…Gateway’s origin?

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But what did the Shadow King want with Vibranium?


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But I’m not stopping there in my Grand Unified Theory.


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I believe the answer lies in Siryn’s sonic powers.



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Nathan infected by Apocalypse




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Good enough for me to say ©J C. N 2013



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66 Responses

  1. This was a great article! I always enjoy how you find even more of the Shadow King’s comprehensive ties to the X-Men and the larger Marvel Universe.

    As the guy who wrote the X-Marks the Spot entry on the Australian Outback for UXN, I especially enjoyed that you addressed and proposed plausible theories for some of the town’s more interesting quirks. Great work—I’d never even considered that maybe N’astirh inadvertently infected the town’s computer systems with the Transmode Virus.

  2. Meticulously reasoned as always. There’s tons of stuff here I never knew about before because it falls during a period of the X-Men I’m not familiar with, but it all holds together.

    Funny thing, I only just found out about that Iron Fist story in Deadly Hands of Kung Fu thanks to the blog Diversions of the Groovy Kind reprinting it over the past week, so as I was reading the above post I was thinking “But how can he tie this in with the N’Garai?” And then you did just that. How could I have doubted it?

  3. As seen in “Black Panther” #7, one of the effects of exposure to vibranium radiation is to make a person bigger and stronger–with sufficiently intense exposure, they become a monster (you also link it to the Wendigo). In this way, it is similar to the gamma radiation that created the Hulk, the Abomination, and Doc Samson. (And gamma radiation also created the Leader, whose powers are mental in nature, similar to how vibranium radiation gave T’Challa ESP.) It’s clearly different from gamma rays, though, so we might call this radiation v-rays, or perhaps… vita-rays?!? Captain America’s shield has long been said to be made of some kind of vibranium alloy, which means the US government obviously had a sample of vibranium at the time Steve Rogers participated in Operation Rebirth. Perhaps the “vita-rays” he was exposed to were carefully controlled vibranium radiation, which caused him to mutate from a 98-lb. weakling into a muscle-bound athlete (bigger and stronger). While not quite superhuman, Cap has always been described as the pinnacle of human perfection and has amazing agility and stamina. The same can be said for Ka-Zar, who grew up in the vibranium-rich Savage Land. Perhaps he was exposed to similar levels of vibranium radiation, or “vita-rays,” and this resulted in his near-superhuman athleticism.

    • I love your thinking Tony. Don’t forget Claremont’s revelation that the United States Government’s stock of vibranium was held in the San Francisco Mint!

      I love the additional origins you attempt to connect this to, and just love the overall potential of this plot in that it means Kirby was coming up with an explanation for the whole Marvel Universe which doesn’t require resorting to the Celestials mythos.

      And recall Vibranium turns brittle upon exposure to gamma radiation… which means it’s time for some character to attempt to detonate a gamma bomb at the site of the sacred mound with the aim of stopping the “demon spirits”. Which character would take such drastic measures to stop the “demon spirits” though? Could Moses Magnum, tired of being manipulated and after discovering the truth regarding vibranium, be the one to do it?

      As for my thoughts on the realm that went on to become the Dark Dimension, I’d suggest it contained Galactus’s world.

      • I got to read the part about the Dark Dimension being what remains of Galactus’s home-space, eh? A fascinating idea. It also offers an explanation for why the Mindless Ones are basically humanoid in form. And maybe why so many of Marvel’s monsters have a humanoid form. In fact, I remember something about one of the reasons Neal Adams quit the X-Men was because Stan Lee insisted the (non-humanoid) monster Neal created in #65 be re-drawn to have a humanoid form. Marie Severin made the changes. Why was Stan so insistent that Marvel stick with humanoid monsters? And why are so many weird-looking alien races — even aquatic or avian ones — also basically humanoid in appearance? Could it somehow be traced back to humanoid denizens of Taa? I wonder. And what does this say about the non-humanoid aliens (like the Fomalhauti)? It’s worth thinking about.

        Anyway, you really packed a lot into that post. I’m very impressed by the attention to detail.

    • My thoughts on Vibranium are that it is a basic building block of why & how things work in the physics of the Marvel Universe. That is there is something within the chemical makeup of Vibranium in its different forms (metal, gaseous & liquid) that makes things work. Things such as Bruce Banner surviving the Gamma Bomb instead of dying of Gamma poisoning, the Fantastic Four getting their powers instead of over-exposure to cosmic radiation, Daredevil getting his powers (the substance he was exposed to being irradiated Vibranium) & so on.

      Perhaps Vibranium in its gaseous form is the Terrigen Mists the Inhumans rely on to manifest their powers. Vibranium can be the key to unlock all the secrets of the Marvel Universe. A third deposit in Kata Tjuta (in the Northern Territory in Australia) closely guarded by Australia’s Indigenous race, the Aborigines, would continue to unlock secrets of the Marvel Universe.

      • Well when you put it like that, vibranium could be the source of pretty much everybody’s super-powers. As I said, we know that the U.S. government had some vibranium during World War II, and they had a pretty good store of it in the “modern” era, as seen in the Spider-Woman issue you posted about. So small amounts of this material would have been available to scientific researchers with the funds to afford a sample. The spider that bit Peter Parker may have been irradiated with vibranium. Henry Pym may have incorporated vibranium in his shrinking formula (liquid and gaseous forms). Likewise, Norman Osborn, Otto Octavius, and Flint Marko may all have been exposed to vibranium radiation. Notably, the comics always say these characters are exposed to “radiation,” but they don’t usually say what KIND of radiation (unless it’s gamma rays or, less often, cosmic rays). So, really, any character who gets his or her powers from exposure to “radiation” could be added to the list. Other possibilities are the Lizard, the Scorpion, even Man-Thing. The Power Broker’s strength-augmentation process could be based on vibranium radiation. Perhaps the cobalt radiation that turned “Happy” Hogan into the Freak (a “demon-spirit” if I ever saw one) was actually a cobalt / vibranium combination? I don’t know that you mentioned it specifically, but the “sacred panther herbs” or whatever that gave T’Challa his physical prowess were undoubtedly mutated by vibranium radiation, which is why they only grow in Wakanda. So that puts him in the same column as Captain America and Ka-Zar that I mentioned in my comment on your post.

