Zod and the controlling Brainiac. However, he’s also faced his fair share of heavy hitters, like Cyborg Superman, Doomsday or Darkseid himself. Unfortunately, some of the most powerful villains to face the Man of Steel over the years quickly fell into obscurity after their introduction.
Foes such as Khyber, Imperiex and Dominus all threatened Superman much more than the likes of Toyman or Bruno Manheim, but they never really stuck around. Dominus’ time-bending powers make him potentially one of the DC Universe’s biggest threats, but he’s only recently reappeared. Now, here’ how this alien priest finally stepped back into the limelight.
The Dominus Effect
Dominus debuted in Stuart Immonen’s Action Comics #747 as part of the larger “The Dominus Effect” storyline, which ran throughout Superman’s titles through 1998. An alien priest originally named Tuoni, his design and premise, much like the aforementioned Khyber as well as characters such as Marvel’s Apocalypse, had a decidedly Egyptian hue to them. He was one of the individuals who led the religion on his planet, and he eventually fell in love with his colleague Ahti. Her ascension to the rank of Kismet caused him great jealousy and consternation, however, leading to his driving ancestral magicks to combat her. This led to his destruction, but his remains were reanimated and sent to the Phantom Zone. There, he encountered Superman’s ancestor Kem-L, who used his own expertise to reconfigure him into the psionic powerhouse Dominus.
He eventually escapes the Phantom Zone and searches for Kismet to steal her power. Superman’s opposition to his plans sees the Man of Steel facing his newest target, with Dominus mind-controlling Superman and using his fleet of Superman robots to conquer the Earth. He also uses his newfound reality warping abilities to make Superman believe that he is living in numerous different realities, all of which resembles the various decades of Superman’s meta-textual publication history. Superman utilizes his own newfound mastery of the Kryptonian martial arts discipline Torquasm Vo, which allows him to quell Dominus’ mental manipulation. After defeating the former priest in a psychic tug of war, Superman banishes him again into the Phantom Zone.
DC Generations
Despite his immense power level and ties to Krypton’s past, Dominus never made a huge splash in the greater DC Universe or even just the Superman mythos. This lack of notoriety has also kept him from appearing so far in other media outside of comic books, but he’s finally made his return to prominence. DC’s Generations: Shattered and Generations: Forged have the villain waging war against reality and a motley crew of heroes led by the original Golden Age Batman.
The story picks up after Dark Nights: Death Metal and has a literal time storm destroying various realities in the DC Multiverse. This is the result of Dominus’ plotting, and the Linear Men, who helped Superman fight Dominus in his debut storyline, have their histories rewritten to now serve him as minions. His new goal was to have his own reality where he ruled supreme, with said universe absorbing and replacing all other continuities. As revealed by Steel, this has the effect of killing trillions on the low end of the kill count. His meddling with time and space also threatened to destroy all of reality.
This reintroduction easily pitted Dominus as DC’s most homicidal villain, giving him a body count perhaps rivaled only by fiends such as the Anti-Monitor. It remains to be seen, however, if this newfound penchant for destruction will give the character more longevity than he had before.
