The Brotherless One. The Grey Walker. The Spirit of Humanity. Many are the epithets associated with the enigmatic Phantom Stranger, but none of them fathoms his entire being. Was he once an angel who neither sided with Lucifer nor fought against him? Or an angel who fell in love with a mortal? Is he the Wandering Jew of legend? A former scientist who observed the origin of the universe? The son of another timeline's Superman and Wonder Woman? The theories are many, but unconfirmed. What is known is that the Stranger is an immortal being of great supernatural power but no extraordinary physical abilities. In the past, he has mainly appeared before people with moral dilemmas, guiding them but never making their decisions for them. More recently, he has confronted several supernatural threats to humanity. "The Stranger comes when the Stranger is required", he claims, but by whom, nobody knows. Although he is a friend of few and a stranger to most, he has sometimes allied himself with other servants of justice such as the JLA, the Trenchcoat Brigade, the Sentinels of Magic, or the Quintessence. For a while he served the Lords of Order, but this was apparently a temporary arrangement. True friendship with the Stranger is a rarity, but among those closest to him are the occult detective Dr. Occult, the ghost-breaker Dr. Thirteen and the psychic Cassandra Craft (with whom he had a love affair). His main enemies have been Tannarak, Eclipso, and Tala. The full secret of the Stranger will seemingly never be revealed, and perhaps he has walked his path for so long that he cannot remember it himself.The Phantom Stranger's beginnings are shrouded in mystery, perhaps even to him. The most commonly believed story is that he was once an angel, but he refused to either rebel with Lucifer or fight on the side of the Host; he was then rejected by Heaven and Hell alike. But it is also said that he is the Wandering Jew, doing God's work until Christ comes again; or that he was chosen by Heaven as the one man to be saved from an evil city marked for destruction, but that he tried to reject Heaven's gift of life and killed himself. Heaven then placed a doom upon him, according to this story; he was to be denied either mortality or immortality, life or death. He was given the power to do as he said ought to be done, turning men from their evil ways and saving them one at a time rather than destroying them; but he was cursed to wander the earth and never have a home, since he had chosen his home city over the will of Heaven. Some say he is an agent of the Lords of Order; others that he serves Heaven; others that he serves only Humanity, protecting it against lords of all kinds and preserving Balance. Darker things are said, too: that he was an angel who loved a demoness, for example. Whether he was once angel or man, whether he is now mortal or immortal, whether his powers come from Heaven or from Humanity or from himself, where he has come from on his endless walk and where he is going; all of this is unknown.The Stranger once told Father Craemer (an associate of Jim Corrigan's) that he was present in ancient Egypt when Nabu failed to stop the Spectre force from killing that land's firstborn sons. He was known to Merlin in the days before Camelot; but Merlin's memory of his life ran backward, so we cannot know when the two actually first met. We in fact know nothing of the Stranger's activities between Moses' time and the mid-twentieth century. He knew the Scarab during the latter's career in the 1940s, but unlike the Scarab seems never to have worked alongside the Justice Society of America. During the years after the JSA disbanded, he acted as a silent guardian of a handful of children-a farmboy in Kansas, an orphan in Gotham City, an abandoned child of Atlantis-to ensure that they would reach their destinies as adults. During this time he also worked as a crime-fighting debunker of sorts, appearing when an innocent was being threatened with harm under the false cover of a magical threat. Once the fraud was uncovered, he himself would disappear into the mist.This work repeatedly brought him into contact, and conflict, with Doctor Terrence Thirteen, the Ghost-Breaker. Dr. 13 also debunked mystical frauds-and he was quite certain that the Stranger fell into that category. (Terry's wife Marie was friendlier to the Stranger.) So even when they worked to protect the same people and uncover the same wrongs, Dr. 13 would direct much of his hostility against the Stranger.If this was an annoyance at first, it soon became much more with the unleashing into the world of a very old evil. In the course of one such case, Tala, a demonic queen of darkness and evil, was released from an imprisonment in the earth that had lasted for millennia. Now the Stranger had much worse to combat than greedy husbands trying to defraud their wives by use of ghost hoaxes; Tala's threat was evil, implacable, and real. The Stranger and Tala clashed time and time again; and it may be that Tala's release explains the increasing frequency of other genuinely magical threats the Stranger faced. Many times Tala's threat seems to have ended, but she always returns.Besides Tala, the bitterest enemy of the Stranger's