Doctor Occult
1899 - The Whateley Cult kidnaps a pair of orphaned children to sacrifice, hoping to usher in a dawn of a new dark age. They are saved by the surviving members of the Order of Seven, who take them in to train as their successors. They are named Richard and Rose, but are also given titles within the Order, which translate to Occult and Psychic.
1915 -16-year-old Richard Occult enrolls early in Boston University, studying chemistry & biology, subjects he'd already mastered during his training under the Order of Seven.
1919 - 20-year-old Richard Occult & Rose Psychic are entrusted with the Seals of Naos, magical talismans that allow them to access the full magical power of the Order as the remaining members transcend the plane, leaving them as the only remaining members of the Order.
1921 - 22-year-old Richard Occult & Rose Psychic first meet Jenny Sparks, assisting her on a series of outlandish adventures.
1923 - 24-year-old Richard Occult & Rose Psychic first open the Occult Detective Agency. Rose chooses to act as his assistant, so she can be an equal participant.
1939 - 40-year-old Richard Occult is severely injured attempting to hold back Germany's invasion of Poland. Rose Psychic manages to smuggle him into Budapest.
48 years ago - Richard Occult is one of the founding members of Jenny Sparks Stormwatch, a secret organization designed to protect Earth and the barriers between dimensions.
27 years ago - Richard Occult's soul is recovered in a ritual by Rose Psychic, sacrificing her Seal of Naos. Choosing to solely occupy the Paths Beyond, Richard is able to occupy their body when they walk the material plane.
15 years ago - Richard Occult is warned by Rose Psychic that Felix Faust is amassing power in hell by summoning the Demons Three. He is assisted by the Justice League in stopping him.
9 years ago - Richard Occult is approached by the Justice Society to assist in containing June Moone's extradimensional spirit entity.
Reading comics is often accompanied by this feeling that you simply don't know everything that came before. You can't. Longtime comic fans learn to get pretty comfortable in that space, accepting that there is a deep lore just outside of your own grasp. Sometimes, characters actually use that to their advantage. They feel like they have a dense history that you might not be familiar with personally, but that you understand clearly must exist... but in fact, they really don't have that many relevant stories under their belt. Doctor Occult is unquestionably an important character in DC's history, but he also gives us a lot of opportunity to get creative, because there just aren't a lot of appearances to reference.
Doctor Occult's Comic HistoryDoctor Occult's first appearance is so long ago it predates the concept of comic stories taking more than one page at a time. Back when the main form of comics was in newspapers, producing a single page of a story at a time, comics like More Fun would just show one page of an ongoing story on each page, so Occult's first appearance in 1935 was entirely on one page.
These books had dozens of ongoing stories at a time, so there were a LOT of characters, but over the years eventually less and less of them made regular appearances as the newfangled innovation of stories taking up multiple pages became all the rage. Doctor Occult continued to appear in every issue of More Fun right until issue #32 in 1938... two months after the publication of Action Comics #1. Which implies that the huge change in the medium with the introduction of Superman and costumed superheroes must have played a factor. As it happens, there were a few Doctor Occult stories where he traveled to another dimension, and wore a sort of proto-superhero-costume. Some people have actually argued that this should technically make him the very first costumed superhero. Doctor Occult was, like so many of his contemporaries completely absent from comic practically forever. It was almost 50 years later in 1985 when Roy Thomas, in his ongoing effort to plumb the Golden Age characters, brought Doctor Occult back in the pages of All-Star Squadron in 1985. |
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This sudden return to the comic pages probably happened specifically because DC at the time was in the middle of digging into the depths of its entire publication history in preparation for the Crisis of Infinite Earths, but in doing so it created a pretty unprecedented return for the character. He had some featured moments in the Crisis, showed up in Swamp Thing, and generally just started to gain prominence among the magic-wielding characters of modern DC. He had his origin expanded in the pages of Secret Origin, where we learn that he and Rose Psychic were actually raised together by the mystic Seven (which makes it really weird that they've sometimes been a couple).
This all culminated when he was one of the four magic using guides for Tim Hunter in 1990's Books of Magic, exploring and mapping DC magical realms. This is also where a new idea is introduced; when Occult leads Tim through a gateway into the land of the Fae, we see him undergo a transformation INTO Rose Psychic. This wasn't an idea that had been explored before, that they were now somehow permanently bound into one body, but it seems to have been thoroughly absorbed into the character's mythology. He's was part of the Sentinels of Magic in the late 90s, and is now operating as a sort of elder statesman among DC's magic users. |
Our Doctor Occult StoryWe tried our best to build our take on Doctor Occult so that he feels like one of the pillars of the world of magic in our continuity. He's born at the turn of the century, and saved from a cult along with his lifelong companion Rose, creates his Detective Agency back in the 20s, and is one of the incredibly powerful casters participating in the 3rd Shadowpact. We wanted to find a way to actually recreate the merging of the doctor and Rose (huh), and to do so we actually made it something Rose did after his death. Giving up her own talisman, which is why they now have only one between them, and giving her ability to walk the material plane to him. This establishes the status quo that she manifests whenever they enter any of the paths beyond, and he manifests here on Earth. This creates a really interesting partnership, and every time we involve either character in any events in the later timeline, we understand that it's all executed with that unique partnership in place.
We also made one pretty big change, but one that really fits with the character in a fun way. We're taking advantage of his status as a character deeply imbedded into the bedrock of DC, and making him part of the original Stormwatch. Like always, its remarkably easy to connect him to Jenny Sparks long history, and by including him we simultaneously give him an anchor into the larger DC storyline that he otherwise doesn't have, and give the team their own deep connection to DC lore. |
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