Doctor Fate created by Gardner Fox and Howard Sherman.
"I am Doctor Fate. You may not have heard of me, for my activities are not for mere mortals to know" - Secret Origins #31
Personal Details
Codename: Doctor Fate I
Codename: Doctor Fate II
Codename: Doctor Fate III
Codename: Fate
Overview
There are two titanic forces that battle over the fate of the universe via an ancient foretold cycle of light and dark, good and evil, Order and Chaos. In the third of the great ages the Lords of Order battled the Lords of Chaos, one of the Order-Lords Nabu took human form as the Descended One in order to guide humanity's champions - they are the wielders of Fate.
The succession of beings and couples to call themselves Doctor Fate were powerful sorcerers who drew more on Hindu and Eastern paths than the more unbalanced Western Hermetic traditions. Empowered by the Order-Lord Nabu they formed the backbone of the fight against the forces of Chaos - and when Order rejected their servant, Doctor Fate stood alone - a powerful guardian of humanity against the forces that would use them as pawns in their own wars.
Background
Long before even the creation of our solar system the nature of the universe was balanced between the forces of science and magic, between illusion and reality. With the Krona Incident and the creation of the Starheart much of the magical energies were wiped from the perceived boundaries of creation and a normality enforced itself while science dominated the universe. However certain elemental magical energies survived and in time they began to evolve into two races of mighty non-corporeal mystical being called the Lords of Order and the Lords of Chaos. Diametrically opposed forces who polarised the opposite spectrum of magical politics, between them on the fractal interface between them existed a war fought with pawns and servants.
The first age the Satya Yuga - the golden age of Order - had passed and it became obvious to many observers including the Oans, the Lords of Order and Chaos, the Phantom Stranger and many more immortal beings that the planet Earth was going to be the cross-roads of creation, a place where finally resolution to almost any conflict would be found. So it was here that the Lords of Order and Chaos staked their existence's and drew the battle lines in the Chaos/Order War. So with the genesis of Chaos the second age, the Treta Yuga concluded.
The third age of the cycle, the Dvapara Yuga brought forth the full power of the Order/Chaos war in a conflict that would eventually last 864,000 years. The Lords of Order made advances on some realms such as the continuing battle field of the Gemworld, while the Lords of Chaos conquered other realms such as the Nightshade dimension. Not all of the Lords fought each other - the Order Lord Terataya and the Chaos Lord T' Charr proved that Order and Chaos could work together via the Hawk and Dove spell. However the war continued and the Lords of Order could no longer let just their servants fight the war on Earth and to this end they dispatched the Order-Lord known in mortal languages as Nabu to take up the fight personally.
A being of pure order Nabu descended into the world of mortals during the peak of the Sumerian and Babylonian Empires. He took a human form and as Nabu the Wise, sorcerer and deity he guided and ancients against the forces of Chaos. Later he would shift his attention to Egypt and would serve behind the Pharaohs as both advisor and sorcerer. During this time he battled the Spirit of Vengeance (the Spectre in another age) who sought to punish the Egyptians for their transgressions. However after hundreds of years the mortal shell that Nabu had created began to weaken and so he placed himself in a specially prepared tomb in the Ur Valley to await his successor. There he lay in suspended animation as the Dvapara Yuga marched on.
For thousands of years Nabu lay in his sleep as the societies of man grew around him, new religions replaced the old gods, prophets were born and ascended, technology conquered nature and man discovered far off and unknown lands. In was in the "New World" that young Kent Nelson was born the son of Sven Nelson (a globe trotting archaeologist) and Celestine Babcock Nelson (a medium who died shortly after Kent's birth), raised by his father as they travelled the world from archaeological dig to archaeological dig. The Lords of Order observing from their remote dimension knew that Nabu needed a physical host to continue his work, therefore they placed the thoughts in Sven's head to bring his son to a certain tomb in the Ur Valley.
