Hello and welcome to Comic Drake, where I talk about comic books and my name is Drake!
Marvel has a LOT of random dimensions that are used in oddly specific ways for some characters
powers such as the Brimstone Dimension that Nightcrawler travels through when he teleports
and the “Punch Dimension” that Cyclops’ eyes may or may not be portals to.
Regardless, two of the most noteworthy out there are the Lightforce and Darkforce Dimensions
so let’s take a look at them today.
The Darkforce Dimension (not to be confused with the Dark Dimension, the home of Dormammu),
has been pretty inconsistent in its depiction.
Sometimes it’s nothing but darkness, an unending realm devoid of light, space, time,
or really anything.
Other times, it’s just an empty world of eternal night, but there is some light and
ground.
Regardless, the Darkforce Dimension is filled with massless dark energy that’s also called
Darkforce, which makes it difficult to explain when you’re trying to differentiate between
the energy and the actual place.
This energy can be channeled into the physical world to essentially do whatever the writers
want since its properties aren’t really well defined outside of that it usually absorbs
whatever is thrown at it.
Generally though, the main application of Darkforce powers is teleportation and the
creation of constructs, kind of like a Green Lantern.
By opening up portals into the Darkforce Dimension, characters like Cloak can transport themselves
and/or others pretty much anywhere.
Or you could just be like one of my all time favorite Marvel characters, Doorman, and just
teleport people to the other side of a thing.
Yeah you heard me right.
There is a character called Doorman who’s main power is standing next to something and
letting people walk through him like a door, man.
Now people CAN get trapped in the Darkforce Dimension and it’s pretty freaking scary
when they do!
Since light is absorbed pretty much instantly, someone trapped there is surrounded by constant
darkness.
Since time doesn’t really exist, they just float around aimlessly for all of eternity.
That coupled with the fact that the Darkforce Dimension is notoriously cold and that’s
enough to drive most people insane.
This darkness can be countered by an extreme excess of light however as we’ve seen Spectrum,
a being of living light, see well enough to navigate the Darkforce Dimension and Dagger
light up all of New York City when it was trapped in a Darkforce dome.
Don’t worry though, there IS a chance to escape the dimension if you’re trapped in
it.
Every time that Darkforce is manipulated in the physical world, it opens up a portal.
If you’re skilled enough, you might just be able to use these brief windows to make
a break for it.
The source of Darkforce is unknown, but apparently on Earth-3470, it’s from an Elder God named
Chernobog.
However, it seems unlikely that this could be the case in the mainstream Earth-616 universe
as well since alternate universes seem to have their own rules for the Darkforce Dimension
as seen in the Marvel Cinematic Universe.
Yet, while the Chernobog of Earth-616 doesn’t seem linked to the Darkforce, it has been
connected to another powerful being.
This is Oblivion, an abstract cosmic entity that personifies non-existence and the end
of creation so it makes sense why he’d hang out there.
Okay, so that is a pretty thorough explanation of Darkforce, at least from what I’ve been
able to find, but there’s still one big detail missing.
Both Cloak and Dagger’s powers are tied together really well.
Cloak teleports and Dagger throws daggers made out of hard light.
Now, most light based characters in Marvel comics just straight up use regular light,
but it’s been explicitly stated that Dagger uses what is known as Lightforce.
This seems relatively straightforward considering that it’s implied that Lightforce is just
the opposite of the Darkforce, especially since it’s been repeatedly stated that Cloak
and Dagger’s light and darkness feed off each other sort of like a sort of yin-yang
effect.
An issue arises though with a Spider-Man villain named Mister Negative who channels both Light
and Darkforces inside of him, allowing him the ability to invert people that he touches.
When he fought Cloak and Dagger, he inverted their powers along with their origins.
This makes it to where Dagger now throws solidified Darkforce and Cloak now presumably teleports
through a Lightforce Dimension.
There’s only one problem.
There isn’t a Lightforce Dimension in any confirmed sense!
I think the main reason behind this is simple.
While Cloak’s ability can literally take you to the source of his powers, Dagger’s
power mostly just lets her create solidified Lightforce.
Where they come from really didn’t matter so it wasn’t explained.
However, it was stated in the past that Dagger’s constructs are manifestations of the life
force that exists within all living beings, but it’s not really know if this was retconned
when the term “Lightforce” started being thrown around.
Honestly, Cloak and Dagger haven’t really made a whole lot of appearances in the modern
era of comics so where they stand in modern canon is kind of unexplained and left up to
interpretation.
Regardless of where Dagger’s energy originates from, the physical applications of Lightforce
seems to be pretty much the same as its counterpart.
The main exception though is that Lightforce has the ability to heal and purify things.
The biggest example of this is when Mister Negative used his powers to cure Eddie Brock’s
cancer left by the Venom symbiote.
This reversed the problem, but created the Anti-Venom symbiote in the process.
The dimensions also seem to border on a couple of others in the Marvel universe including
the Realm of Dreams which is ruled over by the Doctor Strange villain, Nightmare.
More notably however is this Spotted Dimension that fuels the powers of a villain named The
Spot.
It was accessed when trying to duplicate Cloak’s connection to the Darkforce Dimension which
would seem to imply that this Spotted Dimension exists somewhat between both the Light and
Darkforces.
And that’s essentially it for these two forces.
Originally, I was just going to make this video as an excuse to learn all that I could
about the Darkforce since I’ve seen it pop up in Marvel comics multiple times.
Yet when I started researching this, I was kind of surprised with how underdeveloped
the concept really is.
Usually for older concepts like these, Marvel and DC tend to talk about them in great detail,
fleshing them out to sometimes ludicrously obnoxious degrees, but because there’s so
much left unsaid, I am really excited to see what future writers can do with the Lightforce
and the Darkforce and shape them into something bigger moving forward.
But if you like this video then why not consider subscribing or even watching another one?
And if you like Marvel concepts that aren’t really talked about all that much then I would
recommend the video that I did on Marvel’s vampires.
I think they’re incredibly underrated and are this amazing facet of Marvel Comics that
generally isn’t discussed.
Anyway, I hope you learned at least a little something new and maybe I’ll see you next
time!