modern career has been Tannarak, whom he first met less than a year after Tala's release. Tannarak is a necromancer, a man who is willing to commit any wrong, serve any dark power, in his quest for immortality. Not long after Tannarak and the Stranger first met, Tala (through intermediaries) enlisted Tannarak into her Dark Circle, a global sorcerous conspiracy to bring about the Apocalypse. Tala and Tannarak were the recurring foes in the Stranger's life, and Thirteen a recurring antagonist. But around this time the Stranger met one more person who would come back into his life over and over again-a blind psychic named Cassandra Craft. She helped the Stranger follow the trail of the Dark Circle, and while they traveled the world, they nearly fell in love. Only nearly-for whatever it is that drives or forces the Stranger to remain alone and apart from humanity, it always forced a distance between Cassandra and the man she called "my love." The two have never been together for long, and usually only in times of peril; but there is no one else who makes the Stranger feel more acutely the burden of his solitude. Cassandra and the Stranger were captured by Tannarak in Paris, but the Stranger made Tannarak see that the Circle would soon turn on him. Tannarak then joined forces with the other two-the only time he has ever worked with the Stranger-and they traveled to Rio de Janeiro, where the Dark Circle was headquartered in a cavern beneath a mountain. There they discovered that Tala was the force behind the Circle, and that their plan to bring about doomsday was nearly complete. Tannarak himself attacked Tala, and they both fell into a crevice in the earth; the Stranger fought the remaining scores of sorcerers and creatures of the night who made up the Circle. The force of the battle brought down the mountain, apparently killing all involved. Cassandra had escaped, but believed the Stranger to be dead; and he allowed her to think so. This, too, would happen more than once; each time the Stranger believed that his inevitable departure would be easier on her if she believed him dead.For a time the Stranger worked alongside Boston Brand, the deceased acrobat known as Deadman. His path crossed with that of the Batman several occasions; and later still, he began to work alongside the original Justice League against magical threats including Felix Faust, Count Azgore, and a group of resurrected gods from a long-dead civilization, as well as other enemies including the Key and a race of alien invaders. The League offered him formal membership several times, and each time he vanished before replying; but as time went on he began to refer to himself as a member and very occasionally take part in collective team decisions. He was never a close friend of any of the Leaguers, and Green Arrow was openly antagonistic toward him; but Flash, Atom, Hawkman, Hawkwoman, and Aquaman came to see him as a trusted if mysterious ally. After the magic-wielding Zatanna joined the League on a full-time basis, the Stranger ceased to take part in JLA activities. More often he observed, as when he watched Darkseid's attempt to destroy earth's legends, all the time warning the dark lord that the plan would fail.In more recent times the Stranger has often worked alongside a shifting group of magical allies. With Deadman, the Spectre, Doctor Fate, Etrigan, and Swamp Thing he stood against the primordial darkness that threatened Heaven. With more terrestrial allies like Sargon, Zatanna, and Madame Xanadu he helped the Spectre in the latter's struggle with the Anti-Monitor at the Dawn of Time. He led Doctor Occult, John Constantine, and Mister E in initiating Timothy Hunter into the ways of magic, and the four reunited to resist the Cancer God, M'Ngalah, who threatened the earth. He has stood against Circe, the Spectre, the Cult of the Blood Red Moon, the Cold Flame, Eclipso, Swamp Thing, Neron, and the Asmodel-possessed Spectre alongside various groupings of human mystics and other entities whenever humanity was threatened. Zatanna, Doctor Fate, Sentinel, and especially Doctor Occult have worked with the Stranger often enough to trust him implicitly. But others-including John Constantine, Madame Xanadu, Etrigan, and (while he was alive) Fate-dislike or distrust the Stranger, and only follow him reluctantly.But still, the Stranger walks his own lonely path. In the wake of the Day of Judgment many of those mystics pledged themselves to an ongoing association to guard the Spear of Destiny; the Stranger did not, instead providing a voice of conscience to Hal Jordan, the new Spectre. There is a band of gods who monitors the earth and its future-Shazam, Ganthet, Zeus, and Highfather-and though the Stranger sometimes watches with them, more often than not he walks apart, and does not share in their plans. He appears when and where he is needed-when Deadman's psychological torments threaten to provide a portal for a demonic invasion, when a mystic gem animates the corrupt soil of a muderers' graveyard and creates a malicious force that threatens Metropolis, when Eclipso seeks to annihilate the sun, when the Anti-Fate or Tala and Tannarak try to offer the earth to the Lords of Chaos-and then