When Sven opened the sarcophagus of Nabu the Wise a gas filled the room killing him but seeming sparing the child. As the gas cleared Nabu awoke and began educating him on the arts of magic. While the training progressed Nabu accelerated Kent's ageing to the point of adulthood (granting him immortality in the process) and he blocked the child's grief for his father. With his training complete Nabu gave Kent three items, the so called Items/Artifacts of Order: a magical cape, helmet and amulet. Then Nabu unlocked Kent's grief. In anger he destroyed Nabu's body as the Order-Lord had planned allowing him then to possess the helmet that he had given Kent.
Kent Nelson began his career as Doctor Fate behind the scenes for the most part from about 1940 onwards. Initially Kent had the majority of the personality of the Dr Fate persona. During his first case he rescued Inza Cramer from Nabu's old foe of Wotan. In short succession he set up headquarters in a mystical tower in Salem and encountered the new host of the Spectre-force in the form of Jim Corrigan. It was the meeting with Corrigan that was to be a turning point in the affairs of Doctor Fate. Previously he had worked in the shadows and alone, but now he had encountered the Spectre he found himself instrumental in bringing the Spectre and other mystery men into battle against the Nazi's attempted invasion of Great Britain. The very operation itself was the catalyst for the formation of the legendary Justice Society. An organisation in which Doctor Fate world be one of the longest serving members.
As the world was plunged into war Kent Nelson found himself more and more being supplanted by the personality of Nabu who was possessing the Helm when he became Doctor Fate. The matter came to a head when one villain managed to capture the Helm, he was defeated by being flung into limbo but unfortunately he took the helm with him. Kent began using a half length Helm and his own mystical knowledge as a member of the All Star Squadron.
After the war Kent married Inza and began a career in medicine but he would eventually return to his father's profession of archaeology. In time the Helm of Nabu was recovered and the full power Doctor Fate returned to the world unlike many of his colleges in the disbanded JSA Kent did not age (and neither did Inza due to a magical spell) so remained relatively active as Doctor Fate. Nabu became a stronger and stronger force in the helmet and by the time that the Justice Society had come out of retirement along side the newly formed Justice League it was just the stark order driven personality of the Lord of Order remaining when they merged as Doctor Fate. This Doctor Fate would later go on to become a founding member of the Justice League and battled the Grey Man with their help, but departed just before they became the JLI.
The original Doctor Fate would have remained as he was if it had not been for the start of the fourth and final age, the Kali Yuga during the late twentieth century. This age it was told would be the age in which Chaos would triumph over the forces of Order. It also marked a change in the mystical nature of reality as the Order driven reality began to weaken and magical forces began to become more potent and more "chaotic". It was a start marked by the birth of the mage Tim Hunter and the return of the magic of Atlantis. However a more marked effect was on the Lords of Order. They reasoned that if they withdrew totally from the Order/Chaos War and allowed Chaos to win then the Kali Yuga would finish all that faster with the destruction of all reality and it's rebirth in a new revolution of the cycle back with a new Satya Yuga or Golden Age of Order.
The shift in balance destroyed the immortality spells on Kent and Inza, they both found themselves ageing rapidly to their proper ages. Inza surcommed to the stress and Kent found himself unable to become Doctor Fate due to the strain. Nabu needed a new host for Doctor Fate as he had rejected his brothers surrender and intended to continue the battle against Chaos with a new Doctor Fate. The host that he chose was the boy Eric Strauss.
Eric lived with his step-mother who married his millionaire father originally for the money but over the years she came to love Eric as her own son. The two became really close after the death of Eric's father who had been a bad tempered bully. Eric himself was an unusual child, mystically attuned it was often said that he was mature beyond his years. Kent sought out Eric, then Nabu transformed the child to adulthood and trained him much as he had done to Kent all those years ago. A new Doctor Fate appeared to battle Chaos, but a startling revelation was revealed, Nabu was never meant to be part of the Doctor Fate matrix. Instead originally Fate was meant to be the merging of Kent and Inza, but now this new Fate was the merging of Eric and his step-mother Linda. Nabu let Kent die a natural death and then possessed his body so that he might act as advisor to the new Doctor Fate.
