Doctor Doom is a man of science, but he took a different approach to putting the Silver Surfer under his spell.
WARNING: The following contains spoilers for “Leave the Demon, Take the Cannoli” in Marvel #2 by Eric Powell, Marissa Louise and VC’s Clayton Cowles.
In Marvel #2, all the blue-eyed Thing wanted in “Leave the Demon, Take the Cannoli” was to sit on the couch in Johnny Storm’s underwear and eat a tasty Italian dessert. That turned out to be too much to ask. Instead, Thing ended up fighting Spider-Man and Dr. Doom, with the latter of which managing to possess the Silver Surfer with a demon named Gathonagog. Gathonagog’s first appearance in Marvel highlights Dr. Doom’s capabilities as a scientist and a Master of the Mystic Arts.
By any measure, Doctor Doom is one of the smartest people in the Marvel Universe. He’s tried to outwit Reed Richards many times, but he’s rarely succeeded when he’s stuck to science. So in this story, he decides to try his hand at something else: magic. He casts a summoning spell, using Gathonagog to bring the Silver Surfer under his control.
According to Doom, Gathonagog is so powerful that “Only a being capable of containing the Power Cosmic could be the vessel of my otherworldly slave.” Doom implies that whatever would happen if Gathonagog went into a regular human wouldn’t be good, but doesn’t clarify whether it would be something physical like an exploding body or something mental. If the person were to go insane, it would be reminiscent of the endings of many of H.P. Lovecraft’s stories. His narrators were frequently driven mad through exposure to cosmic knowledge.
Lovecraft–arguably the father of cosmic horror, inventor of Cthulhu, and inarguably a writer of horribly racist poetry–is referenced a few more times during Gathonagog’s summoning. Doom calls Gathonagog “From your realm of chaos and madness! From the void beyond the stars where the ancient ones slumber!” The description is alluding to Lovecraft’s elder gods, who created the universe before going to sleep. When they wake, they’ll destroy everything. In Lovecraft’s mythos, the only chance humanity has at survival is that these ancient ones don’t notice us, the way a human wouldn’t kill an ant they don’t notice. Doom’s word choice hints that Gathonagog is one of those elder gods.