        The Mad Thinker’s Awesome Android and the Super-Adaptoid — two shape-changing androids. What is their power source? How do they change shape like that? Perhaps each one has a “heart” of vibranium. This leads me to another android — the Original Human Torch — and the explanation for the sudden surge in crazy-powered mutants that I mentioned a couple of weeks ago. What is the OHT’s power source? What is the nature of his flame — what is it that’s actually burning to produce all that fire? And how do we explain Toro suddenly bursting into flames when he met the Human Torch? Sure, he was a mutant with latent powers, and his close proximity to the Torch caused his powers to manifest. But that sounds to me like the Human Torch was emitting some kind of radiation that causes latent powers to manifest. A transfusion of the Torch’s blood gave Spitfire super-powers. Not flame powers, but super-speed. Again, sounds like latent mutant powers activated by exposure to the Torch. (After the war, her powers eventually faded. And it seems like Toro was never very active when he was separated from the Torch for long periods of time. So they may have needed continuous exposure to the Torch’s radiation to keep their power levels up. Mad Thinker may have deduced this and exposed Toro to some vibranium radiation before sending him after the Sub-Mariner.)

        Perhaps the Human Torch, too, was powered by a “heart” of vibranium, and when he was flaming, he emitted this vibranium radiation. And this radiation could either cause latent mutant abilities to manifest, or it could cause people exposed to it to produce mutant offspring with wildly unpredictable powers.

        I would take this further, which may not work as well for you as it kind of depends on my Original Marvel Universe timeline. But most of Marvel’s mutant characters of the X-Men’s generation were born in the decade following World War II, so most of their fathers probably fought in the war. Christopher Summers was a pilot about the same age as Ben Grimm, so he was most likely in the Army Air Corps during the war. William Drake was probably in the infantry, and Warren Worthington, Jr. was undoubtedly an officer. Even John Grey may have volunteered later in the war (which would explain why Jean Grey is a mutant and her older sister Sara is not). David Munro, Nikolai Rasputin, Carter Blaire, Ronald Rankin, Neal Proudstar, Saburo Yoshida all probably fought in the war. And they could all have, at some point, come into close proximity with the Human Torch. As a member of the Invaders, the Human Torch was all over the globe during the war. We know he was in England, France, and Germany. We know he went to Russia. I think I remember him and Toro being in the Pacific Theater at some point. And in every one of these places, he would have encountered American soldiers, as well as the native population. So it’s no stretch to say this handful of individuals would have encountered him at some point. We know he met Baron Strucker, and he definitely had mutant children later, Andreas & Andrea. The Human Torch doubtless could have irradiated thousands of people during World War II, and the fact that only a small number of them actually had mutant children makes it more believable to me.

        He would have irradiated more people during his return stint in the mid-1950s, mostly in the United States, so you would expect an uptick in mutant births. So who do we have being born at this time? Kitty Pryde, Rogue, Sam Guthrie, Dani Moonstar, Doug Ramsey, Rusty Collins, and Angelica Jones, as well as Roberto daCosta, Rahne Sinclair, and Meggan, etc., etc., etc. We don’t have a full and complete record of the Torch’s exploits during this period, so who knows where he went during the couple of years he was active?

        So, as I said, the man most responsible for the mutant phenomenon of the modern “Marvel” age? Phineas T. Horton!

  4. Amazing! I was dubious about vibranium. (I still don’t like the name “vibranium” … I think someone should change its name …) But your logic is infallible!

    Nice work once again. You outdid yourself!

  5. Following on from my origin for Galactus, if I ever had the clout to write Dr. Strange, one of my idle fancies would be this: due to some other catastrophe, the major powers are away from Earth when Galactus returns. We could have Spider-Man and, say, Hawkeye around for comic relief. Doc is the only one to stand against him. The most powerful magic Doc knows does not work on him – so in order to save his homeworld, Doc opens up a great big hole into the Dark Dimension and sends Galactus through. And we have a battle between Galactus and Dormammu, a battle with real bad effects for the rest of reality, where Doc must intervene.)

    It’d be fun – and sort of the Ultimate Ditko vs. Kirby conflict. I haven’t worked out all of it, and these days there seems no point, but, very loosely speaking, I’d use Moorcock’s framework, that Galactus was a Lord of Law, while any Dark Dimension is a realm of Chaos. Galactus would find all sorts of energy available in the Dark Dimension – but as he absorbs huge chunks of it – and as he fights Dormammu, he begins to get more and more distorted – and more and more like ol’ furnace-face. It would be fun – especially with somebody like Chris Warner on the art.

  6. Quite a rollercoaster, Nathan. As you said, it’s like a Grand Unified Theory of the Marvel Universe. It’s the sort of thing that if Marvel were redesigning the universe from scratch with the benefit of hindsight – an Ultimate or Heroes Reborn type of thing but, you know, good – that they might consider. I sometimes have problems with that kind of thing. I like the fact that the Marvel universe is a hodgepodge of unrelated events. But there’s no doubt your theory is in the Thomas/Englehart/Gruenwald tradition of tying seemingly unrelated things together after the fact. Very interesting.

    • Thanks so much fnord that you consider this as a worthy reboot infrastructure. If Marvel were to rewind to the early 90s it could also work. One can dream, despite how untenable.

      This doesn’t necessarily affect the hodgepodge but you have to admit when Lee & Kirby were writing the comics had a great, internal consistency that was also fun and its gone significantly downhill since writers have come in that were not raised on the Silver Age. The Ultimate titles were an acknowledgement of Marvel themselves realising this issue.

      We all know though that this would be resolved if Marvel had let their heroes grow up in real-time.

      Just look at Marvel’s core characters/ titles and they are still those created in the Silver Age.

      Think what characters created since then have been able to sustain title runs the core Silver Age characters have. Not many.