Kent Nelson and Inza Cramer were always "fated" to be Doctor Fate but Eric and Linda had a different history and destiny. Their souls were intimately linked, always reborn together in the great cycles of life, as mother-son, lovers, arch-enemies, mentor and student, no matter what they were always together, so they had the potential to far surpass the original Fate in power. The Strauss's led a strange life during their short time as Doctor Fate, they obtained a Yiddish demon called Petey who pretended he was their dog, the immortal Nabu in Kent's body who developed a taste for drinking and life in general and the unfortunate lawyer Jack C. Small who stumbled into their world and found himself possessed by every malevolent entity that was passing.
The Order-Lords did not take the intervention of Nabu and his group lightly and decided to bring about the end of the world using the vampire Andrew Bennet (I... Vampire). Fate was forced to ally himself with the Chaos-Lord Typhon to stop Bennet bring about the Mahapralaya - the sleep of Brahma - the literal end of existence. Fate arrived too late at the Tomb of the Avatar (the alleged resting place of the last physical incarnation of the Avatar). Bennet brought about the Mahapralaya with only Fate and himself surviving as the universe disappeared around them, they witnessed what can only be described as the "love" behind the universe. The universe then restarted and evolved back to its present age - Bennet discovered that the universe will end when and only when it is ready to do so and in doing so was granted the final sleep that he craved.
While Doctor Fate and the Deadman battled the minor sorcerer Joachim Hesse who was trying to usurp the powerful entity Indra, the Order-Lords and Chaos-Lords had struck a dead with the evil god Darkseid. Darkseid had convinced the Lords that Eric Strauss was the first of a new breed of humanity that was beyond the need for Chaos, Order or any Gods. Eric who had been suffering a fever (due to his accelerated ageing by Nabu) battled Darkseid alone as Doctor Fate and was pulled to Apokolips when he faired badly. Linda with the help of Nabu became a female Doctor Fate on her own and perused him there. The two Fates managed to defeat Darkseid together but Eric-Fate was mortally injured by a parademon who sought to please Darkseid (after Darkseid agreed that they could go unharmed). Linda tried to pull Eric's spirit from the otherside but they both encountered an aspect of the Avatar who convinced Linda that she would rejoin Eric when it was time. She returned to the Earth Plane and assumed a role as a lone female Doctor Fate.
Linda-Fate was forced to ally herself with the Justice League International to battle the sorcerer Wotan who had kidnapped Nabu in an order to obtain the ultimate power via the Tomb of the Avatar. He experienced the same "love" that Bennet and Fate had experienced and was transformed by it. Blinded he then became the protector of the Tomb along with the progeny of the Avatar.
Eugene Dibella was a father who was seeming killed in a car crash, while his spirit passed onto the otherside the Avatar reincarnated Eric in Dibella's body. There Eric remained believing he was Dibella while Linda found it harder and harder for her to become Doctor Fate. The Phantom Stranger with the help of Raina the mystically aware daughter of the Dibellas (it is she in fact that is the next stage in humanity not Eric) brought Eric into the realisation of his fate. Meanwhile Nabu and Linda were battling the powerful Anti-Fate - Ben Stonner who was in turn being wooed by both the Order-Lords and the Chaos-Lords. In the finally battle he managed to kill both Linda and Nabu before rejecting the Anti-Fate persona after witnessing the power of the Avatar.
Linda joined Eric as she was reborn as Wendy - the wife of Eugene who had recently died. Nabu however was given the choice of either merging with everything and enjoying the eternal sleep or accepting humanity now that his role in the tale was played out. He chose to become the unborn child of Wendy to eventually be born fully human.
Nabu had left a contingency plan for the future of Doctor Fate. When Inza had originally died he had intercepted her soul and placed it in a demi-dimension locked within the Amulet of Anubis, when Kent finally passed on as well Nabu also placed his spirit within the Amulet. Together Inza and Kent lived in a pseudo-afterlife in Amulet. When Nabu knew that his time was nearing an end he sent Petey and Jack C. Small into the Amulet. With the help of Joachim Hesse (who was absorbed into the Amulet during the battle with Wotan) they managed to convince Kent and Inza to return to the real world as Doctor Fate.
