IMMORTALIS

Real Name: Mortigan Goth

Identity/Class: Human magic-user; (confirmed in 14th Century, World War II, Pre-Modern, and Modern era, presumably active in all eras in between)

Occupation: Adventurer

Group Membership: Unkillables (Marjorie Brink, Madcap, Scavenger, Harry Sikes, Vic Slaughter, Suicide, Yi Yang)

Affiliations: Corruptor, Dr. Strange, Flip, John Hinde, Spitfire (Jacqueline Crichton), Tony the ghost, Wolverine (Logan/James Howlett), other immortals;
    formerly Katherine Ainsley-Jones, Contagion (Winsor)

Enemies: Katherine Ainsley-Jones, Baron Blood (John Falsworth), Nicholas de Bellrais, Contagion (Winsor), Mephisto, his own corrupted soul, unnamed demon

Known Relatives: Mary (mother, deceased), Celia (sister, deceased)

Aliases: None

Place of Birth: Horsham England, 14th century

Base of Operations: Mobile across Earth, but especially England

First Appearance: Mortigan Goth: Immortalis#1 (September, 1993)

Powers/Abilities: Mortigan is immortal, unable to die by conventional means. He can be injured and feel pain, but always heals (with the exception of his corrupted soul, empowered by Mephisto to do him permanent harm or even slay him).

    His soul has been removed from his body and had been in the possession of Mephisto for over six centuries; he has been reluctant to oppose evil actions for fear that Mephisto will torture his soul (which he did continuously anyway). Like a vampire, he casts no reflection in the mirror. His blood, when consumed by a vampire, is able to cure vampirism (at least for fifty years), but he usually refuses to use it thusly, knowing he is just putting off the problem.

    He has accumulated a large amount of occult knowledge and has some experience with various weapons, though he is not a particularly accomplished combatant.

Height: 6'3"
Weight: 180 lbs.
Eyes: (Left only) blue
Hair: Blond

History:
(Mortigan Goth: Immortalis#1 (fb) - BTS) <1334 AD> - Mortigan Goth started a fifteen year journey, walking the Earth and learning much of its horrors.

(Mortigan Goth: Immortalis#1 (fb) / [#2 (fb) - BTS]) <1349 AD> - As Mortigan returned home, he saw the plague spreading across Europe towards his homeland. He called on the devil to save him, little realizing he'd answer. Mephisto--seeing in Mortigan a brightly shining soul which might serve as a beacon of hope for others--challenged Mortigan to a game of chess, gambling his soul for immortality. Unexpectedly, Mortigan won, sending Mephisto away as Mortigan headed home as an immortal.

(Mortigan Goth: Immortalis#1 (fb)) <May 24, 1349 AD> - Returning to Horsham, Mortigan found his mother dying of the plague and his sister having been hanged by the priest Nicholas de Bellrais for allegedly having killed her infant (of which de Bellrais was actually the father). When Mortigan went to confront de Bellrais, Mephisto stopped him, telling him that he had other plans for de Bellrais, and if Mortigan interfered, he would have a thousand years of suffering.
    Mortigan watched as de Bellrais and Mephisto plotted to sacrifice the entire congregation in order to grant de Bellrais immortality. Mephisto demanded the youngest infant present to seal the deal.

(Mortigan Goth: Immortalis#2 (fb)) <May 24, 1349 AD> -  Mortigan stopped de Bellrais from slaying the infant, offering his own soul in order to save the infant and the congregation from Mephisto's clutches. Mephisto immediately began to torture Mortigan's soul, while de Bellrais--who had lost his chance for immortality--led the congregation--who believed that they had lost the chance for protection from the plague--to stone Mortigan.

(Mortigan Goth: Immortalis#2 (fb)) <1349 AD> - Mortigan awakened weeks later within a plague pit, surrounded by the dead villagers and infant whose souls he had saved only for them to all die from the plague. Mephisto taunted Mortigan, naming him Immortalis after the Latin used by de Bellrais. When Mortigan told him he would fight Mephisto eternally, the demon lord responded by telling him that for every hurt Immortalis did him, he'd visit on his soul a thousand times more. Mephisto's curse was that Immortalis would watch suffering, knowing he might help, but certain that he dare not.