  7. I don’t think Adversary was “The Great Spirit” – I think Forge didn’t know who “Naze” (really a Dire Wraith) was summoning.

    • The Great Spirit to whom Naźe and Forge refer was certainly the Adversary.

      Recall the Dire Wraith Naźe summoned the Great Spirit after which he was possessed by the Adversary in the lead-up to The Fall of the Mutants!

      Thank you for dropping by:)

      • Yeah, but again – “The Great Spirit” is like the benevolent supreme being in that mythology. The “Adversary” is a demonic force whose name they’re afraid to even say – that’s why they only refer to him as “The Adversary”. I agree that the Dire Wraith Naze was summoning the Adversary, but he knew that – he was offering up Earth in exchange for help for “his people” (aka the Wraiths). He may have told Forge that he was calling upon The Great Spirit, but that was a lie.

  8. Wow, you sure are pulling a lot of different sources together there! Looks like a herculean effort.

  9. I read the theory, and as usual was amazed by how many bits and pieces you managed to stitch together.

    And then I noticed the Avengers Forever pieces by Plok. I’m obviously gonna have to digest *that* thoroughly, and probably the related pages on his own site.

  10. I worked my way through your Gateway post.

    You might want to consider these possibilities.

    1. What you call “pure vibranium” is actually a different isotope of the metal than the Antarctic & Wakandan varieties. Hence why the Great Mound doesn’t mutate folks wholesale… it only has a small percentage of said isotope… T’Challa managed to hit a higher concentration than average.

    2. Another variety, which lacks the vibratory abilities but happens to hold enchantments very well, is primarily found in the dimension that has been falsely called Limbo. This isotope is best known as promethium, or “soulsteel”, although some deposits have been found in other splinter realms under the name “netheranium”.

    3. The Celestial containment suits (did you ever see my theory tying them to the Beyonders) are composed of a similar alloy, as is much of their technology, including their Ship, and the nanites which compose the original T-O virus. This was all part of their experiments in evolution, specifically in how technological races might develop… they WANTED the naites to change over time, and seeded varieties on dozens of worlds, from Earth to the Technarch homeworld.

    (This would neatly explain, I think, why a magikal sword can cure the virus…)

    4. It’s also possible that there are isotopes of the metal in Mount Wundagore, long known as a nexus of magic, as well as, perhaps coincidentally, evolution research. Indeed, there may be a connection between the High Evolutionary (who also wears a suit of strange metal armor) and either the Celestials or Apocalypse.

    Just some babbling on a lazy Sunday afternoon.

  11. Reblogged this on Mars Will Send No More and commented:
    Nathan Adler of FanFix begins with the X-men character Gateway and extrapolates a grand unified theory that ties in Jack Kirby’s Black Panther and the origin of Galactus. Part mutant minutiae, part aboriginal apocalypse and nineties nostalgia, it winds through a splash of Kirby Krackle and drops in on the bronze age Black Panther. Are you ready to mine for the mysterious vein of vibranium hidden within… Gateway’s Origin?

  12. Amazing blog- as always!
    Gateway has been shown recently to have been from the same tribe and to have mentored Eden Fesi- Manifold of the current (Hickman’s) Avengers line up and Secret Warriors member. Manifold is sorta a cosmic position in each reality(as shown in Hickman’s Secret Avengers)- someone capable of manipulating space much in the way the Space Infinity Gem does- Teleportation at unlimited range being the most obvious application of the power.

    Gateway may have been the prior “Manifold” and thus took Eden Fesi as his apprentice- and Eden’s power coming to fruition may have signaled to Gateway that he did not have long to live- indeed, soon after Eden joined Nick Fury’s band of Secret Warriors, Gateway was killed (In X-Force). Eden’s power being essentially the same as gateway’s -only greater(!) – might indicate that their tribe has a connection to this Manifold ability and that they may be responsible for continuing the line.
    It may be that eden’s greater powers stem from his youth or from whatever final universe-ending cosmic event Hickman is building toward in Marvel (rumors are of a reboot, but I’ll drop every Marvel title if that’s so!).

    • Thanks Jason:)

      Show’s how much Hickman gets about Australian culture – here manifold is known most commonly as the exhaust.

      I much prefer Claremont’s iteration of Gateway and you can tell from my post above “sacred mound” of vibranium is the likely direction he’d have gone in which kicks Hickman’s own efforts into the next galaxy!

      Oh for a return to 1980s Marvel:(

  13. Goodness me, Nate. I clicked on your link concerning Gateway, Australia and the vibranium mound. You have a TON of material posted there! It will take me some time to go through it all. But you certainly have been busy thinking about these abandoned plots and other connections into the Marvel Universe. Gateway always sitting on that high site certainly makes one wonder if you are on to something. I love how your mind connects so many peoples of the puzzle.

    It seems odd to me though. Chris Claremont created the N’Garai very early in his writings. And there are many connections with them during his Marvel run. Yet he never actually brings a full-scale story/adventure about the N’Garai fighting the heroes. They are almost always in the background. If he was headed towards some big epic storyline, why wouldn’t he have told it in his seventeen year run at Marvel Comics in the 1970s and 1980s?

    • SOMETHING happened to make Claremont give up Illyana’s fate to Louise Simonson in “Inferno” and change the original intent of the N’Garai Saga that “Inferno” was originally intended to ostensibly complete. That SOMETHING was Harras co-opting the story to redeem Cyclops by destroying Madelyne Pryor.

  14. […] enjoyed it and I bet X-fans will get a kick out of it. Link here. While you’re there you could do worse than to amble through the archives, there’s lots […]

  15. Neat. I think you get a bit too far in the connections to the rest of the Marvel Universe, but the basic idea of connecting the N’Garai to the Shadow King, The Adversary, Gateway, and Limbo sounds legit. We know that Claremont was gearing up for a huge Shadow King story for UXM #300 when he was kicked out, and I could see him planning to go out with a bang connecting threads he’d been planting since the first X-Men story he plotted himself.

