Because I suck at Google, another comics list-thread. DCU Immortals.

Cafe Society
1

More out of pure interest, than anything else.

I’ve noticed that there’s a pretty good number of immortal characters in the DCU. I find I’ve forgotten most of them.

Ground rules: Only beings that should be mortal - no gods, angels, demons, robots or other AIs, no Endless, no ageless races. Even if their method of immortality can be taken away, they count. People who die and are reborn in a new body don’t count, but those that can die and repair their old body do. Superheroes who are immune to death/reborn simply by plot contrivance/one-time outside intervention (Superman, Green Arrow), obviously don’t count.

Approximate time of birth, and how they’re immortal would be helpful.

Who I have so far:

Vandal Savage - prehistoric, encounter with meteor.
Ra’s al Ghul - no clue, Lazarus Pits.
Hob Gadling - 15th century, deal with Death and Dream
Jason Blood - reign of King Arthur, melded with a demon. (Etrigan doesn’t count, but Blood does.)
Ressurection Man - modern, nano-tech
Mad Hettie - no clue, no clue (Mentioned by Hob (Along with Jason Blood) as another Immortal he’s encountered.)
Quite a number of characters mentioned/encountered in Sandman who I’ve forgotten details about.

2

The Immortal Man is the counterpart and nemesis to Vandal Savage.

Looker of the Outsiders is a vampire and by the DCU concept of it: immortal.

3

Yes, but he’s reborn in a new, different, body every time he dies, is he not? (Granted, a fully grown body, not from a baby, but still, he is cheating a bit.) It’s why he’s not on the list as is. Ran into a few references to him on pages concerning Vandal Savage (looking for whoall has come into conflict with him), and that’s what they all implied. I’m unfamiliar with him, though, so I guess I might be misreading them. But if, say, Vandal Savage and Hob Gadling did business in the 1800s, then met again today, they’d likely recognise eachother. Immortal Man would would recognize the other, but not be recognised, himself, as I understand it. Are his bodies ageless, a la Savage, unless he dies violently?

Looker’s a vampire? Huhn. I haven’t read any of the original Outsiders from after Batman left, so I only knew her origin and the basics of her powers (and that I really, really don’t like her). That’s interesting.

4

Dark…I forgot Thessally (She’s not even in the ‘forget the details’ section…I completely forgot she was immortal.)

Revised list:

Vandal Savage - prehistoric, encounter with meteor.
Ra’s al Ghul - no clue, Lazarus Pits.
Hob Gadling - 15th century, deal with Death and Dream
Jason Blood - reign of King Arthur, melded with a demon. (Etrigan doesn’t count, but Blood does.)
Ressurection Man - modern, nano-tech
Mad Hettie - no clue, no clue (Mentioned by Hob (Along with Jason Blood) as another Immortal he’s encountered.)
Thessally - prehistoric, magic
Possibly, depending if I misinterpreted the information on him: Immortal Man - prehistoric, same incident as Savage

Doesn’t really fit the theme of the list, but interesting anyway: Looker - modern, humanity stripped away.

5

The Phantom Stranger might qualify, depending on which origin you choose.

6

Great Googly Moogly.

I’ve never liked the Phantom Stranger that much… Trying to decide what to do with THAT isn’t helping.

Eh, I’ll keep him with Deadman and Spectre on the Devine Agent list. twitchtwitch

7

There’s an Animal Man story back when Morrison wrote it about Jason Blood, the Phantom Stranger and the Immortal Man meeting in some California hippie area. Vandal Savage was apparently invited and declined… too busy masterminding a cult… they said how meetings like that were the only constants in a ceaselessly changing world.

Based on that, I’d add The Stranger to your list. He’s clearly neither an angel or demon NOW – cut him some friggin’ slack.

I’d add all of DC’s horror anthology hosts: Cain and Abel, Eve, Lucien and the Three-Who-Are-One: The Kindly Ones. Lucien is a particularly good choice: he used to be the Sandman’s first raven. All of them precede humanity and all of them are immortal, in part, because they live in the realm of the Dreaming.

Do dreams count, or are they an immortal race? If they count, there’s a number of major dream arcana who might fit: Brute and Glob, the first and current incarnations of the Corinthian, and the late Fiddler’s Green.

Also, there’s Swamp Thing and the Parliament of Trees. (Do human-born earth elementals count?)

Mad Hettie is three hundred and sixty years old. The exact method of her immortality is unknown, but it likely involves her hiding her heart from Death.

The Sandman storyline, “Briefly Lives” introduced the concept of “the old ones” –
immortals living among us. Ones of non-divine origin include the lawyer, Bernie Caspak, the Sandman’s son Orpheus (he was mortal, though born of a goddess and Endless-- he was made immortal by a deal with Death). It is strongly implied Rose Walker is immortal.

