Nightmare (Marvel)
Nightmare is a male comic supervillain who features in Marvel Comics.
Contents |
Biography
Origin
Nightmare was a demon that, as his name suggests, dwells in the nightmares of sleeping beings. He feeds on the fear that bad dreams produce, and can also use them to torture or mentally influence sentient lifeforms in their sleep. Nightmare has been opposed by many super-heroes, including the Hulk, Ghost Rider, and, most frequently, Doctor Strange.
He came to join the ranks of the Fear Lords where similar to the others that his true origins were a mystery that was only known to a few. (Doctor Strange, Sorcerer Supreme v1 #31)
Long ago, Zeus of the Olympian Gods came to Nightmare where he asked the demon to care for one of the Night Shards that contained the scattered power of the banished goddess Nyx. He asked the demon to hide the relic within the dream to prevent the goddess of night from ever recovering her power. In exchange, Zeus promised that the Olympians would never trespass in Nightmare's realm. (Avengers: No Road Home v1 #3)
Lord of Dreams
Nightmare captured the physical astral form of an unnamed human male who was suffering from deep psychological guilt after committing a fraudulent business transaction. Holding the mortal captive within his specialized extra-dimensional dreamscape, Nightmare subjected the man's subconscious mind to a terrifying sequence of shifting illusions and physical torments, including an automated track where a miniature locomotive actively pursued him down a dead-end path. When Doctor Strange entered the dream dimension via astral projection to investigate the man's prolonged comatose state, Nightmare immediately recognized his long-time magical adversary and used his reality-warping control over the environment to attack him. Nightmare manifested a localized gravity warp that pinned Doctor Strange to the floor, materialized an impenetrable wall of solid ice to block his movements, and bound his arms with automated iron chains to prevent him from utilizing his traditional somatic sorcery. He openly mocked the sorcerer's vulnerability within the subconscious realm, confidently declaring that physical force was entirely useless against a conceptual entity who drew absolute power from the collective fears of the waking world. However, Doctor Strange outmaneuvered the trap by focusing his mental discipline to bypass the localized constraints, projecting a powerful hypnotic command directly into the mind of the sleeping businessman on Earth. This mental compulsion forced the mortal to abruptly awaken from his slumber, which instantly shattered the dreamscape's energetic anchor, completely dissolving Nightmare's manifested illusions and forcing the entity to scream in frustration as his captives safely escaped his dimension. (Strange Tales v1 #110)
During the Skrull Secret Invasion, the God Squad formed who sought to challenge the invaders by attacking their deities within their own realm. However, they needed to find the pantheon's home through the Dreamtime and thus sought a map of this collective unconscious. As such, they petitioned the fear lord Nightmare who agreed but in exchange for each of the Squad's members revealing their deepest fears. Secretly, Nightmare inended to use the divine fears of immortal gods to conquer the world but Hercules along with the others manage to escape their imprisonment. This allowed Amatsu-Mikabosh to steal the map through trickery after having created a shadow duplicate of himself to fool Nightmare. This infuriated the Lord of Nightmares who summoned an army of monsters to attack the God Squad who quickly managed to escape his realm. (Incredible Hercules v1 #118)
When Nyx was freed, she sought to reunite the scattered pieces of her soul and determined that one of the Night Shards was hidden in the realm of Nightmare. Thus, she dispatched her son Hypnos who was the god of sleep and could force the sleeping inhabitants to serve as his army. This act deprived Nightmare of his power thus weakening him and leading to him being unable to push back against his attacker. A group of Avengers fell into his realm and he attempted to force their aid but ended up asking for their help. (Avengers: No Road Home v1 #3)
Following the War of the Realms, Nightmare decided to invade the realm of Jotunheim that was weakened after the conflict and ruled by the new King Loki. From there, he intended to get access to the World Tree Yggdrassil and thus devour the other nine realms. However, he was defeated by Loki and was consumed by a Norn Stone empowered construct called Frosti who digested him and intended to excrete Nightmare back to his home dimension. (Loki v3 #1)
Trapped within a stalemate, Loki proposed that the pair fight as mortals and give up their otherworldly nature as part of their duel. Nightmare came to agree but after doing so it was Loki who betrayed him by having a Stark Industries car fall from its showroom on top of the Lord of Dreams. Upon being killed, Nightmare as a mortal now was relegated to journeying to the afterlife where he came to meet the One-Above-All and cursed Loki's name for his treachery in putting him in Heaven. (Loki v3 #4)
Overview
Personality and attributes
