Shuma-Gorath first appears as an adversary for Doctor Strange in Marvel Premiere #5, created by Steve Englehart and Frank Brunner. The character's name is taken from Robert E. Howard's short story "The Curse of the Golden Skull", which features a dying magician named Rotath invoking the "iron-bound books of Shuma-Gorath" in a curse against humanity.
During Earth's pre-history Shuma-Gorath ruled the world, and demanded human sacrifice until eventually banished by time-traveling sorcerer Sise-Neg. The entity eventually returns during the Hyborian Age, but is imprisoned within a mountain by the power of the god Crom. Shuma-Gorath continues to be an influence on Earth until returned to its home dimension by Crom. When the entity tries to return to Earth via the mind of the Ancient One, his disciple Doctor Strange is forced to kill him to prevent this. Years later, Strange battles Shuma-Gorath in its home dimension, and although victorious, he gradually becomes a new version of the entity. Strange commits suicide to prevent this transformation and is resurrected by an ally. Sorcerer Nicholas Scratch summons the entity to Earth but it is driven back by the combined efforts of Doctor Strange, the Fantastic Four, the Salem's Seven and villain Diablo. Shuma-Gorath is eventually revealed to be one of the four undying extra-dimensional "multi-angled ones" guiding a metaphysical invasion from a dimension called the "cancerverse". In attempting to destroy Death itself, the entity and its allies are rendered inert by the conceptual form of Death and subsequently are trapped in the cancerverse when it is destroyed. Shuma-Gorath survives and once again attempts to invade Earth but is repelled by the superhero team the Avengers with the Spear of Destiny. During the 2011 "Fear Itself" storyline, Shuma-Gorath is among the demons to meet at the Devil's Advocacy to discuss the threat of the Serpent and what this means to them. During the 2013 "Infinity" storyline, Thanos' servant Ebony Maw manipulates Doctor Strange into summoning Shuma-Gorath to the streets of New York. The creature is met by Luke Cage and his new team of Avengers. Blue Marvel arrives at the scene of the battle and flies through Shuma-Gorath's head, destroying its physical manifestation. Shuma-Gorath's astral body possesses a crowd of people in New York City and attempts to recreate itself on Earth. It is weakened through mystical attacks by Power Man and White Tiger and finally banished by Monica Rambeau, who penetrates Shuma-Gorath's eye as a ray of light and disperses the entity from within. The Last Days of Magic storyline describes Shuma-Gorath as responsible for destroying the home planet of the character Imperator, leader of the Empirikul, by sending a group of evil sorcerers after his family. This leads to the Imperator to dedicate his life to destroying magic in every universe. Later, during a battle, Dormammu states to Doctor Strange that he helped the Empirikul in finding Shuma-Gorath, who was defeated by the Imperator. Doctor Strange later banishes Dormammu to Shuma-Gorath itself, who was visibly wounded and seeking revenge.
Powers and abilities
Shuma-Gorath is an ancient force of chaos, the immortal, nigh-invincible, and godlike ruler of nearly a hundred alternate universes, capable of energy projection, shapeshifting, teleportation, levitation, altering reality, and sympathetic magic, among many other feats. He is described as being vastly more powerful than other mighty demonic enemies, such as Satannish and Mephisto, and is capable of automatically destroying multiple galaxies through aura-pressure alone.
Other versions
In the "Venomized" event, a Poison Shuma-Gorath was present in the Poison Hive's invasion of the Prime Marvel Universe, fighting Vision and Falcon, successfully bonding a symbiote to the latter.