(Mortigan Goth: Immortalis#2 (fb) - BTS) - Mortigan eventually learned that Mephisto would torture his soul no matter what he did, and so he learned how to oppose the demon lord in subtle fashion. However, his failure to cast a reflection often caused others to distrust him, limiting the amount of help he could provide.

(Mortigan Goth: Immortalis#1 + 2 (fb) - BTS) - Mortigan became a close friend of the Falsworths, who dedicated an entire wing of their manor to his use.

(Mortigan Goth: Immortalis#2 (fb)) <1940> - Mortigan met the Falsworth's distant cousin, Katherine Ainsley-Jones, who had been evacuated to the manor from London. Katherine was smitten with Mortigan and threw herself at him, falling in love quickly. Mortigan, not being able to bear watching a lover grow old while he remained eternally young, left the next morning without saying a word.
    Katherine was devastated to learn that Mortigan had left; she was then visited by John Falsworth Jr., secretly the vampire Baron Blood, who told her that the only way she could gain Mortigan's love was to become an immortal, and he then vamped her.

(Mortigan Goth: Immortalis#3

(fb)) <1940> - Katherine, now a vampire, threw herself at Mortigan. Though he was initially intrigued with the idea of having someone to share eternity with, he found her literally cold and clammy, and realized that she was for all practical purposes dead. Disgusted, he drove her off with a cross. He later sought her out in the Falsworth mausoleum, where she tried to turn him into a vampire, too, biting him and drinking his blood.

(Mortigan Goth: Immortalis#2 (fb)) <1940> - Mortigan revived four days later, having recovered from the bite, and finding that Katherine had been cured of her vampirism. However, she knew that Mortigan did not love her, and she feared the cure may not be permanent, so she left him to live her life as if every day might be her last.

(Mortigan Goth: Immortalis#1 (fb) - BTS) <1965> - A young girl came into possession of a magical tome, from which she read a spell that allowed a demon from Mephisto's Hell to possess her.

(Mortigan Goth: Immortalis#1 (fb)) <1965> - Mortigan Goth joined forces against Dr. Strange against the demon possessing the young girl. Mortigan convinced the demon that during its absence from Hell, Mephisto had promoted the demon's friend, enraging the demon and causing it to exit the girl's form to attack Mortigan directly. Dr. Strange then banished the demon back to Hell.
    Mortigan then warned Strange that the beings whom he invoked for power would eventually demand favors in return, and he also warned Strange about vampires in his future.

(Marvel Frontier Comics Special#1) <1993> - Mortigan visited his old friend Professor John Hinde, who had resigned his position of head of the faculty after two local youths had died with tripping on a new hallucinogen stolen from the medical faculty's laboratories. Mortigan failed to convince Hinde not to resign, after which he was introduced to Bentley, one of Hinde's students. As Mortigan walked with Bentley, the student was knocked out by a pipe which had fallen (or was thrown...) from above scaffolding. Mortigan left after Bentley was hospitalized, missing out on Hinde's revelation that Bentley had been selling the drugs to the children. As punishment, Hinde would spend his free time (which was all he had since his retirement), making sure Bentley remained unconscious via the same hallucinogen he had sold the kids.
    Bentley, who had been doing research on drug-using writers and had been disturbed by the stories of Edgar Allan Poe (and O'Henry), was tormented by hallucinations based on those stories.

(Mortigan Goth: Immortalis#1 (fb) - BTS / 4 (fb)) - Mortigan's corrupted soul began slaying beings granted immortality by Mephisto.

(Mortigan Goth: Immortalis#4 (fb)) - In Wittenburg, Germany, Mortigan's soul slew the immortal Dr. Johannes Faustus. His wife, Marguerite, similarly immortal, managed to escape the corrupt soul, tearing off a piece of its clothing in the process. She recognized the clothing as having come from Immortalis, and she informed Dr. Strange that Immortalis was killing the immortals.