    • You’ve got to admit though connecting Gateway and the “outsign spirits” to the Sacred Mound of vibranium in Wakanda and its “demon spirits” in Black Panther #7 is just too obvious, and connects beautifully with his unresolved plans for Ororo:)

      And given Ororo was a Faltine like Clea its fun to connect this back to the realm that became the Dark Dimension being that of Galan of Taa. The Grand Kirby Marvel Universe Unified Theory!

  16. I think you’re onto something good here. If I was able to keep working on my comic site your comments would be gold. By demonstrating common sources you are creating the equivalent of a tree of life for comics, showing common ancestors and generally simplifying and explaining everything. Admiring your work from a distance:)

  17. This is quite an amazing estimation.

    In fact I wouldn’t bet it was too far off from what Claremont had planned seeing as the Shadow King was going to have some dominance over the Inner Circle and use Gateway to access dreamtime was actually what he had planned…its all in there along with:

    The Outbacks HQs computer having sentience

    Why Shadow King is obsessed with Storm to begin with.

    Storms mystical heritage

    The N’Garais relation to just about everything

    Gateways history

    The Reavers relation to Gateway

    You connect it all. Pretty good stuff, somebody give you a writing job:)

  18. […] were previously believed to be uranium, I’d posit they are in fact vibranium (in line with my Grand Unified Vibranium Theory and I’ll explain why further […]

  19. The gateway origin is really your biggest masterpiece. It’s just plain perfect.

    I am amazed how fluently you moved from one topic to another in a logical way.

  20. Hiya, may I interest you to talk about Cthulhu?

    Because, the X-Men have made a habit of setting their base on places on top of very Lovecraftian Elder God influence. There’s the N’Garai cairns in Westchester, and their short-lived island base in middle of the Caribbean is of course nothing else than R’lyeh, or “the sunken Cthulhu island”, albeit misplaced.

    Now, Lovecraft did this story called “A Shadow out of Time”, freely available on Wikisource, which tells the story of professor Nathaniel Wingate Peaslee, who gets his mind hijacked back in time some 250 million years and spends time in their library city.

    HEREWITH BE SOME SPOILERS!(if you want to read the not-log story by yourself):

    Afterwards to his horror he finds the ruins of the said city under (ta-dah!) the Great Sandy Desert in Australia. The city is said to have large vaults and be connected to inner earth caverns which were sealed off during his visit on the island but which he will find bursted open when visiting the ruins.

    Which brings us to the fact that Roma is a harsh mistress who will take the X-Men right to the next probable location of crisis after they have just sealed off the Adversary. Of course it’s not merely because of an abandoned mining operation why she takes them there.

    I can’t omit to also quote the letter from the mining engineer (!) that guides Peaslee to the location in the first place:

    “…make it advisable for me to tell you about certain things I have seen in the Great Sandy Desert east of our gold field here. It would seem, in view of the peculiar legends about old cities with huge stonework and strange designs and hieroglyphs which you describe, that I have come upon something very important.

    The blackfellows have always been full of talk about “great stones with marks on them,” and seem to have a terrible fear of such things. They connect them in some way with their common racial legends about Buddai, the gigantic old man who lies asleep for ages underground with his head on his arm, and who will some day awake and eat up the world.”

    Now, do we know anyone in habit of eating worlds or someone gigantic who lies asleep underground?

    Our protagonist Nathaniel btw hails from the imaginary Lovecraftian town of Arkham in Massachusetts the given real world location of which seems to have Essex Street going right through it, but that may be just an coincidence. 😉

    * * *

    Other than that, Belasco has to locations he’s connected on this world: the Antarctica and the Caribbean Island. The Caribbean island is if I remember correctly told to be in middle of Bermuda’s Triangle, just like the Monster Island of Mole Man. Monster Island is connected to underground lairs and has Moloids.

    Antarctica, again, is the place where in Loveraft’s At the Mountains of Madness a scientific expedition manages to find yet another massive ancient town that connects to the subterranean world.

    • Claremont never made the N’Garai as fully connected to the Great Old Ones as much as he obviously did with Magneto’s Island and an extreme pity we never learned more about that location.

      Do you really believe Roma relocated the X-Men there for a reason and if so exactly why (and what connection does it have to Loch Daemon)?

      Buddai makes me immediately think of the Dreaming Celestial but Claremont never made reference to the Celestials throughout his entire run so not keen to dip my toe in that water at present – but I do have a fix for the messy shoehorning of the Eternals and Deviants in the MU proper and it is part of my Grand Unified Vibranium Theory!

      By the way, Belasco did not have a connection to the Carribean Island under Claremont’s pen (that came later with Hama).

      And Monster Isle is off the coast of Japan, probably the Kural Chain near to Lord Darkwind and Moses Magnum’s respective bases!

      • Belasco did have a connection to the Caribbean Island: Illyana was lured into a temple there and taken away to Limbo by the portal discs that seemed to have a connection to that very place. I failed to mention earlier that the whole Belasco’s idea about opening a gateway to bring his Elder Gods to Earth is *the* basic Lovecraft plot. Pretty much my whole suggested case lies on this really, but it kind of gets hammered in and if he also made Belasco “the high priest of N’Garai” akin Cthulhu being the high priest of GOO… it could be only a homageous lift, but as we have no official explanation for the underground base it’s very curious for a mere coincidence.

        Monster Island seem to have been given two locations. Offshore Japan was the first one but later on they have positioned it in the middle of Bermuda triangle.

        As for Roma’s intention… it does look like they were rather after the Reavers and getting their base of it was merely a bonus, but all that unexplained advanced technology underneath the Australian desert just has to have some purpose.

        I have absolutely no idea what Claremont-written Bizarre Adventures 25 was about and can’t say if this Child of Light/Darkness thing is only a tick of Claremont’s or if he had some sort of female triumvirate not unlike the classic three witches set-up in mind.

      • On Claremont-written Marvel Fanfare 33 they put some light on the Caribbean island.

        Storm: “Horrible creatures inhabited the citadel and committed such unspeakable atrocities that the very stones radiate a primal malevolence which neither time nor effort can ever exorcise.”

