Real Name:
AllatouALLATOU
Real Name:
Allatou
Identity/Class: Demon;
possibly former goddess (see
comments)
Occupation: servant of "Satan"
Group Membership: Satan's court;
possibly formerly an undentified pre-Islamic Arabian
pantheron (see comments)
Affiliations: "Satan" (master), Mr. Carstairs (owner of grimoire bookstore, pawn), demon servants
Enemies: Alan Crandall, Cerberus, Hellstorm (Daimon Hellstrom), Hellcat (Patsy Walker Hellstrom), Master Pandemonium, Albert Manners, Mary Manners, Melissa Manners, Wilfred Noble, West Coast Avengers (Hawkeye/Clint Barton, Iron Man/Tony Stark, Mockingbird/Bobbi Morse Barton, Tigra/Greer Grant Nelson, Wonder Man/Simon Williams)
Known Relatives: Nergal (husband)
Aliases: None
Base of Operations: Hell (specifically, a cavern within the realm formerly ruled by Kurios, currently ruled by Hellstorm); The Grimoire Book Shop (presumably in Los Angeles, California)
First
Appearance: Marvel Spotlight I#18 (October, 1974)
Powers: Allatou is a demon and is not necessarily vulnerable to aging, physical attacks, disease, etc. Her powers are derived from magic and will wax and wane depending on the amount of power she has accrued. She can possess and control others for extended periods of time, twisting a victim's appearance to mirror her own. She can also shift rapidly from host to host. It takes extreme effort, even from an accomplished exorcist such as Hellstrom, to exorcise her unwillingly from a host. Allatou can most easily possess a victim during moments of anguish, when the emotional shields are weakest.
Allatou possesses a number of other abilities, only a few of which have been observed. She can travel and bring others to and from her cavern in Hell. She can alter her density, making herself immaterial to pass through solid objects, or solid enough to be impervious to one of Hawkeye's blast arrows. She can bypass advanced detection systems. She possesses superhuman strength (@ Class 75), enabling her to cause upheavals in the ground by striking it, or to uproot a 25 foot section of rock whole.
Allatou also possessed a small army of demon servants to assist her in battle or in carrying out additional tasks for her.
Height: Variable (see comments)
Weight: Unrevealed
Eyes: Variable (see comments)
Hair:Variable (see comments)
History:
(myths and legends) - Allatou may have been an ancient goddess who
degenerated over the eons into a demon (see comments).
(Marvel Spotlight I#18 (fb) - BTS) - A menial demon in
Satan's court, Allatou sought to gain further power, or accomplish acts
in order to raise her status within the court, possibly even becoming
the bride of Satan.
(Marvel Spotlight I#18 (fb)) - In Ladue, Missouri, Albert
and Mary Manners returned home early from a dinner party and caught
their teenage daughter Melissa making out with a guy Albert perceived as
worthless. After throwing the boyfriend out, Albert lost his temper and
struck the girl. This caused her to momentarily drop all her emotional
shields, allowing Allatou to possess her. For the next three weeks
"Melissa" tormented her concerned parents, refusing to leave her room,
eat or speak to Albert, while her face became aged and dead looking.
(Marvel Spotlight I#18 - BTS) - Eventually "Melissa" slipped out the house one night and wandered the neighborhood with an axe, looking to commit mayhem. As she wandered across Wilfred Noble's lawn, only a few houses down the road from the Manners' house, she encountered the man's dog, Cerberus, and brutally slew the gentle animal.
(Marvel Spotlight I#18) - Dropping the axe
she fled the scene, but her shadowy fleeing figure was spotted by
Noble's friend Daimon Hellstrom, a.k.a. the Son of Satan.
(Marvel Spotlight I#18 - BTS) - Later that night,
"Melissa" returned to Noble's house and set it alight. Trapped in the
house, Noble would have burned alive if the fire brigade had not arrived
in time to get him out.