The new Doctor Fate emerged into the real world as he/she was always meant to be a synergy between Kent and Inza Nelson, the mixing of the duality, this time with no Nabu in sight. The couple found that Nabu had provided them with new bodies identical to their old at twenty five years of age. Rather than living once more in the Tower in Salem, Fate merged the extra-dimensional interior of the Tower with a building in New York that Kent owned. After Doctor Fate battled the Order-Lord Shat-Ru, they found that only Inza was able to form Doctor Fate. Kent did not mind that at all. After the decades as Doctor Fate he got to relax and take up the job as an Assistant Professor of Archaeology.
With Nabu absent from the Helm it was easily possessed by an Chaos-Lord who began influencing the actions of Inza as Fate. Whereas she had operated as a low level, fixing up the neighbourhood, helping the poor, etc. the influence of the Helm forced her actions towards vengeance and retribution against a corporate business man Thomas Bridge. The influence forced a rift between Inza and Kent until the Chaos-Lord feared that Kent was beginning to win the upperhand so he pulled Inza into another dimension.
With the help of Shat-Ru and using his old half-helm Kent followed Inza into the Chaos Realm. While there it was revealed that a sorcerer needs a focus, when Nabu inhabited the Helm or was supplying power to Eric and Linda he acted as the conduit for the magical energy and as a focus for Doctor Fate, with him removed from the matrix Inza's power was greatly reduced leaving her open to the influence of the Chaos-Lord. Kent managed to pull Inza back from the Realm and influence of Chaos but they were followed by the Chaos-Lord. Who attacked Doctor Fate.
Battling the Chaos-Lord Inza was seriously outmatched until she managed to change her focus to the people around her. They were her responsibility and therefore her focus, from the people in her immediate area she reached out across the country and then across the world. Focusing magical energy through such a massive focus she easily trounced the Chaos-Lord. With the influence of Chaos removed from Doctor Fate Kent was able to enter the matrix once more.
The remade Doctor Fate joined his/her comrades of the Justice Society to battle the villain Extant at the headquarters of the Linear Men outside of the timestream. In the battle Extant aged the Society members back to their correct chronological ages - Hourman I, Atom I and Doctor Mid-nite I died while Doctor Fate was ripped apart and left as plain mortal Kent and Inza Nelson. The items of Order - the Helm, the Amulet and the Cape returned to the Temple of Nabu to await a new owner, but for Doctor Fate the chronicles were over
Postscript: In the wake of the destruction of Doctor Fate the items of Order were taken up by adventurer/grave robber Jared Stevens while Kent and Inza ascended as energy beingings. They altered taking a new form for him as Chaos and Order battled over him. Now know as Fate, Jared is best described as a repairman for reality fixing mystical threats and anomalies that exist beyond normal human perception. As of the moment his chronicles are limited and only time will tell if he will pass on to be replaced by yet another servant of fate.
Powers and Abilities
At his/her height Doctor Fate was one of the three most powerful sorcerers on the planet and perhaps one of the ten most powerful beings on the planet. When empowered with a focus such as Nabu or the People of Earth in the case of Inza then Doctor Fate could perform what some could claim as miracles, but he/she always used spells cast in the Eastern Way of internal balance and internal focusing as opposed to the Western Hermetic use of symbols and incantations (as used by Zatara, John Constantine and others).
The principal components common to all Doctor Fates were the item of Order - the Helm of Nabu, the Cloak of Destiny and the Amulet of Anubis. The items are linked to their user and when used by the original Doctor Fate they remained relatively inanimate, however the metal Helm actual mirrored the emotion and facial expressions of its wearers for the second Fate and totally changed shape for the third Fate. When Jared Stevens took over the items of Order the Amulet impressed itself onto his face as a red ankh mark, the Helm became mystical throwing knives and the Cape of Destiny became a bandage for his arm energising his body and protecting him from harm.