        Kitty: “Those ancients were weird, all right, but they were no dummies, I’ve been examining the statues — they’re not stone. It’s some form of crystalline circuity matrix. They’re devices!”

        Storm’s comment it very appropriately Lovecraftian thing to say, whereas Kitty’s comment is curious at least. Are they supposed to be some sort of techno-organic, is the Aussie base of something similar and was it all by a coincidence that Technarch Warlock specifically rammed Magneto’s hi-tech Asteroid M when he came to Earth?

      • … aand checking up the Lady Daemon bit on marvunapp.com the Bizarre Adventures #25 story is pretty much pure Lovecraft with her sister trying to open up the gateway at Stonehenge to let “Outer Dark” into Earth. Castle Daemon apparently has a vast and ancient library with great deal of occult knowledge. “There has always been magic and dark power in the Highlands, and the Clan Daemon has always been a part of it…”

        So, when Claremont specifically refers to Loch Daemon as “haunted place” in the first issues of Excalibur… it could be a mere shout-out for his ten years old totally not-connected story, or, well, there’s Widget who portals Colin to Ee’rath which is ruled by Necrom, who is connected to the history of Phoenix-Force, that has current hostesses around the Earth, and Merlyn, who’s daughter Roma chose the Aussie base for the X-Men.

        Colin disappears from Loch Daemon in Claremont/Davis Ex #2 and then the storyline gets dropped until Davis upon his return to the title picks it up in Ex #46. Maybe lot of what Davis picked up was in the works and discussed already when Colin went but had to be dropped at that time for some reason (Claremont’s plans for Inferno falling through?).

      • Of course (I can’t believe I’d overlooked that Belasco had lured Illyana from THAT island)! Obviously a clue Hama later picked up on.

        The Technarch never had crystalline circuitry and recall the crystals, etc. in Marvel Fanfare #33 might have been brought there by the Chief Examiner from the Questprobe series.

        Don’t forget Claremont also refers to Kthara in Marvel Spotlight #24 as “She who Rules the Outer Dark” so given same writer and same name undoubtedly he’s referring to the same demons encountered by Lady Daemon!

        As for Kylun, I don’t think Claremont intended young Colin McKay to become him or be in any way connected to Necrom. A later Davis addition which I doubt emerged from any discussions he had with Chris.

      • Yes, and what’s more, to quote Kthara Marvel Spotlight #24: “…my Ravagers will be free to claim this Earth once more. Claim — and rule!”

        Do we know any demonic beings that are known to had ruled the Earth once and looking for to do it again? 😉

      • It is of course possible that all that Loch Daemon was meant to be was a Scottish pun on “Lakedaimon”, the other name used for Sparta, the Ancient Greek city-state where things were a bit gladiatorian and where the women enjoyed of status, power and respect on level that was unheard of in the rest of the classical world. So, all things right at Claremont’s alley. 😉

        The X-men part of Fall of the Mutants draws heavily from the Spartans’ last stand at Thermopylae, or, hah, “The Hot Gates”, which probably was generally a bit obscure thing in the comic book circles prior Miller’s “300”.

  21. I omitted to mention that Cthulhu by his stated role is “the High Priest of the Great Old Ones”, “a loose pantheon of ancient, powerful deities from space who once ruled the Earth and who have since fallen into a deathlike sleep”. “Space”, as Lovecraft uses it, may as well be understood as another, very dark dimension.

    The other high priest, Kulan Gath of course is intimately connected to the world of Conan the Barbarian, which, as some assessments online have it, is connected to Cthulhu mythos. And Cthultu, if we believe IMDB, was in “Oliver Twisted” with Erik Estrada who in turn was in “We Married Margo” with Kevin Bacon.

    So I’m not so sure if Vibranium, heavily abundant in place associated with the places connected to the Great Old Ones is actually material brought to the world by them when they came, possibly in the form of their vessels. Corrupting the mankind seem to be high on the agenda of the servants of them for which purpose such corruptive material would be just great. Of course the stupid humans would go make shields and stuff from it without understanding what they are playing with.

    According to Wikipedia “Cthulhu is described as being able to change the shape of its body at will, extending and retracting limbs and tentacles as it sees fit”, which barring the tentacles looks like something right out of the Marvel Universe Handbook’s page on Apocalypse, who has history of claiming that he was known in Egypt as Set. How close Apocalypse resembles another Lovecraft character Nyarlahotep, “”tall, swarthy man” who resembles an ancient Egyptian pharaoh”, I’ll leave up to others. But personally, I wouldn’t trust this En Sabah Nur one bit.

    • What do you mean by “the form of their vessels”? Ships or bodies? The GOO never seemed to require the first!

      I like the connection with Apocalypse but have you read Louise Simonson’s final origin for him in X-Factor Forever? Quite different it would seem!

      And Kulan Gath wasn’t the only High Priest of the N’Garai, Belasco was another and I posit here Suma-Ket also.

      • It was mainly a feeler thrown-in, but I was thinking about something ship-like made of vibranium. Haven’t read X-Factor Forever.

        There seems to be a line of High Priests, and Illyana maybe intended to be the last in line or something totally different.

  22. Soo… if we gather that Lovecraft got the unfitting bits of his mythos wrong, while the coincidences with Marvel Universe and the said mythos are just too numerous to be coincidences, I’d say that Dreaming Celestial is in his part massively tangled with this all: Deviants, Apocalypse’s technology of alleged Celestial origin, the high-technology underneath the Australian desert (which Lovecraft hasn’t managed to understand leading to such a deceptive description of it in the “Shadow”), the “Morlocks'” lairs branching underneath Westchester where there’s known N’Garai presence marked with hieroglyphed stonework.

    Apocalypse naturally has his connections to not only one form of techno-organic virus but also with Kang/Rama-Tut/Immortus, who I believe you were looking to somehow tie into your Grand Theory, and connects Nathaniel Richards and Cable to this… which you of course already knew, “Nathan Adler”, who seemingly picks up this tiny bits ignored by others very much like Sherlock Holmes and weaves full narratives of them, and taunts us all by using an assumed name that’s portmanteau of Nathan Summers, the alleged son of Scott Summers and Madelyne Pryor and Irene Adler, the one person who ever managed to one-up Sherlock Holmes and also is part of Marvel Universe.

