Warning: contains spoilers for Doctor Strange: Nexus of Nightmares #1!
Marvel’s Sorcerer Supreme is known for powerful magical spells that make short work of terrestrial foes, but he usually meets the more magical monstrosities of the Multiverse. In Doctor Strange: Nexus of Nightmares #1, Marvel proves that Strange’s most powerful foe is far, far stronger than fans realize.
Stephen Strange belongs to a rare category of superhero, along with Storm of the X-Men and DC’s Superman and even Green Lantern. These characters are often so powerful that they could easily beat foes that an entire roster of Avengers, X-Men or the Justice League couldn’t defeat as a team. As such, writers often find a way to write these heroes out of stories altogether, either by sending them on missions elsewhere, allowing the villain to take them out of the fight first with a specific weapon, or simply waiting until those heroes are dead (and all of the above heroes, Doctor Strange included, have died multiple times).
Thus, Doctor Strange’s enemies must be orders of magnitude more powerful than him to pose a serious threat. His strongest foe isn’t Baron Mordo or Kaecelius, but an extradimensional entity known as Nightmare. Hailing from the Dream Dimension, Nightmare is so strong that he can even defeat the Beyonders as seen in Doctor Strange: Nexus of Nightmares #1. “Within this hand, I hold several of the supposedly all-powerful Beyonders who invaded my realm years ago,” Nightmare says to Mordo. “All their vaunted energies have dissipated in this place beyond the pale. They have learned the error of their ways…too late!” Nightmare closes a fist and the Beyonders are destroyed.
The Beyonders can warp reality and kill millions (and even bring them back to life) with a single thought; their power is essentially beyond human understanding. The Secret Wars and Secret Wars II series showed the power of just one Beyonder – but Nightmare can silence multiple Beyonders easily in the Dream Dimension. Nightmare is also tied to the Dream Dimension himself, and though he can be defeated and banished occasionally, he can never truly die.
Even at his most powerful, Doctor Strange has little hope of defeating Nightmare in a fight. This is why Strange usually bests his enemies by tricking them or even negotiating with them; there is very little he can do against magical foes such as Nightmare. Doctor Strange has many foes, but Nightmare remains his most iconic – and most powerful.
