Solomon Seal (magic item; Alpha Flight and Fantastic Four stories)

First Appearance: Unrevealed; compiled within One Thousand and One Nights (perhaps 8th century AD; see comments);
(Marvel) Alpha Flight II#16 (November, 1998)

Powers/Abilities/Functions: Solomon's Seal is a powerful source of white magic.

In its limited appearances, it has been used to bind or exorcise demons, to open a portal to Heaven, and to unlock mystic armor.

As an artifact, it was initially an immense structure, but it could apparently be converted to a handheld device.

History: The Solomon Seal is apparently a powerful source of magic established by the former Sorcerer Supreme Solomon.

(Alpha Flight II#16 (fb) - BTS) - Years ago (see comments), "in a secret land," the Brass Bishop built a new "Tower of Babel" to Heaven, seeking to recover the soul of Beatriz, which he intended to trade to Mephisto in exchange for not having to surrender his own soul to Mephisto as he had previously promised.

(Alpha Flight II#16 (fb)) - The Brass Bishop and his minions fought Modred the Mystic and Puck who fought to hold closed the doors of eternity. Modred instructed Puck to locate the Solomon Seal and prevent the Bishop from getting his hands on it.

(Alpha Flight II#16 (fb) - BTS) - The Brass Bishop intended to use the Solomon Seal to unlock the gates of Heaven.

Alpha Flight II#16 (fb) - BTS) - Modred and Puck defeated the Brass Bishop, foiling his plans, and Modred hid the Solomon Seal within the Tower of Babel, which he then presumably banished from the mortal plane.

(Alpha Flight II#16) - In modern years, the Brass Bishop recreated the Tower of Babel in White Cross, Newfoundland.

When Puck led Alpha Flight (Flex/Adrian Corbo, Guardian/James Hudson synthoid, Manbot/Bernie Lachenay, Puck/Eugene Judd, Radius/Jared Corbo, Vindicator/Heather Hudson), the Bishop used Dargil to ensnare Puck's soul and make Puck's soulless body his servant. The Bishop sent Puck to lead him to the Solomon Seal.

Navigating through the multi-planar maze, Puck led the Bishop to the Seal, after which Alpha arrived and confronted the Bishop anew. Telling them they were too late, the Brass Bishop used the Seal to cause the gates of Heaven to appear.

Puck's soul, however, gathered the collective willpower of the other souls trapped within Dargil, and while Alpha struggled to keep the Bishop from the gate, Puck's soul returned to his body, and he grabbed the Solomon Seal and used it to unlock the Bishop's helmet.

With the Bishop's mystic armor breached, Mephisto was able to sense him at last, and Mephisto arrived and collected his soul.

(Fantastic Four Annual 1999) - Mechamage used Solomon's Seals to disrupt the spell that had displaced the souls of the Fantastic Four with demons (caused by the Black Queen (Selene) and Blackheart).

Comments: Created by unrevealed sources;
adapted to Marvel by Duncan Rouleau & Steven T. Seagle.

Solomon's Seal has been shown as a physical artifact, while Solomon's Seals were shown as magical spells. Perhaps the spell draws power from the artifact.

In Alpha Flight II#16, at least once the Bishop notes that he is seeking the Key to the Solomon Seal. Solomon's Key is something different than the Solomon Seal.

    In Alpha Flight II#16, the Brass Bishop referenced his and Puck's previous encounter as "decades ago and continents removed."
    Continents removed certainly is possible, but "decades ago" is a little harder. Puck was certainly active for like 100 years, and Modred first became a sorcerer back in the 6th century; however, Modred was inert for many centuries, only reviving during the modern era, 1975 real time. From 1975 to 1998 real time just can't be "decades," since there haven't been decades from FF#1 to the most recent comics. It couldn't be more than 6 years between the stories, and possibly only 4 years.
    Other possibilities:

One Thousand and One Nights

One Thousand and One Nights is a collection of Middle Eastern folk tales compiled in Arabic during the Islamic Golden Age. It is often known in English as the Arabian Nights, from the first English-language edition (c. 1706 – c. 1721), which rendered the title as The Arabian Nights' Entertainment.

Most scholars agreed that the Nights was a composite work and that the earliest tales in it came from India and Persia. At some time, probably in the early 8th century, these tales were translated into Arabic under the title Alf Layla, or 'The Thousand Nights'. This collection then formed the basis of The Thousand and One Nights. The original core of stories was quite small. Then, in Iraq in the 9th or 10th century, this original core had Arab stories added to it—among them some tales about the Caliph Harun al-Rashid. Also, perhaps from the 10th century onwards, previously independent sagas and story cycles were added to the compilation [...] Then, from the 13th century onwards, a further layer of stories was added in Syria and Egypt, many of these showing a preoccupation with sex, magic or low life. In the early modern period yet more stories were added to the Egyptian collections so as to swell the bulk of the text sufficiently to bring its length up to the full 1,001 nights of storytelling promised by the book's title

images: (without ads):
Alpha Flight II#16, pg. 18, panel 1-2 (top view; side view)
Fantastic Four Annual '99, pg. 18, panel 2-5

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