Possibly the new envoy of the Endless, Elbis O’ Shaunnessey is possibly immortal and in the original Books of Magic it is again implied that the apparently bi-gendered Dr. Occult.

8

Cain and Eve might fit - details of their origin are sketchy, but it’s entirely possible they’re THE Cain and Eve. It’s also unclear if they’re now Dreams or if they just happen to live in the Dreaming - and therefor are mortals who just happen to live forever - Cain through Divine Intervention/translation into story-dream, Eve through translation into a story-dream. On the list, albeit with a note.

The rest definitely don’t fit the criteria, though.

The Three-Who-Are-One are a demigod, and the Dreaming is the form of the Afterlife that Abel got due to the iconic nature of his death, and assuming Lucien got the job the same way Matthew did, he also had to die to get their.

Dreams do not count.

Hmm. That’s a tough one. Hmm. I’ll say no, since Swampy’s no longer human, and it’s the nature of what he became to be immortal.

Ah, good, good. Mmm. Details. That sounds familiar, so it must be from one of the books I read, but I can’t remember which.

Bernie was one of the ones lumped under ‘I forget the details’ - although it was only his name that I forgot. :smack: I can’t believe I forgot Orpheus, though.

I didn’t get that impression - from Sandman, anyway, she may have shown up in another book where it was - just that she had a very strong connection to the Dreaming, due to her ancestry.

Not familiar with either of these characters. (Really didn’t like The Books of Magic, which was disappointing. Looked so promising.)

Revised list:

Vandal Savage - prehistoric, encounter with meteor.
Ra’s al Ghul - no clue, Lazarus Pits.
Hob Gadling - 15th century, deal with Death and Dream
Jason Blood - reign of King Arthur, melded with a demon.
Ressurection Man - modern, nano-tech
Mad Hettie - 17th Century, hid heart from Death (or so she says…she’s mad, after all.)
Thessally - prehistoric, magic
Immortal Man - prehistoric, same incident as Savage (Possibly. Details of his nature of his immortality may or may not remove him from the list.)
Cain - pre-human, divine intervention/translation to story-dream.*
Eve - pre-human, translation to story-dream.*
Phantom Stranger - Very Old, pissed off God*
Orpheus - Hellenistic era, deal with Death.
Bernie Caspak - prehistoric, not mentioned

(*Depends on the interpretation of the origin you consider correct.)

9

I disagree that the Dreaming is a form of the Afterlife. The Dreaming is a Realm of the Endless. Many, many, many characters – some, who have died – dwell in dreams and later move on to their final rewards of Heaven, Hell, Hades, Tartarus, the Elysium Fields, reincarnation, etc. The Dreaming is NOT the Afterlife – otherwise Morpheus would be there. It can provide a metalife for those who no longer wish to, because of death or choice, live in the Waking World or go on to the Afterlife.

Whether Lucien actually died to get to the Dreaming has never been revealed to my knowledge. Since he was the first raven, there’s a possibility that his origin may be unique to the array of dreamers. poets, writers, etc. who all became ravens later.

Abel is forever being killed and reborn in the same body as God’s punishment for being the first victim, just as Cain is being punished for the initial act by reliving it over and over again. (This was all laid out in SWAMP THING by Alan Moore.) I happen to think their living in the Dreaming is somewhat immaterial to this condition. Cain, of course, is marked by God’s protection and cannot die.

Dr. Occult is one of the four magicians who introduce Tim Hunter to the magic of the DCU in th original four part series “The Books of Magic”… doubtless you were disappointed by the follow-up series of the same name, because the original series by Neil Gaiman is simply terrific. Dr. Occult takes Tim on a tour of Faerie, and once they enter the boundaries Dr. Occult transforms into a woman Tim calls Rose. Dr. Occult has been around since the 1940s and hasn’t aged, and during the events of the Swamp Thing’s “American Gothic” storyline he was characterized as a being of “great power and great age” and in The Books of Magic he relates how he has “entered into the service of the Seven” for some time now…

The bit about Rose Walker being immortal had to do with the endless comments regarding her youthful appearance… it seems she stopped ageing after the events of “A Doll’s House,” possibly because her grandmother Unity reclaimed her destiny as a Vortex of Dream, and gave her her heart. But now that i think about it, Rose walker gave her grandmother’s heart away again, so maybe she’s not ageless anymore.

Oh – and aren’t all the Amazons of Themscyria immortals, or am I mixing Pre/post-Crisis continuities again?

10

No, he wouldn’t, because it’s not HIS Afterlife. If the Endless even have an Afterlife - rather than the dead aspect simply ceasing to be.