    Frankly, Nathan, it’s quite obvious that you’re Cable.

    • Just what do you propose is the technology underneath the Reavers’ base? I propose that they’re Vibranium mining locations, including the Keewazi’s Silver Rock Springs too, a theory I’ve eventually get to when I unfold my Vibranium theory fully. As for how the Vibranium got there, I’ve proposed some ideas here but am up to other suggestions being posted here:)

      And am I the Marvel Universe equivalent of Nathaniel Wingate? Ooh, Satana’s middle name. Hmmm!

      • I don’t really know but someone has been busy doing some hi-tech tunneling around all these heavily (N’Garai) magic-induced places. Magneto had some fancy tech in Cthulhu island and in Antarctica, but was it originally his?

      • The tech beneath Magneto’s Antarctic base was obviously left behind by Apocalypse who undoubtedly had been mining there for its variant of Vibranium in order to create Adamantium as shown in Wolverine: Jungle Adventure.

  23. A huge point is made of the fact that Cthulhu “sleeps dead dreaming”, not unlike the Dreaming Celestial for whom the name Tiamut is given. Could it be that “Cthulhu” is a deranged idea of him passed on by the Devians to the cultists that Lovecraft have worshipping him in “Call of Cthulhu” around statuettes a lot like the ones on the Caribbean island.

    One of the places of worship mentioned in the story is Greenland where a set of Inuits do it. Greenland is also where we find the undying Atlantean sorceress Lilith in the beginning of the Rise of the Midnight Sons, trapped inside, ha, “Leviathan Tiamat”. The original Spirits of Vengeance had some Atlantis connection too if I remember correctly.

    Now, don’t you think Namor was being unnecessarily harsh on the idolatric Inuits who revered the frozen body of Steve Rogers when he stopped that and threw the slump of ice into ocean. He certainly has his reasons to not have any of that, from the look of things. Perhaps, they weren’t worshiping the blond blue-eyed man or the colors of America after all, but the shield made of…

    • Were the Deviants of the City of Toads ancestors of Tssathogua?

      If the Dreaming Celestial is Tiamat how did Lilith burst forth from him in Greenland if he is located on the West Coast?

      • Tiamat’s/Tiamut’s name popping up was only a fancy coincidence, but scanning through the Tsathoggua article on Wikipedia words like “Atlantean high priest” and “N’kai” sort of pop out, mentioned in quote from Lovecraft’s “Whisperer of Darkness”, the one with cyborgean contrivances. That damn Atlantis everywhere.

        Of course things like cyborgs in Australian underground base being mish-mash homageous lifts and shout-outs and nothing more is always a possibility.

      • N’Garai means The Conquerors in Basque!

  24. (just noticed you have already been told some of that by Cove West on Remarkable Blog. oh well.)

    Now why do we have the X-Men so tangled into this and why does Magneto seem to hang in places like the Caribbean island or Antarctica like he was, ha, tailing Belasco until moving to Westchester conveniently to keep Illyana closely on the eye after Belasco gets dethroned? I believe it has something to do with the fact that the Celestials have been explicitly revealed to be the reason why human race ultimately developed into a species that has super-human powers, or, Homo superior.

    For someone who spent his youngdom in a concentration camp and then in after-war Ukraine Magneto has always been too well versed with highly advanced technology. I’d say he has possibly stumbled into technology not unlike the one under the Reavers’ outback base that taught him to use and understand it, but: in Avengers ‘Yesterday Quest’ arch Chthon says that he increased Wanda’s magical powers and reduced her science-oriented ones.

    So it looks like Magneto has some very technology-oriented mojo in his genes, and later on he goes to have ridiculously technological bases nearby established areas of Belascian influence and is as loud proponent of Homo superior as Apocalypse is. Has someone been giving him (or rather, both of them) access to such technology with some very curious information of the Celestial-purposed role of his race?

    Does it all come down to a massive eternal battle between not good and evil but technology and raw magic? The Celestials vs. the Elder Gods. And the human race between it like the rising ape meeting the falling… astronaut?

    All this circles around and somehow connects to Mt. Wundagore, a very technological place built on top of a massive Chthonic site, by Moloids, courtesy of Herbert Edgar Wyndham, who becomes the High Evolutionary after getting vast amount of genetic information from everyone’s favorite mutant affair schemer Mr. Sinister.

    I’m sure though that any connection to classic Lovecraft story “Herbert West – Re-Animator” are purely coincidental,

  25. To return more closely to Gateway and the Australian Base, could it be conceived that “Dreamlands” is in fact inside the mind of the Dreaming Celestial? Lots of Deviant fun seem to have been done with it and I can’t help noticing your point of the technology in the base being able to link itself into people’s minds and dreams.

    Google finds the quote “The Dreaming Celestial learned that one of his star-spawned kin, the Celestial known as Ashema, was the guardian of the pocket universe” in several places. I don’t know if this is canon wording or fan wording, but “star-spawn” is a term most often associated with Cthulhu. Linking Ashema to Alchera or Alshra may be a bit far-fetched.

    Why Donald Pierce and the cyborg Reavers are littering the place, is harder to explain, but his prowess in the field on cybernetics is said to excess the conventional science by two centuries. Somewhat linking to the bigger Cthulhu mythos is Lovecraft’s story “Whisperer in Darkness”, where there is an alien race in habit to “surgically extract a human brain and place it into a canister wherein it can live indefinitely and withstand the rigors of outer space travel”, and


    the protagonist finds that his host’s deattached face and hands “were furnished with ingenious metallic clamps to attach them to organic developments” of one of the aliens pretending to be his host. Now, if that’s not a spot-on description of cybernetic attachments then I don’t know what is.

    Wouldn’t it be just handy for the higher-up operators to pass such advanced knowledge and technology at their disposal to a human with suitable characteristics like Donald Pierce, who infiltrates into Apocalypse-inspired mutant Inner Circle of the Hellfire Club despite hating mutants and also guide him to the whereabouts of such an important site as the Australian Base is for some reasons that yet are undisclosed to us?

