Doctor Phoenix (Earth-One)

...My nightmare machine will enable me to rid myself of this world of chaos I have dreamed into reality... Where ugly towers of metal stab the sky-- And humans kill their own kind even as they talk of peace!

— Doctor Phoenix ^src

Doctor Phoenix was the human form of the Abominable Snowman, a quasi-mystical entity of unknown origins whose natural state was perpetual sleep and dreaming.

History

When the Kryptonian survivor Kal-El came to Earth as an infant, the presence of his alien aura on Earth somehow disrupted the Abominable Snowman's sleep-state and forced him to assume human form. "Doctor Phoenix" spent the next 27 years trying to discover a means through combined science and sorcery of returning to the world of dreams which he considered his personal reality and banishing the real world, whose noise and discordance caused Phoenix to regard it as a waking nightmare.^[1] Phoenix found his opportunity when second-rate film director Simon March came to the alchemy store he maintained on 81st Street in Metropolis, seeking some means of reviving the art of cinema, which he saw as being obsolete in an age where superhuman beings perform wonders beyond the capacity of the silver screen on an everyday basis. Using his dream-analyzing machine to probe March's dreaming subconscious, Phoenix determined that his id contained the deep-seated desire to destroy Superman for the entirely petty reason of representing the alleged decline of his art, so Phoenix agreed with March to magically make the content of his dreams come true, in return for taking the psychic essence of March's actual ability to dream. The following day, Phoenix made good on his bargain by using a magic ritual to summon the Monster-Wolf of Citroak and binding it to March, a process which apparently drove March insane and caused him to go on a rampage until both he and the Monster-Wolf were stopped by Superman.^[2] Several days later, Phoenix used an illusion-projector to draw Superman into the reaches of space while he harnessed the psychic essence of Simon March's dreaming ability to fuel his "Nightmare-Machine," with which he could return to his true form as the Abominable Snowman and cast the "nightmare-world" of physical reality into oblivion. However, Superman's premature return from outer space put a hitch in Phoenix's timetable, causing him to change plans to eliminating Superman before he could activate the Nightmare-Machine. Phoenix used his devices to make several blocks' worth of tall buildings vanish into thin air, including Clark Kent's 344 Clinton Street apartment complex, to draw Superman to the location of his 81st Street townhouse for the final showdown. Superman and the Abominable Snowman traded blows, showing them to be equivalent in terms of strength and invulnerability, but putting Superman at a disadvantage due to the Snowman's magical cryokinesis. The Abominable Snowman retreated from the battle to activate the Nightmare-Machine, but Superman destroyed the machine and kicked the Snowman unconscious, preventing the world from doing a "fade-out" around them. Before the Abominable Snowman could regain his awareness, Superman cobbled together a perpetual compressed-air machine in the Fortress of Solitude and used it to keep the Snowman permanently suspended above the ground by a few feet on a Himalayan peak. Reasoning that the Snowman's problem was that he would remain awake so long as Superman's alien matter came into contact with the Earth, the solution was simply to keep the Abominable Snowman a couple feet off the Earth at all times so he would never awaken again.^[1]

Powers and Abilities

Powers

Magic
- Cryokinesis
- Summoning
- Molecular Reconstruction
Superhuman Strength
Invulnerability

Abilities

Weaknesses

Monstrous Appearance
Vulnerability to Eye Injury

Paraphernalia

Equipment

Nightmare-Machine
Mirage-Projector
Dream-Recorder

Notes

This version of Doctor Phoenix, including all history and corresponding appearances, was erased from existence following the collapse of the original Multiverse in the 1985–86 Crisis on Infinite Earths event and later restored following the rebirth of the infinite Multiverse during the Dark Crisis of 2022-2023. Even though other versions of the character may have appeared, this information does not apply to those versions.

Trivia

In Superman #263, Doctor Phoenix claims to have dabbled in human affairs for centuries, such as by maneuvering Lieutenant Colonel George Armstrong Custer into the Battle of the Little Bighorn, but his backstory in Superman #266 of having been present in his Abominable Snowman form, asleep, until the arrival of the baby Kal-El on Earth awakened him and trapped him in human form, contradicts that.