Some people - Abel, Matthew, & Rose’s gramma, for instance - go to the Dreaming in death. It’s not THE Afterlife, or a dedicated Afterlife - its primary purpose is not to house the souls of the dead, but the dead do end up there, from time to time.

And it probably was the followup to Books of Magic that I read - since I never encountered Dr Occult - but I didn’t like Tim Hunter at all, so I doubt I’d have liked the mini any more, unless the character was really altered.

11

Tim Hunter is the proto-Harry Potter, complete with owl minus the lightning scar. Do yourself a favor and read Neil Gaiman’s first four-part mini trade, The Books of Magic. It’s splendid, and provided a blueprint for magic in the DCU and the whole Vertigo imprint.

12

I am unsure of the details on some of these

Professor Ivo- This foe of the Justice League was a mad scientist. Besides building Amazo and other killer androids, he developed an immortality serum. It gave him many reptillian features, but did make him immortal.

Metamorpho- A normal human transformed by the Eye Of Ra (or was it Horus?). Besides the powers granted by his new form, he is immortal and appears to be extremely dificult to kill through violence. A woman (I don’t remember her name) was later transformed. She attempted suicide in many ways, but was unable to die.

Evil Star- A human (possibly from another planet, but still homo sapien) scientist with a death phobia. He developed a device which gave him power and made him immortal. It also made him thoroughly evil. The scientist is a good man, but his fear always makes him put the immortality ring on again.

Mutliple Man- Foe of the Challengers Of The Unknown, he discovered (a scientific serum? A mystic potion? Found a lost tomb?) that promised many lives. Each time Multiple Man seemingly died, he returned with a new set of powers.

Doctor Fog- IIRC This member of the Global Guardians is immortal, possesses great mystic powers, and cannot leave the mountain he dwells in.

The Baron DeWinter- Founder of Night Force (or was it Night Watch?), the Baron is immortal, posseses great mystical power, and cannot leave the mansion he dwells in.

Alan Scott- The union Scott has achieved with the mystical green flame allowed him, with no conscious effort, to make himself forty years younger and stop the aging process. He may well be immortal at this point.

General Immortus- Enemy of the original Doom Patrol, if he wasn’t immortal the name makes no sense.

Pronsias Cassidy-He’s a vampire. While Ennis deliberately left much of his view of vampires untold, it is clear that they do not age.

Mister E-The post Vertigo version. He has vast mystic powers involving time. He can travel through it(both backwards, or just at a much higher rate than the rest of us), stop it, and reverse it. On at least one occasion, he has used the last ability to make his death unhappen after being killed in battle.

Phantom Stranger- The Secret Origins featuring the Stranger lists a fourth origin. Without spoiling, this one says that he was once an ordinary human who gained immortality through a scientific\mystical accident.

IBAC- IIRC This joe average wanted power and immortality. He made a deal with the devil and got it. When he said IBAC (Ivan the terrible,? , Attila the Hun,?) he became a powerful villain.

Black Adam- He’s been around since anient Egypt. Doesn’t show any signs of aging.

Shazamo- Not to be confused with the wizard Shazam (who doesn’t count because his physical body is very dead), this wizard was Shazam’s student. Then he turned to evil. He was cursed with goat’s hooves. His magic cannot harm women. He seems to be ageless and immortal, probably through his own magic.

13

Doesn’t count, since it’s new bodies every time. (Hmm…maybe I should add those to the list anyway.)

OK, another :smack: for me. I knew these. Immortus also brings up Arani Caulder. (Unless something’s revealed later than I’ve read in Doom Patrol and that’s a lie.)

Although, I’m not sure if Immortus IS immortal, or just wants immortality. I know that’s why he and the Chief were enemies.

Discounting Vampires since few takes on Vampires don’t make them immortal.

Note expanded.

Metamorpho and Element Girl are off the list for the same reason as Swampy - no longer human, immortal by nature of their new form.

Have ages for some of these?

Revised list.

Vandal Savage - prehistoric, encounter with meteor.
Ra’s al Ghul - no clue, Lazarus Pits.
Hob Gadling - 15th century, deal with Death and Dream
Jason Blood - reign of King Arthur, melded with a demon.
Ressurection Man - modern, nano-tech
Mad Hettie - 17th Century, hid heart from Death (or so she says…she’s mad, after all.)
Thessally - prehistoric, magic
Immortal Man - prehistoric, same incident as Savage (Possibly. Details of his nature of his immortality may or may not remove him from the list.)
Cain - pre-human, divine intervention/translation to story-dream.*
Eve - pre-human, translation to story-dream.*
Phantom Stranger - Very Old, pissed off God, or mystical accident*
Orpheus - Hellenistic era, deal with Death
Bernie Caspak - prehistoric, not mentioned
Alan Scott - modern, infused with mystic energy
Arani Caulder - modern, immortality serum
Evil Star - Don’t know, immortality device
Professor Ivo - modern, immortality serum
Baron DeWinter - don’t know, don’t know
IBAC - don’t know, deal with devil
Black Adam - Ancient Egypt, mystical (probably)
Shazamo - don’t know, magic (probably)
Mr E - don’t know, time magic

(*Depends on the interpretation of the origin you consider correct.)