(Mortigan Goth: Immortalis#1) - Dr. Strange (having recently lost much of his power by refusing to serve the Vishanti in the War of the Seven Spheres (@ Dr. Strange III#48-49)) traveled to Falsworth Manor to investigate claims that Immortalis was killing other immortals. Katherine, a vampire again, ambushed Strange, badly injuring him, but she was driven off by Jacqueline Crichton, who took Strange to the manor and treated him.
    Meanwhile, Mortigan had been trapped inside San Francisco's St. Francis hotel during an earthquake, during which time he met a man named Tony, trapped under some rubble. Unable to save Tony, he told him the story of how he had lost his soul, though Tony died before its conclusion. Tony returned as a ghost, becoming Mortigan's companion, about the same time Strange's astral self appeared, summoning Mortigan for aid.

(Mortigan Goth: Immortalis#2) - Mortigan and Tony the ghost traveled to Falsworth Manor, meeting with Dr. Strange and Jacqueline. Mortigan drugged the injured Strange to force him to rest until his injuries healed.

(Mortigan Goth: Immortalis#3) - Mortigan refused to cure Katherine again, as he knew it would only be temporary. Mortigan, Strange, Jacqueline, and Tony traveled to Saint Johns Boarding School, where Katherine had taught while human, finding that she had vamped all of the kids there. The vampires overpowered them, and Katherine decided that the blood of Jacqueline, which contained the blood of the android Human Torch would rejuvenate her, too;  instead it burned her from within, incinerating her. While many of the children had drunk Mortigan's blood, he and Strange decided that the children might revert to vampirism at any point, and so they performed formal vampire destruction ritual on them.
    Later that night, Mortigan's corrupted soul appeared within Falsworth manor.

(Mortigan Goth: Immortalis#4) - Learning from Strange that his corrupt soul was the one killing the immortals, Mortigan waited for the soul to come for him. When it tore out his left eye and told him that it was going to kill him a bit at a time, Mortigan was happy; he now knew he could die, which rendered life sweet and precious.

(Wolverine: The Best There Is#1 (fb) - BTS) - Winsor hired Mortigan Goth to join the Unkillables.

(Wolverine: The Best There Is#4 (fb) - BTS) - Mortigan volunteered to be burned to ash. Re-coalesced he got drunk. He also volunteered to be have his life force drained by Scavenger once to give Marjorie Brink a baseline reading on the effects.

(Wolverine: The Best There Is#1) - Mortigan joined Winsor and other Unkillables in a night club where Winsor used the Corruptor's sweat to cause Wolverine and everyone else in the club to kill each other.

(Wolverine: The Best There Is#2) - Mortigan led Wolverine to Winsor's son, but couldn't aid him any further because the pain caused by Mephisto torturing his soul for this good act, brought him to his knees.

(Wolverine: The Best There Is#3) - Hungover Mortigan joined the other Unkillables in the lab after Wolverine was finally caught and listened to Winsor's ramblings.

(Wolverine: The Best There Is#4) - Mortigan watched Yi Yang on a screen torturing Wolverine. He was ordered to leave the room when Winsor tested a new virus on Harry Sikes. He later joined Wolverine in the lab and told him about the Unkillables while they got drunk. Mortigan left for his room when Winsor and Brink arrived to drink a bit more.

(Wolverine: The Best There Is#5) - While others watched how Winsor's viruses affected Wolverine Mortigan stayed unimpressed and got drunk a bit further.

(Wolverine: The Best There Is#6) - While getting drunk Mortigan told Wolverine how to get to Corruptor, whose sweat Wolverine then used to force Winsor to heal himself, and was in return attacked by his own soul.

(Wolverine: The Best There Is#11) - Winsor kept Mortigan incapacitated with heartwood-rot around his head.