In appearance, Nightmare was a slender male entity who operated as the absolute ruler of the Nightmare World within the Dream Dimension. He possessed a tall, gaunt stature and an exceptionally thin body build, paired with pale skin and sharp, angular facial features that were framed by wild, unkempt green hair that stood up in jagged tufts from his head. His face was characterized by narrow, slitted eyes and a thin, mocking mouth that routinely shifted into a sinister grin during his torment of mortal minds. Nightmare's attire consisted of a form-fitting, bright green bodysuit that covered his entire torso and limbs, featuring an integrated, high-collared ragged cape that billowed outward from his shoulders like torn fabric. He did not utilize standard human footwear, and he was continuously observed riding a supernatural, coal-black horned stallion named Dreamstalker, which could gallop seamlessly across the open void of the dreamscape without requiring a solid physical path. (Strange Tales v1 #110) His domain led to him being known as the Lord of Dreams. (Incredible Hercules v1 #118) He also came to be referred to as the Lord of Darkness. (Doctor Strange v1 #183) And he was also referred to as the Midnight Leviathan. (Marvel Fanfare v1 #51)
At some point, he came to encounter the primordial nightmare known as Nemesis. The two mated leading to the birth of the Night Terrors named Zmora and Morus. The two giant nightmares were kept chained and hidden away by their father until he ever needed them. Despite being his children, the Night Terrors regarded their father as being merely a lord and instead claimed their own power as well as influence surpassed him as they were sons of the Primordial Nemesis. (Sorcerer Supreme v1 #6)
One account claimed that the creature known as Daydream was his daughter born from Betty Ross. (Incredible Hulk v2 #81) He was noted to had been the father of a half-human offspring called Trauma. (Avengers: The Initiative Special v1 #1)
Powers and abilities
Nightmare was a natural conceptual manifestation belonging to a specialized species of extra-dimensional entities known as the Fear Lords, native entirely to the Dream Dimension. On a basic feats level, this unique extra-dimensional physiology granted him absolute mastery over mind invasion, reality warping, and environmental restructuring whenever a sentient mortal being entered a state of sleep. He possessed the innate power to capture the astral forms of human beings, completely dictating the gravity, landscape, and physical laws within his pocket realm to match the deepest anxieties of his victims. Nightmare could effortlessly conjure fully tangible physical hazards out of raw subconscious energy, project destructive psychic blasts, and paralyze powerful sorcerers by weaponizing their own stray thoughts against them. He held no biological vulnerabilities to conventional human diseases, toxins, aging, or physical blunt force trauma, rendering him completely immune to standard physical combat launched within the waking world. Despite these immense reality-warping capabilities, Nightmare was bound by a strict, absolute physiological framework native to his existence: his active power levels and physical hold over his captives were entirely dependent on the targets remaining asleep on Earth, meaning that if a victim was forcefully awakened by internal or external means, his localized control would instantly collapse and his manifestations would completely dissolve. (Strange Tales v1 #110)
He noted that he was a conceptual entity who was as much part of existence as Eternity himself. According to Nightmare, mortal dreams would lack meaning if he did not infect them. (Doctor Strange v2 #34)
His realm bent to his will before he could even think it with all its inhabitants enslaved to his will. (Nightmare v1 #1)
Among his minions was the diminutive dog-faced demon named Doggerel who was noted for being his competent major-domo. (Nightmare v1 #1)
He ruled the borderlands between madness and myth which led to him being privy to knowledge beyond the understanding of some gods. Within his infinite libraries, he had charts that led to the realms of other pantheons as dreamers from other worlds do fall into his clutches from time to time. (Incredible Hercules v1 #118)
Notes
- Nightmare was created by Stan Lee and Steve Ditko where he made his first appearance in Strange Tales v1 #110 (July, 1963).
Alternate Versions
In other media
Television
- In Ultimate Spider-Man, Nightmare appeared as an antagonist in the animated television series in the episode "Strange" where he was voiced by actor Mark Hamill.
Films
- In Hulk: Where Monsters Dwell, Nightmare appeared as an antagonist in the animated film where he was voiced by actor Matthew Waterson. An inhabitant of the Dream Dimension, he had numerous shadow creatures at his command where he kidnapped children to become his servants. Those children taken in their dreams were transformed into terrifying monsters in their nightmares with these becoming his army to invade the waking world.
Video games
Appearances
- Doctor Strange v1: (1963)
- Nightmare v1:
- Avengers: No Road Home v1:
- Loki v3:
- Sorcerer Supreme v1:
External Links
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