God of the sun and fertility, Atum’s power is equal to the star itself. As ruler of the Ennead, he is known by many names: his most famous is Ammon Ra, or simply Ra, who is not only worshipped by Earth’s Ancient Egyptian people, but also, he’s the leader of Ogdoad, the first incarnation of the Egyptian Gods.
The God-Eater
Atum is the son of Elder Goddess Gaea, or “Mother Earth”, one of the Elder Gods who materializes on Earth before any life develops there. Except for Gaea, the Elder Gods degenerate into demons, preying on each other. Seeking to save the world she loves, Gaea calls upon the Demiurge, the sentient life force of Earth’s biosphere, and gives birth to Atum, first of the next generation of gods, his power that of the blazing sun. Atum slays hordes of demon gods, absorbing their forms and energies until he transforms into the monstrous Demogorge. Only Chthon and Set escape destruction, and only Gaea is allowed to remain. His task complete, Demogorge takes to the skies and casts the forms and energy from his body, seeding the heavens with godstuff until he transforms back to Atum and merges with the sun.
Millions of years ago now, Gaea realizes that dinosaurs had reached an evolutionary dead end, and she shifts her favor to mammals. Set, who derives power from the dinosaurs, directs them to slaughter the mammals. Gaea confronts Set and, realizing the threat, summons Atum for protection. Atum and Set fight savagely for untold millennia until Atum became Demogorge and drives him off. During their battle, Earth’s dinosaurs were rendered nearly extinct, with only a few remaining in isolated regions such as the Savage Land.
Gaea, along with Demiurge and/or Atum, later produces the succeeding generations of gods. Atum eventually takes the aspect of Ra, the primordial sun god worshipped in Ancient Egypt. As Ammon Ra, he rules the Ogdoad, the first incarnation of Egyptian gods. While myth states that the Ogdoad spawned Ra, it is suspected that they were in fact spawned by Ra. As his first creations, they may have been imperfect and aged more rapidly than the virtually immortal Ra, their senior appearance causing this misconception.
The Ogdoad eventually perishes, and Ra starts anew, siring the first of the Ennead, the next generation of Egyptian gods, including Shu and Tefnut. Ammon Ra is eventually succeeded as ruler of the Ennead by Shu, though he sometimes still represents them at meetings of the Council of Godheads, such as when they met to discuss the Celestials circa 1000 AD.
The Power of a God
Atum possesses powers at least comparable to other godheads, such as Odin Borson, AKA Odin, Zeus and Vishnu, including vastly superhuman strength, stamina, durability and the ability to fly and manipulate massive amounts of solar energy (usually as heat or light); he can survive the heat and pressure within a star. Atum can also absorb the forms and energies of gods and demons, sufficient amounts of which transform him into Demogorge, a massive, misshapen, virtually unstoppable hulk who grows in size and power as he feeds.
Devouring His Enemies
Despite alliances with gods outside his own pantheon, Atum has been known to devour other gods. When preparing to consume Earth’s gods, a union of gods convinced him otherwise. When the Skrull Gods became a threat, Atum joins the God Squad against them.
Godly Allies
The firstborn from Gaea and Demiurge, Atum is based out of the Celestial Heliopolis, an extradimensional realm. He leads the Ogdoad, which includes such members as the air goddess Amaunet, infinite space and visible matter gods Huh and Hauhet, Keku, AKA Kuk and Kauket, who represent darkness, Demiurge, AKA Nun, to the ancient Egyptians, and the water goddess Naunet. He later joins the God Squad.
Ancient History
In recent years, a union of Death Gods sought to merge their realms and powers, and the union of this dark power summoned Demogorge anew. Demogorge consumed them all and prepared to devour the rest of Earth's gods. A union of heroic gods from various pantheons convinced Demogorge that it was not time for the current pantheons to die, and he restored the fallen gods and returned to the sun as Atum.
Demogorge was summoned to Olympus when Cronus and the Giants broke free from Tartarus and threatened to destroy Olympus and thus shift the cosmic axis. When Set again menaced Earth, the Asgardian God of Thunder, Thor Odinson, AKA Thor, forced the reluctant Atum to become Demogorge. Though consumed, Thor somehow asserted dominance over Demogorge to defeat Set, after which Atum disgorged the noble Thor.
At some point, Chthon somehow bound some of Demogorge’s power into a Darkhold page, which was read in recent years by the vampire hunter Eric Brooks, AKA Blade, in a misguided effort to destroy all things magic to his demise. The Darkhold Redeemers’ Louise Hastings sacrificed part of her own soul to Chthon to reverse the spell and restore Blade.
Atum was later summoned by Horus to the Council of Godheads and joined the God Squad in preparation to battle the Skrull Gods. Atum transforms into Demogorge and devours Sl’gur’t, the Skrull Goddess but he was overwhelmed and exploded. He later regenerated and attended a meeting of the Devil’s Advocacy who were concerned about the Serpent’s upcoming threat.
Living beyond space and time, Atum/Demogorge then swallowed Thor and his allies but they escaped when Thor used his hammer Mjolnir to strike at his heart.
When Atum’s son Khonshu revealed the truth about himself and the origin of the Gods to Marc Spector, AKA Moon Knight, Atum scolded him using fire. In response, Khonshu manipulates Spector to the point where his multiple personalities formed into one and defeated Atum. Spector then takes Atum’s followers.