14

Tengu. Strike Mister E. I considered Mister E, too, but all he does is travel through time. He still ages. Death herself says in BOOKS OF MAGIC that she took him long ago, and makes him walk backwards through time to his moment of death. In that same issue, its implied he, as an old man, taught his younger self the secrets of walking through time.

It’s Dr. Mist, not Dr. Fog – but, he too, is immortal.

Returning to Dr. Occult. Occult is a Siegel and Shuster creation who predates Superman by about a year, who who was born in 1899 and has not aged since the 1930s.

There’s the Flash villain, Cicada, who extends his life by leeching the life-forces of his hundreds of followers.

Circe is a powerful, ancient witch and possibly Thessaly’s cultural contemporary.

15

Oh, frikkin’…it was reading up on Cicada and Savage in rapid succession that inspired this thread. >_<

OK, strike E, add Mist (I don’t seem to have him on the list under the wrong name, either…), Occult, Cicada and Circe. Will scratch Immortal Man, too - haven’t been convinced I misread his powers.

Vandal Savage - prehistoric, encounter with meteor.
Ra’s al Ghul - no clue, Lazarus Pits.
Hob Gadling - 15th century, deal with Death and Dream
Jason Blood - reign of King Arthur, melded with a demon.
Ressurection Man - modern, nano-tech
Mad Hettie - 17th Century, hid heart from Death (or so she says…she’s mad, after all.)
Thessally - prehistoric, magic
Cain - pre-human, divine intervention/translation to story-dream.*
Eve - pre-human, translation to story-dream.*
Phantom Stranger - Unknown, at least ancient Egypt, pissed off God, or mystical accident*
Orpheus - Hellenistic era, deal with Death
Bernie Caspak - prehistoric, not mentioned
Alan Scott - modern, infused with mystic energy
Arani Caulder - modern, immortality serum
Evil Star - Don’t know, immortality device
Professor Ivo - modern, immortality serum
Baron DeWinter - don’t know, don’t know
IBAC - don’t know, deal with devil
Black Adam - Ancient Egypt, mystical (probably)
Shazamo - don’t know, magic (probably)
Dr Mist - Don’t know, magic (?)
Dr Occult - 19th century, unknown, possibly magic
Cicada - early 20th century, life-draining ability
Circe - prehistoric (maybe), magic

(*Depends on the interpretation of the origin you consider correct.)

16

I sit corrected. I have read that issue, but don’t own it. I was thinking of the four issue Mister E miniseries dealing with the walk back.

I really need to get my comics organized so that I can just pull out the Who’s Whos.

I didn’t mention her because I’m pretty sure that she is descended from one of the Olympian gods. This would, IMHO, disqualify her from human status.

17

Orpheus is the son of Dream of the Endless, and still mortal until his deal.

I’ll leave Circe on the list until I figure out of her immortality is a feature of divine descent or magic.

18

Luckily my own comics are quite in order, (snark!) so I can satisfactorily answer this by refering to the source material.

In issue #19 of the revamped WONDER WOMAN, Circe identifies herself as “the daughter of Hyperion and Persies, princess of Colchis and favored of Hecate.” My own ‘Concise Enyclopedia’, MYTHOLOGY OF THE WORLD, gives her sires as Helios and Persa. Unfortunately ALL these people are gods ickily interbreeding. Ew. So I figured Circe must have been an immortal demi-goddess, too, correct?

WRONG. Reading further into this issue, while it was clear that while she was Olympian offspring several generations removed, in the DC universe, at least, she was also quite mortal. Circe sold her soul for immortality to the goddess Hecate. On page 11, it says:

“[Hecate] made me a proposition. To attain immortality, eternal beauty and incredible power, all we needed to do was trade our souls. I found that to be a most agreeable exchange.”

So blahsie blahsie blah, long story short, she sold her soul to become immortal and I’m right again. Circe is a jumped-up witch.

19

OK, Circe stays on the list, but I need to change her reason for immortality.

20

Some interpretations of Superman’s powers paint him as unaging. He’s still apparently alive in the 853rd Century. As is J’onn J’onnz, actually.