With a single haunting story in The Sandman, Doctor Destiny went from being a pushover to one of the scariest villains in the DC Universe.
Nominally, The Sandman takes place in the DC Universe, largely operating independently of the superhero sections of the universe to instead explore the strange, unexpected, and occasionally horrific.
And in The Sandman #6, Neil Gaiman, Mike Dringenberg, Malcolm Jones III, Daniel Vozzo, and Todd Klein pushed that connection to the limit by transforming Doctor Destiny from a forgettable Silver Age villain to a world-threatening and nightmare-inducing monster.
In his original incarnation, Doctor Destiny was a mysterious scientist who created various tools and gadgets to try and defeat the Justice League starting with Gardner Fox and Mike Sekowsky’s Justice League of America #5 in 1961. Among these were his Materioptikons, devices that could affect the dreams of others and draw these nightmares into the real world. Based on a particularly powerful item and its power — a strange crimson gem — these machines could turn the visions seen within people’s dreams into living things composed of matter. However, after going up against the Justice League multiple times, the heroes decided to try and defeat Dee once and for all, breaking his ability to dream and leaving the villain a shriveled, decrypt man. He was brought to Arkham and locked away for years, and largely forgotten until the events of The Sandman.
However, The Sandman revealed that the crimson ruby Doctor Destiny — real name John Dee — had used was the original Materiotinkon, otherwise known as the Dream Stone. The artifact belonged to Morpheus, Dream of the Endless. Nearly a century before the modern-day, Roderick Burgess and his Order of Ancient Mysteries accidentally captured Morpheus in a binding spell meant for his sister, Death. Burgess and his allies stole away many of Dream’s tools. This included Burgess’ former mistress, Ethel Cripps, who made off with the Materioptkons, as well as the protective charm of her criminal partner. She ended up giving gem to her son, John, and parting with the charm just before her death. This allowed Dee to escape Arkham and hunt down the Materiotinkon before a released Dream was able to properly take it back.
Reclaiming the Materioptikons, Dee made his way to a diner and waited as the gem went to work, dragging the nightmares of all beings into the real world and unleashing madness made flesh against humanity. Anyone who sleeps is woken by horrifying nightmares, and a children’s show host cuts his wrist on live-television. As his madness spreads and religious leaders begin calling the events doomsday, Doctor Destiny watches from the coffee shop. He even takes time to mess with the minds and dreams of the others in the coffee shop, slowly driving them mad and forcing them to mutilate themselves in his presence. Doctor Destiny transforms from a minor villain into DC’s answer of Freddy Krueger, given a god-complex and a commitment to destroy the entire world and drag it into darkness.