(Marvel Spotlight I#18) - Investigating,
Daimon Hellstrom confirmed demonic energy traces at the remains of
Noble's home and tracked it to the Manners' house. After hearing Albert
and Mary's story, he confronted the possessed Melissa. After identifying
herself and calling him a traitor for betraying Satan, Allatou attacked
Hellstrom, but he managed to exorcise her. However, Allatou swiftly
switched to possessing Albert instead, and came for Hellstrom with a
meat cleaver.
(Marvel Spotlight I#19 (fb) - BTS) - Allatou may have had Satan's surreptitious help to enable her to switch between victims, as it was abnormal for demons to be able to leap so effortlessly from body to body.
(Marvel
Spotlight I#19) - Hellstrom overpowered Albert and knocked him out, but
as he began to exorcise the man, Allatou revealed she had fled back into
Melissa's body. Too exhausted to risk another exorcism so soon,
Hellstrom retreated out of Melssa's room and sealed the demon in to give
him time to recover his strength.
(Marvel Spotlight I#19 - BTS) - Allatou began torturing
Melissa, pulling out the girl's hair and letting her possessed victim
feel the pain and scream, so that it would lure Hellstrom back.
(Marvel Spotlight I#19) - Hellstrom returned and tried to trap Allatou, but she again transferred to Albert and escaped past Hellstrom into the rest of the house. As Hellstrom confronted the man, Allatou rapidly switched to take over Mary Manners and attack the exorcist from behind. Hellstrom threw Mary out a window, but as she landed outside unconscious Allatou transferred herself to reporter Alan Crandall, who had heard the ruckus from outside and come to investigate. As the possessed Crandall leapt back into the house to attack Hellstrom, the exorcist blasted him with soulfire, fusing Allatou's ectoplasm to the mortal's body so she could no longer separate from him to take a new host. Hellstrom then used his soulfire to torture the demon, and when she still refused to let him exorcise her quietly he threatened to force her to live out the rest of her days as a mortal unless she relinquished her grip on Crandall. Reluctantly she acquiesced, briefly solidifying to appear over the supine Crandall to curse at her foe before fleeing back to her realm in Hell.
(West Coast Avengers II#14 (fb) - BTS) - Allatou returned
to Earth and made a base in the Grimoire Book Shop, turning its owner,
Mr. Carstairs, her thrall. She learned of Master Pandemonium, presumably
because he was harassing other demons in his search for his soul
fragments, and made efforts to accrue greater power in order to defend
herself against him.
(West Coast Avengers II#13) - When Dr. Henry Pym sought to research the occult in order to learn more about Master Pandemonium and his demon host, he visited the Grimoire. Overhearing him mentioning Master Pandemonium to the owner, Allatou mistakenly suspected Pym was allied with Master Pandemonium, so she followed him...
(West Coast Avengers II#14) - back to Avengers Compound and then brought forth an army of demon servants to capture him. The large number of demons drew the attention of Pandemonium's familiar, Azmodeus, and he joined the battle, both against Allatou and the West Coast Avengers who had arrived to assist Pym. Despite the interference, Allatou successfully abducted Pym, along with Tigra (at the time trapped in her human form as Greer Nelson) back to her realm in Hell. Quickly learning that assumption about Pym's connection to Pandemonium had been mistaken, Allatou decided to torment them anyway, but was interrupted before she could do so by the sudden arrival of both Master Pandemonium and the West Coast Avengers, the latter having enlisted the aid of Hellstrom (now using the alias Hellstorm), and his wife, Patsy Walker, a.k.a. Hellcat, to get to Hell. After a short battle, Allatou uprooted the section of rock her enemies were standing on, and cast it into the River of Death, where they drifted away, leaving her alone in her realm, laughing maniacally at her foes' fate.
Comments: Created by Steve Gerber, Gene Colan and Frank Chiarmonte.
Satan, as relates to Allatou, most likely represents Marduk Kurios, the true name of the father of Hellstorm, who frequently went by the name of Satan.
Allatou's relationship with her husband, Nergal, has not been defined. I'm certain, however, that there are no laws against bigamy in Hell. That statement has a certain irony to it.
