Dormammu - Character

Character

Dormammu has been described as "something worse than a demon". It is unknown exactly how ancient he is, as he inhabits a wholly alien, conventional-laws-of-physics-defying realm separate from the regular Marvel Universe, and certain similar beings, such as the Dweller-in-Darkness are known to predate it. He is known to well precede the creation of the current demonic netherworlds; to have clashed with Agamotto hundreds of millions of years ago, to have served as the primary enemy of the Vishanti ever since, and to have been considered an extreme threat by the mages of "pre-cataclysm" Atlantis.

Dormammu is presented as the most powerful and malevolent of "the Faltine", fictional higher-dimensional mystical energy beings. Not native to the "Dark Dimension", Dormammu and "his" sibling Umar were exiled for slaying their progenitor "Sinifer" (and what was considered a morbid/unclean obsession with physical matter), whereupon they journeyed there in search of experience, and assumed corporeal forms. Dormammu merged with the local "Flames of Regency" to further enhance his power, and returned to an energy state, whereas Umar had grown accustomed to physical pleasure. After imprisoning the horde of marauding virtually unstoppable Mindless Ones behind a barrier Dormammu enslaved the entire realm to be worshipped as its sole deity, and continued to gradually merge other mystical universes to his own, while spreading his worship to any sorcerers throughout the multiverse who invoked his powers.

The character is sometimes shown as incredibly patient, with certain plots to achieve his goals spanning billions of years, whereas others are planned far more recently or even improvised through opportunity. However, although extremely intelligent, with tremendous knowledge of the mystic arts, he is overwhelmingly arrogant, generally does not adapt well to sudden confusion and unexpected developments, and has a tendency to indulge, and brag to, technically outmatched foes rather than swiftly finish them off. He and his sister (originally genderless siblings) Umar have an unpredictable love-hate relationship. Sometimes being loyal and collaborating, and other times gladly betraying and taking the other's power for themselves. Umar has an occasional tendency to sarcastically puncture her brother's obsessive histrionics with more pragmatic sadistic hedonism.

Writer Keith Giffen has described them as "Donnie and Marie from hell. The brother-sister sibling rivalry relationship blown up to nightmarish, universe-shattering proportions." Whereas Dormammu himself is "completely inhuman", the kind of character that "commits mass murder... on a whim".