departs again. Far more often than he enters into combat, he appears to a troubled soul, someone afraid to face up to his or her responsibilities, and provides advice and courage. But again, he walks away into the darkness when the moment has passed. He has reached a reconciliation of sorts with Terrence Thirteen, struck up an occasional friendship with solar scientist Bruce Gordon, and even allowed Cassandra Craft to know that he is alive; but still he walks his path alone. He often greets souls as they pass into the Realm of the Just Dead and escorts them toward their destination; but-as with so much else about the Stranger-whether this is an appointed role or a voluntarily assumed one remains unknown.MOTIVATIONS: These are as unknown as (and possibly linked to) his origin. He does not serve Hell or Chaos, ever; but what his duties to Heaven or Order or balance or justice are, we do not know. He permanently opposes those who would inflict evil or chaos onto humanity, but he seems determined to allow humanity to choose goodness or salvation or justice. He is deeply committed to some version of goodness, or justice, or balance, or freedom for humanity; more than that we do not know.The true extent of the Stranger's abilities has never been determined, as we are often reminded. But a good many things are clear. He can travel at will among the magical dimensions, including the Realm of the Just Dead, the Antechamber of Souls (which may be another name for or a particular area of the Realm of the Just Dead), Heaven, Hell, and Apokolips. He has at least some telepathic abilities, and can ordinarily perceive truth and deception, good and evil. He can see spiritual entities and travelers invisible to normal sight; he can perceive magical events at a great distance. He can hurl magical bolts (sometimes taking the form of lightning) which are extremely potent. He can mysteriously vanish and appear at will, suggesting magical teleportation (when the JLA had a satellite in orbit 22,300 miles above Earth, the Stranger routinely entered and left it without use of the JLA teleportation tubes). He can send dreams of omen, warning, or information, though possibly only with the permission of Dream of the Endless. He can dispel magic and sorcery, especially magic of mental control or illusion and deception; he can also cast illusions and mind controls of his own. He can perform some feats of transmutation, such as turning fired bullets into flowers and sticks into snakes and back. He can survive and even communicate in outer space, though he may not be able to travel of his own volition while there.The Stranger almost never uses spoken spells, magical artifacts, or magical rituals more complex than a seance or a circle of entrapment. He does not fly in the material world. He cannot travel to the future. He is a moderately skilled hand-to-hand combatant, often surprising with a punch someone who smugly thought their protection against magic rendered them untouchable.When the Stranger is acting in his bailiwick, he is almost supremely powerful. If he is not taken by surprise and can plan and act, he can be baffled only by universal forces such as the Spectre, the Anti-Monitor, the Lords of Order, and presumably the Endless. However, there are mysterious limitations on when the Stranger is permitted to act directly; it is not even known whether these are self-imposed or the commands of a higher power. Very often, he is limited to providing warnings and cryptic information, or perhaps gathering together those who must win the day.The Stranger's most important weakness, if that is what it is, is the sharp limitation on his acting directly and overtly. Threats which he would presumably have the raw power to directly defeat he must instead warn others about, especially if those others have some particular responsibility at stake. Even his information he apparently cannot provide clearly and explicitly; in many cases his warnings or clues are cryptic. It might be, for example, that he is forbidden from removing the responsibility from humanity's shoulders; he definitely believes in free will, and the availability of a balance of choices to humans. This may also explain his tendency to talk at great length. He has to try to make those around him understand the consequences of their choices and the fact that truly they face choices. He must not act in their place, so he must make them understand what their actions mean.The Stranger is not physically invulnerable. Especially when he is heavily outnumbered when his magical abilities are already in use, or when he is taken by surprise, he can be injured or knocked out. He can be imprisoned by magical means; and his innate magical energies can be siphoned away. His physical form can be destroyed (as in Dr. Fate #3); and he can die in at least some circumstances (as in JLA #145). He has often thought that a particular combination of threats might destroy him, particularly those which combined magical imprisonment with physical attacks or magical drains. It may be that the Stranger is mistaken and that there is nothing which could permanently destroy him (nothing has yet, obviously); but he believes that there are things which can.