  26. Completely unrelated matter, but a cool tidbit nevertheless, is that the Wolverine:Bloodlust panels about the Neuri Renegades attacking a human camp seems to offer the answer to the real-life mystery known as Dyatlov Pass incident, the mysterious deaths of nine ski hikers in the northern Ural mountains on the night of February 2, 1959. They don’t say it aloud but everything from place and timing to results match pretty much perfectly.

  27. Ou! Ou Ou! This should be about Gateway, but lots of things of interest about him has so far been ignored about him. When Madelyne is having her disturbing dream after hitting the screen, Gateway quite freely walks right into the dream. Also when Betsy is having her dreamlike premonition, it’s again Gateway who walks in to show her that Siege Perilous is the solution – and then teleports the X-Men back to the Outback from the Savage Land to necessitate the solution. At one point we see Storm meditating with him and dreamish version of Longshot lurks there collecting pieces of himself.

    And after the X-Men go through Siege Perilous, we will have crucified Logan dreaming a little fever dream about how things went down like someone was inducing it all into his head, possibly but of course not necessarily aided by this technology capable of accessing people’s dreams.

    It’s very dreamy time for the X-Men in Australian Outback, for the short while they stay there. In fact, these alternate bases seem to be used by the X-Men for only so long that a larger plot piece may be introduced, after which the place gets unceremoniously abandoned.

    They left the Caribbean island right after Illyana had been made Belasco’s disciple in UXM 160. You have the panel right there where Belasco pointedly talks about opening the “Gateway” for the dimension of his dark gods, and explicitly states Illyana will be his means to do it. The story ends into Belasco’s gloating about the five bloodstones and her glorious fate when they’re finally set. Inferno was partly supposed to be about this.

    (If one want’s to be absolutely paranoid about things, we’ll next meet Illyana when she talks with Xavier in UXM 163 or 164, who worries about her Belasco experiences and notes her mental shields and, I quote:

    “I ought to investi-
    gate– find a way to
    pierce that barrier–”

    Wouldn’t even mention it, but it’s just around these times when Pierce Consolidated is mining in Kentucky. But Chris wouldn’t… would he?)

    Anyways, other stuff happens, and then one days Roma brings the X-Men to Australia and hands them a curiously named Aboriginal teleporter and Siege Perilous, then Inferno happens taking form that may or may be quite altered from what it was supposed to be and the X-Men return to the Outback only for to throw kid Storm at the Shadow King and then leave the place in the infamous way very soon afterwards.

    So, had the Outback at this point given Claremont what he needed to further his bigger plot just like the Caribbean island before and was that something… a living gateway?

    • Shaw DOES remark in New Mutants #75 that Illyana is the most powerful among them and potentially the most likely to serve THEIR interests so just what is the true purpose behind the Hellfire Club I say!?

      And what are you suggesting about Pierce Consolidated mining in Kentucky at the same time Xavier things of piercing what “barrier”?

      • The Xavier quote was a massively contrived “I want to believe” type of thing. What barrier is really meant here are of course the mystic barriers that are preventing Xavier doing telepathy on Illyana, but I was trying to point to the typing in the blurb being divided so that there’s “gate” and “pierce” as some sort of hidden message for the reader.

        I DID warn it’s contrived, but there’s the timing of it just after the Belasco story and when Pierce surfaced alone and drifted away from the Hellfire Club. There is a massive Gateway to be opened and still just before Inferno in UXM 231 Claremont is having S’ym gloat about the Forge’s portal for Adversary being a minor one compared to the one he’s about to open.

        It may be that they just did poor job in showing the seriousness of the Demon Rain portal from Inferno, or it kind of got lost with the more pressing developments in the story regarding Maddie/Jean/Sinister, OR that Claremont was looking to blow open a much more Serious Gateway for the Elder Gods or something and was teasing for it for years beforehand, but was called off at the last minute from something that should have had linewide repercussions and it came a pesky portal to Belasco’s Limbo instead.

        As for the Hellfire Club, I always found their stated motivation for capturing the X-Men during the Dark Phoenix Saga to do some tests on them for to isolate the mutant factor and create what kind of mutants they wanted a bit Silver Agey, but with the Apocalypse retcons and whatnot the genetic manipulation angle akin to Mr. Sinister or the Celestials is very X-appropriate.

        Pierce may well be mining for Vibranium, but I’m more interest for what purpose he’s doing it. Did they need a shitload of magical metal for example to build some sort of Portal contrivances, possibly powered by portal-powered mutants like Gateway, or, hah, Illyana?

        Of course, there had already been built demon portals on Earth in linewide Surtur War cross-overette and the higher editors would probably have nixed there being yet another one of those in a similar story but at this point Claremont had already been teasing for it and to make something out of it there perhaps was a fastly conceived magical portal to Limbo as a back-up plan. Going back to read Belasco’s original plans for Illyana to open up a Gateway for the Elder Gods I find it hard to believe a crappy Limbo portal was supposed to be the culmination for the Darkchylde arc. I mean, wasn’t there already like an open connection to the Caribbean Island for the demons to use to get to Earth?

  28. And, the bit about “legends about Buddai, the gigantic old man who lies asleep for ages underground with his head on his arm, and who will some day awake and eat up the world”…

    Of course it’s the Black/Dreaming Celestial and Galactus who should be springing into one’s mind, but when mentioning that I didn’t even remember all the factuals circling around the Fantastic Four “Time Bubble story” of the Black Celestial boosting up Galactus’ hunger. It was published in 1990, contemporary to the Outback Era, as practically the first FF story by Walt Simonson, who should be supposed to have been very much in the loop with the X-office around this time.

    • In the lettercol of Thor #369 (pub. 1986) they let out that Walt and Louise Simonson were working on a Havok and Polaris limited series where they would be set against the Sleeping Celestial. Apparently it fell through and/because (?) they were sucked into the post-Mutant Massacre UXM, but the Celestial showing himself up seems to have been long in the works with the Simonsons.