(Wolverine: The Best There Is#12) - Winsor's son Flip telepathically aided Mortigan to free himself of the heartwood rot. He joined Wolverine and the other Unkillables in devouring Winsor to end his threat. Afterward Harry Sikes and Marjorie Brink decided to keep Mortigan and the other Unkillables in line by turning them into a mercenary crew.

Comments: Created by Nick Vince and Mark Buckingham.

    Immortalis was published under Marvel UK's Marvel Frontier Comics imprint...sort of like the equivalent to Marvel Edge (a precursor to Marvel Knights), which also didn't last. Immortalis was definitely the best of the Frontier Comics (which also included Dances with Demons (dealing with Native American mythology), Bloodseed (an alien sci-fi warrior story), and Children of the Voyager (some kind of nightmare deal...can't remember...not my favorite); Marvel Frontier Comics Special also previewed the Fallen and the Evil Eye, the former of which contained 18th and 19th century flashbacks to the Hellfire Club, and also named several ancestors of Jean Grey)). It was actually one of the best Marvel UK series period, though the ending was a little anti-climactic.

    Immortalis' series was given the date of 1993 within the story, but as it references events from Strange's third series, it is contained within the sliding time scale of the Marvel Universe, so that date is topical. All other dates within that series seem reasonable and accurate. The Frontier Comics Special also contains a 1993 date; since Mortigan has both eyes in that series, and since it has no references to anything else in the Marvel Universe, I think that date is appropriate.

Thanks to RATREK for pointing out that I accidentally wrote his righ eye was still intact instead of his left.

Immortalis got an entry in OHotMU Horror 2005.

Profile by Snood.

CLARIFICATIONS:
No known connection to:

Mortigan's corrupt soul

 

    Tortured to madness in Hell, it failed a chance to escape in the 15th century, and was eventually purged of its bright compassion in the modern era. Feeling that most of the immortals serving him either lived tedious lives or sought to thwart him, Mephisto broke his contracts with the immortals and sent Mortigan's corrupted soul to slay them. Accessing earth via mirrors, it slew Johannes Faustus and several other immortals. When Mortigan learned the true culprit, he waited for his soul to come for him. The soul tore out his right eye, telling him that while he had forgiven him centuries ago, he was going to kill him a bit at a time because he enjoyed it.

 

    The soul was a savage and lethal combatant, but it's primary ability was to bring death to those otherwise granted immortality by Mephisto. It's limitations and vulnerabilities are uncertain, but it required a mirror to use as a portal to access the Earthly plane.

 

--Mortigan Goth: Immortalis#1 - BTS, #2 (2(fb), 4(fb), 3, 4

 

 

 

 

 

images:
Mortigan Goth: Immortalis#1, cover
        last page, panel 1 (face)
    #4, first page (soul)
        last page, last panel (eye ripped out)
Wolverine: The Best There Is#3, p12, pan4 (with Unkillables)

Appearances:
Mortigan Goth: Immortalis#1-2 (September-October, 1993) - Nick Vance (writer), Mark Buckingham (pencils), James Hodgkins (inks), Gary Russell (editor)
Mortigan Goth: Immortalis#3 (January, 1994) - Nick Vance (writer), Mark Buckingham (pencils), James Hodgkins (inks), Gary Russell (editor)
Marvel Frontier Comics Special#1 (January, 1994)
Mortigan Goth: Immortalis#4 (March, 1994) - Nick Vance (writer), Mark Buckingham (pencils), James Hodgkins (inks), Gary Russell (editor)
Wolverine: The Best There Is#1-3 (February-April, 2011) - Charlie Huston (writer), Juan Jose Ryp (artist), Axel Alonso (editor)
Wolverine: The Best There Is#4-6 (May-July, 2011) - Charlie Huston (writer), Juan Jose Ryp (artist), Sebastian Girner (editor)
Wolverine: The Best There Is#11-12 (January, 2012) - Charlie Huston (writer), Juan Jose Ryp (artist), Sebastian Girner (editor)

First posted 10/25/2004
Last updated: 06/05/2021

Any Additions/Corrections? please let me know.

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