Kent Nelson was a skilled magician in his own right and for a time operated with a half length Helm but he was not as powerful. Eric showed some skill in the mystic arts but the others required the transformation to Doctor Fate to be able to perform magic.
Recommened Reading
Overpower Cards
None Known
Allies
The Avatar - The mysterious Avatar is an element of the divine incarnated to human form at various times. Sometimes he is called the Old Man at other times the Guide. He was Eric's guide in the afterlife and seems to know both Nabu and the Phantom Stranger.
Jack C. Small - A lawyer who lived in the same building as Eric and Linda. He had the unfortunate fate of being possessed by almost every malevolent being that they encountered. He later worked as the lawyer for Maxwell Lord at the JLI
Sentinel - The golden age Green Lantern was the closest in power in the JSA to Doctor Fate (apart from the mysterious Spectre) and when Kent and Inza disappeared after the battle with Extant it was he who tracked down the new Jared Stevens.
Major Enemies
Grayman - The Grayman was an agent of Order who collected the left over life essences from dead bodies. He sought to abuse his power and was brought to heel by Doctor Fate I and the Justice League.
Ian Karkull - A sorcerer/scientist that threatened Doctor Fate in the golden age. The side effects from the battle left the JSA rejuvenated beyond their years.
Joachim Hesse - A minor sorcerer who got himself tangled up in the dealings of Doctor Fate II when last seen was living in the dimension inside the Amulet of Anubis.
Typhon - A Lord of Chaos who battled the second Doctor Fate. He tormented Eric Strauss and for a time possessed Jack C. Small.
Wotan - A sorcerer originally a woman who was reborn through the ages in constant pursuit of knowledge. He kidnapped Nabu in trying to enter the Tomb of the Avatar. During the process he was converted by the love from the Avatar and now guards the Tomb.
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Alter Ego: Dr Kent Nelson (merged with the Lord of Order Nabu)
Occupation: Archaeologist, Physician
Known Relatives: Inza (wife), Sven Nelson and Celestine Babcock Nelson (parents, deceased), Aaron Babcock (Uncle, deceased)
Group Affiliation: Justice Society of America, Justice League, All Star Squadron.
Base of Operations: Salem, Massachusetts.
First Appearance: MORE FUN COMICS #55 (May, 1940)
Height: 6' 2"
Weight: 197 lb.
Eyes: Blue
Hair: Blond
Alter Ego: Linda and Eric Strauss
Occupation: Sorcerer
Known Relatives: Mr. Strauss (Eric's father, Linda's husband - deceased)
Group Affiliation: Justice League International
Base of Operations: New York City.
First Appearance: DOCTOR FATE (mini-series) #1 (July, 1997)
Height: (Eric) 5' 11", (Linda) 5' 5", (Dr Fate) 6' 2"
Weight: (Eric) 180 lb. , (Linda) 115 lb. , (Dr Fate) 197 lb.
Eyes: (Eric) Brown, (Linda) Blue
Hair: (Eric) Dark Brown, (Linda) Blonde
Alter Ego: Inza Cramer Nelson (ocassionally merged with Kent Nelson).
Occupation: Sorcerer
Known Relatives: (Inza) Kent Nelson (husband)
Group Affiliation: None
Base of Operations: New York and Salem, Massachusetts.
First Appearance: (Inza as Dr Fate) DOCTOR FATE #25 (February, 1991)
Height: 5' 7"
Weight: 125 lb.
Eyes: Green
Hair: Reddish Brown
Alter Ego: Jared Stevens
Occupation: Agent of Balance
Known Relatives: Holly Stevens (former wife), Mr and Mrs Stevens (parents), Gabrielle Marsh (father in law
Group Affiliation: None
Base of Operations: Boston
First Appearance: (original) FATE #0 (October, 1994), (current) BOOK OF FATE #1 (February, 1997)
Height: 6' 2"
Weight: 210 lb.
Eyes: One white, one blue.
Hair: Blond.
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