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Doctor Strange has just been on a harrowing journey to visit one of his greatest enemies and find the secret to ending Kulan Gath’s reign of terror.
WARNING: The following contains major spoilers for Savage Avengers #23, available now from Marvel Comics.
The Savage Avengers have crossed nearly every corner of the globe and even the bounds of time in their hunt for the ancient sorcerer Kulan Gath, and none of them have been working harder in their search than the Sorcerer Supreme himself. As cunning and capable as Doctor Strange might be, Gath has continued to evade him at every step, forcing Strange to turn to another of his greatest enemies for help. Unfortunately, Shuma-Gorath has been far less lucky than any of Earth’s most brutal heroes in his own encounters with the evil wizard of the Hyborian Age — although he does have one piece of advice for Doctor Strange that could prove to be precisely what he needed to hear.
Doctor Strange has grown desperate to find Kulan Gath before there is nothing left to be done to stop him. Every spell he has invoked and artifact he has employed have proven to be completely useless. Thankfully, there is at least one person left who might be able to give the Sorcerer Supreme an edge — though “person” is likely too generous a descriptor for them. Strange has gone to the Eldritch god Shuma-Gorath for aid, but Shuma-Gorath is in no position to offer a helping hand. Kulan Gath’s efforts south of the border had turned unwitting drug users into even less suspecting conduits for Shuma-Gorath on Earth, and the Hyborian Age horror was quick to make meals of them over the course of his cannibalistic bid for power.
Now Shuma-Gorath has been left begging for death, not to mention entirely convinced that the battle against their shared enemy has already been lost. Of course, that isn’t true just yet, though not because Kulan Gath is incapable of ending things here and now should he choose to. Rather, it is because of the mad sorcerer’s greatest weakness, and it is Gath’s final shred of humanity that could very well prove to be his undoing.
For all of his magic and apparent immortality, Kulan Gath is ultimately still a man. As Shuma-Gorath tells Doctor Strange in Savage Avengers #23 by Gerry Duggan, Patch Zircher, Java Tartaglia and VC’s Travis Lanham, Gath still suffers from “the many needs and weaknesses of your kind,” and that “he will fight like a man when challenged.” This might sound like a sort of vague jab at Kulan Gath, but it is in fact an assumption that there is already an ancient precedent for. Kulan Gath has died from mystical attacks on multiple occasions, and each time he has come back with just as much ferocity as ever.
That said, he has never shied away from a direct confrontation despite Gath’s usual method of operating primarily from the shadows. The last time that Conan himself put an end to Kulan Gath in 2000’s Conan: The Flame and the Fiend #3 by Roy Thomas and Geof Isherwood, it was face-to-face with his blade on the battlefield instead of after sniffing the sorcerer out of some dark corner. There is no question that Kulan Gath is as much an egotist as he is anything else, and if Doctor Strange can exploit that, he might actually be able to bring this whole affair to an end. Even better, Shuma-Gorath has also left Strange with another powerful weapon in his final moments.
Shuma-Gorath didn’t convince Strange that the battle with Kulan Gath was already over, but he did manage to convince the Sorcerer Supreme to end his life in an act of mercy. No matter how much horror Shuma-Gorath and his ilk have wrought on the Multiverse, Doctor Strange ultimately agreed to alleviate the beast’s suffering. He also collected a bit of Eldritch blood on his blade in the process. Now sealed with the Crimson Bands of Cyttorak, Strange has an actual weapon to bring with him into his final confrontation with Kulan Gath. It’s hard to think of any better weapon to end the mad wizard’s reign of terror with, assuming Kulan Gath can be stopped in the first place.
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