Sultan Magus

Origin

Dagan Shah was a terrorist leader of Sharzhad and was captured by the US Army when he used a last ditch attempt and spit a grenade from his mouth. Barely surviving, Shah escaped and heard the call of a Rigellian seeding pod which bonded with him and he became the Sultan Magus.

Creation

Sultan Magus was created by writer Jeff Parker and artist Patrick Zircher and first appeared in Hulk #42.

Major Story Arcs

Hulk of Arabia

For more information: Hulk of Arabia

Shah disguised himself as Arabian Knight and led Hulk and Machine Man back to his lair before revealing himself. He imprisons them and leaves them with his hybrid henchmen, Haya and Scorpion. Sultan Magus leaves to Cairo to punish the city for revealing information to Westeners about his country. Upon returning to Sharzhad, he finds that Hulk and Machine Man have escaped and discovered the source of his power. The Sultan Magus continues to overpower them until they take the fight away from the city. He begins to lose his powers the further away from the city he gets. However, General Fortean arrives and informs Hulk that Sharzhad is now a legitimate country and he must leave immediately.

Mayan Rule

For more information: Mayan Rule

When the Mayan Gods returned and sought to rule over Earth, their temple transported to various parts of the globe to re-establish a power base. When it teleported in Sharzhad, the Sultan Magus arrived and destroyed the Mayan Temple believing it was a weapon sent to his country by the US Government.

Cataclysm

The government assembled a new team of Thunderbolts, consisting of members Norman Osborn‘s former Avengers team, and sent them to Sharzhad to liberate an American citizen who has been caught by Sharzhadeen troops. Half the team accomplish that end after abandoning Luke Cage and Skaar and leaving them to battle against the Sultan Magus.

Magus makes short work of the two, quickly transforming Skaar back into his non-Hulked out form and easily beating Cage. The rest of the team put into effect their secret plan, to use Wender’s superhuman power to transfer energy to use the Rigellian technology in Sharzhad.

Powers and Abilities

As Sultan Magus, Dagan Shah has displayed ill-defined and generally varied powers from super strength (enough to one-shot Machine Man/fight evenly with Red Hulk) to optic blasts to geokinetically creating a giant rock creature. His powers are limited to a defined radius – mostly coinciding with the region of Sharzhad – the further he is away from it the less powerful he is. He has noted he has been working on extending his range and recently was seen displaying great power in Egypt. His powers come from a sub-space pocket in the Earth wherein crystal formations channel the energy that walls off the land and powers Sultan Magus. He has access to energy that was felt across the world, the only limit is what he feels his body can handle.

Along with his immense physical gifts of speed, strength, and near death healing, this?planetary ??level?crystal also grants Magus substantial mental abilities. Such abilities include projecting huge mental images of himself, read the mind of Red Hulk, as well as keep Skaar from Hulking out until the war was already over. The crystal themselves were extremely durable, able to restrain Red Hulk’s body while he had his mind read (returning the force back to him) well as no-sell a direct strike from Red Hulk with none of force transferring to Magus. Last non-physical gift, the blast that he shoots are potent enough to lay out Luke cage and knock Skaar & Red Hulk around with relative ease. His blast are hax enough to ignore spatial warping (more than likely due to its pocket universe origin).

Sultan Magus also has the ability of mass manipulation and duplication, able to grow to enormous sizes while seemingly increasing strength as well as make duplicates that have enough strength to stun Hulks. The limitation of this duplication is that they all obey the main body, making them less effective then if they were able to operate independently. This mass manipulation is theoretically the reason he can heal from dismemberment and being stabbed by Skaar.