The trip down the River of Death led Master Pandemonium and the group of heroes to the Land Within, where an encounter with the Cat People enabled Tigra to merge her human and feline aspects, resolving her personality problems. This encounter also gave Master Pandemonium the first of his five sought after soul fragments (which ended up actually being portions of Mephisto's soul).
In the All-New OHotMU Update#3 it was assumed that Allatou was an
expelled aspect of Ereshkigal
or that the goddess traded her Babylonian name and husband Nergal to
her.
Allatou's name may be derived from
Al-Lat, a pre-Islamic Arabian goddess. If so, she might simply have
stolen the goddess' name, or she may be the goddess who, like other
no-longer worshiped deities such as Nergal,
has degenerated into a demon. Perhaps she's formerly one of the Annunaki?
Interestingly, Michael Jordan's Dictionary of Gods and Goddesses notes
that the Mesopotamian goddess Ereshkigel
was known in Carthage as Allatu (sic), and last I checked, Ereshkigal
was married to Nergal. Maybe Allatou and Erishkigal are the same
individuals wearing different forms, or were once the same but have
been somehow split apart? The Greek scholar Herodotus mentioned in his
fifth century Histories that "Alilat" was the name the Arabians gave
to Aphrodite, the goddess of beauty. If Allatou is some rogue aspect
of Aphrodite
then she's really let herself go!
Like many demons, her appearance seems
somewhat variable - her hair is orange when she encounters Hellstrom
but green when she takes on the West Coast Avengers; though not
impossible, I doubt she dyes it, especially as it turns back and forth
between green and black during her fight with them in Hell.
Additionally, when she fought Hellstrom she was around his height, but
when facing the WACkos, she was a heck of a lot taller - there's one
panel where she's stalking Hank Pym and is easily twice his height.
And of course her skin goes from blueish while facing Hellstrom to
pinky-purple when she takes on the WACkos. Even her eyes shifted - in
WCA II#13 her eyes are pure white, but in WCA II#14 another face
close-up shows pupils and sclera, though it's not possible to discern
the color.
A female demon called Allatou appears in
a couple of issues of Epic Comics' Hellhound series. Though she looks
quite different from this Allatou, that's not proof they couldn't be
one and the same; as noted above, Allatou changes her appearance at
least a little, and it's entirely possible that like other demons she
can change to look however she wants. The question is really whether
or not the Hellhound series is taking place on Earth-616 (the
mainstream Marvel universe). It's creator-owned, but that wouldn't
prevent it being set in 616. Until evidence arises preventing it or
confirming it to be in 616, the jury remains out.
Full disclosure - the "first posted" date
below may actually be not actually be the time it was first uploaded.
Rather, it is the earliest date listed as "Last updated" when I
checked the profile on the Wayback Machine, and thus the very first
incarnation of this entry may actually be a little earlier. - Loki
Profile by Snood.
CLARIFICATIONS:
Allatou has no known connections to:
images: (without ads)
West Coast Avengers II#14, p7, pan1
(main image)
West Coast Avengers II#13, p22, pan7 (headshot)
Marvel
Spotlight I#18, p15, pan4 (possessing Melissa)
Marvel Spotlight I#19, p13, pan6
(ectoplasm form, exiting Mary)
Marvel Spotlight I#19, p16, pan3 (crouching, just emerged from
Alan Crandall, facing Son of Satan)
West Coast Avengers II#13, p10, pan3 (immaterial,
stalking Hank Pym, height comparison shot)
Appearances:
Marvel Spotlight I#18-19 (October-December, 1974) - Steve Gerber
(writer), Gene Colan (pencils), Frank Chiaramonte (#18) & Mike
Esposito (#19) (inks), Roy Thomas (editor)
West Coast Avengers II#13-14 (October-November, 1986) - Steve Englehart
(writer), Al Milgrom (pencils), Joe Sinnott (inks), Mark Gruenwald
(editor)
Any Additions/Corrections? please let me know.
Non-Marvel
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