      It’s hard to believe Claremont would have been working UXM towards that direction based only on obsolete reference-drop in ancient Lovecraft story, but all the Australian dream connecting machinery popping up sure dies give up tools to contrive things up. It could perhaps have been possible to retcon the Celestial sleep under Australia instead of Californian mountain.

      • Recall Havok & Polaris had previously been in the Rio Diablo Mountains in Uncanny X-Men #97 (when Eric the Red enslaved them) and return there in Uncanny X-Men #218 (when hunted by the Marauders and where the Brood starshark vessel crashes). So geological and archaeological anomalies were they both there studying that drew all the x-related events there in particular? Were the Rio Diablo Mountains an extension of the Diablo Range in California and if so was the Celestial drawing these events to where he was imprisoned?

        Can you add your email to your next comment so I can reply directly?

  29. Or rather, just after the Outback era. It’s haunting really how in 1990 Claremont visits Zaladane, Forge’s past, Shadow King and has Rogue pop in the Outback to absorb Gateway, really all the things that seem to have some connections to some massive plot, but gets derailed by Jim Lee’s eagerness to visit such classic settings like Shi’ar Imperium and Harras’ mandate to return them to the school setting where they are in their cartoon show getting popular but which he is done with. And he quits.

  30. We have of course so far ignored the little story piece that goes by the name “Dark Phoenix saga”, where Jean Grey… ish character hosting the Phoenix Force gets corrupted by Mastermind. His means for doing it is a mind tap device “provided by Emma Frost” and his own powers.

    Now if someone was inducing the fever dream into the head of crucified Logan (rather than him just imagining things he possibly could know nothing about), the process is eerily similar. Perhaps it is Donald Pierce who 1) is into torturing Logan and 2) actually was there to witness the happenstances presented in Logan’s dream.

    In any case, “Emma Frost’s” device, essentially telepathy by technology, still is pretty much the same thing as the mind tap technology in the Outback base. Both Emma Frost and Donald Pierce were members of the Inner Circle of the Hellfire Club so the technology can freely move but somehow I suspect that Emma Frost is not the originator it.

    Funny how this Australian mind tap technology dances with Madelyne Pryor and eventually plays a role in her corruption, considering that in DPS it’s Jean Grey… ish Child of Light and Darkness who they go after with it. Was it Storm who at some point explicitly said that Maddie is their computer wizard, suggesting that the technology there is not at all as easy for the others to use? Excluding of course demons from Limbo once controlled by N’Garai high priest Belasco, now property of Darkchylde’s.*

    Sooo… do we know any “Child of Light”? Jade from Feng-Tu?

    Anyway, soon enough after DPS, a cultist priest and a lycanthrope Friedrich von Roehm will introduce Selene, an ageless energy vampire and old acquaintance of Kulan Gath’s into the Club. It’s probably not because they think they’d fit just finely into the outfit of rich industrialist mutants who are into cosplaying 18th century.

    This happens right after she meets Rachel Summers, another Child of Light and Darkness. She’ll lose the hunt for her to Spiral though, who fools Rachel into her Body Shoppe just after getting connected to the Hellfire commandos Reese, Cole & Macon.

    And just then the Hellfire Club will pull a full 180 turn on their relation to the X-Men after meeting the mutant hunting robot Nimrod from Rachel’s Days of the Future Past future.

    (It must be noted of course that Nimrod is a stand-in for Fury from Alan Moore’s Captain Britain arch Jaspers’ Warp from where also Roma hails, and Claremont was planning to re-do Jaspers’ Warp and have Mutant Massacre tied to it, but he wasn’t allowed to use the characters)

    Nimrod is the ultimate expression of the attempts to stop the Celestial-induced evolution of the human race into superpowered Homo superior. Is his appearance in Earth-616 at this point a massive game changer for the hidden plans of the Hellfire Club or what?

    And should we return to re-evaluate the first appearance of Mystique where she radios to her mystic “lord” not so much before when she, possibly unknowingly, will try make the DoFP future come true by assassinating senator Kelly?

    * Oh yes, that Gateway fellow. When Illyana was doing a necromantic spell of most dark kind to summon Colossus, then thought to be dead by her, it was Gateway who knew of the summoning and teleported Colossus there just in time before Illyana managed to condemn herself beyond redemption. There seems to be practically no borders between Limbo and Australian Outback.

    I also can’t help thinking about the “Necrophone” that blew on Voctor von Doom’s face. Funny is should happen to the scion of a Balkanese magic user family, right after he walks in on the son of Nathaniel Richards tampering with the equipment. “Oh I’m just reading the papers!”, is the son’s excuse upon getting caught, and to cover himself for suspicions over what he knows will happen next he continues: “You seem to have made some errors in your equations, and –”

    And then later on he will go and stir up troubles on the Monster Island in Fantastic Four #1, tilting the fragile balance of things and essentially activating all the N’Garai problem of the modern times that will rapidly start to unfold.

  31. This is nothing short of revelatory. Blows my socks off. It makes me think that I didn’t read enough comics as a kid -a rather unlikely scenario. All your theories seem to unearth things that I’ve missed but this one’s absolutely dazzling. There’s stuff here that you can’t help but think that Kirby must have intended as an undelying myth, stuff that Claremont must have intended as a development of, and stuff that neither of them can have meant -but should have!

    For completism would it be worth mentioning The Brood as a manifestation of the N’garai? as a nipper I always assumed that the creature from Uncanny 143 and the Brood were the same thing and the Brood’s mysterious place of origin can only add to that suspicion. Come to think of it Nastirah has some physical resemblance to the both of them too.

  32. btw, following up on my previous comment, I was looking at Inferno and noticed that one of the little demons addresses Nastirah as ‘Mawther’ -perhaps suggesting a Queen/Hive structure.

  33. I really like this article, especially the bits with the Alchera but the theory about the vibranium, Gateway, the Shadow King and his obsession with Ororo is really fascinating.

    Really good stuff as always!

    P.S. Sorry for not posting in awhile, I will try to leave more comments in the future 😉

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