The Fear Lord known as D’Spayre is a powerful being that instills fear and feeds off of negative emotions. He repeatedly attempts to plunge Earth’s citizens into despair to gain power.
Demonic Fear Lord
D’Spayre is a creation of the Dweller-in-Darkness via the fear caused by the sinking of both Atlantis and Lemuria. Created 20,000 years ago, D’Spayre is imbued with some of the Dweller’s consciousness and given independence. D’Spayre directs the murder of the Dweller’s enemy Zhered-Na, and battles her apprentice, Dakimh, many times over the ensuing millennia.
In modern times, D’Spayre captures Dakimh and his disciple, Jennifer Kale, in the Florida Everglades by the Nexus of All Realities. D’Spayre intends to enslave his captives, but suffers defeat by Peter Parker, AKA Spider-Man, and the Nexus’ guardian, Ted Sallis, AKA Man-Thing.
Psychic Fear Projection
D’Spayre draws psychic sustenance from the despair suffered by other beings. He can instill great fear by touch, though he prefers to act indirectly and cause his victims to generate their own fear by filling their mind with illusions of terror and despondency. Virtually immortal, D’Spayre is normally invulnerable to physical injury; however, he can be physically harmed if sufficiently weakened by a lack of psychic sustenance.
D’Spayre can also levitate himself, fire concussive blasts of energy, vary his form (his true form is unknown), and travel between dimensions. D’Spayre also created the D’Sprytes, small imp-like versions of himself with similar but lesser abilities. D’Spayre created D-Lite, an addictive drug that induced agony in its victims before killing them.
Opposing Forces
D’Spayre goes up against Spider-Man, Man-Thing, Brunnhilde, AKA Valkyrie, Ben Reilly, AKA Scarlet Spider, and Scott Summers, AKA Cyclops; as well as Dr. Stephen Strange, AKA Doctor Strange, the Straw Man, and Matt Murdock, AKA Daredevil. In his battles with these heroes, he often experiences defeat.
Spite, D’Spayre’s sister, seeks to depose him and uses the mutant Cain Marko, AKA Juggernaut. D’Spayre nearly destroys the Juggernaut but it does not stop Spite from sending her brother to Hell.
Tenuous Alliances
While D’Spayre joins the Fear Lords in their diabolical plan to cause Great Fear on Earth, being a Fear Lord himself, he betrays them through manipulative means and gains more power in the process.
D’Spayre joins the other Lords of the Splinter Realms including but not limited to Mephisto, Dormammu, Umar, Thog and Pluto, against Archenemy. Despite the fact that these leaders are typically opposed to one another, they join forces to save all of creation.
A Record of Despair
Later, drawn by the suicide of terminally ill Jock Forrester, D’Spayre menaced Jock’s daughter Lee Forrester and the X-Man Cyclops, but endured another defeat with the Man-Thing’s aid.
Soon after this he allegedly interfered with the empowering of Tyrone Johnson, AKA Cloak, and Tandy Bowen, AKA Dagger, placing Light and Darkforms within them, ensuring their destined powers were swapped, and perverting those powers to spread despair for him. He subsequently lured Rachel Summers, AKA Marvel Girl, then called Phoenix, to the aid of a lost young girl, hoping to feed on Rachel’s cosmic level of despair, but the girl’s rescue foiled him. Needing to replenish his power levels, D’Spayre joined with the enigmatic Avandalia and sought out Cloak and Dagger; absorbing Dagger’s Lightform, he then attempted to digest Cloak’s Darkform, but it overpowered D’Spayre and seemingly consumed him.
Participating in the Fear Lords’ plan to cause a Great Fear on Earth that would reduce humanity to a state of unreasoning and unceasing terror, D’Spayre manipulated Nightmare and the Dweller into a contest of their powers, and humanity was driven too far into fear, giving in to despair. The senior demons realized their error too late and both fled from the newly powerful D’Spayre, who was defeated by Doctor Strange, Straw Man, and Daredevil.
D’Spayre’s subsequent targets included the living vampire Morbius, the sorceress Margali Szardos, the Asgardian Valkyrie, and secondary attempts on Lee Forrester, Scarlet Spider, and Spider-Man. D’Spayre himself was targeted by his sister, Spite, who sought to depose him with Juggernaut’s aid, but D’Spayre drained Juggernaut’s power. Almost destroyed, the Juggernaut survived by allowing himself to be consumed by pure rage. Spite was then able to leech D’Spayre’s power and cast him into Hell.
D’Spayre later joined the other Lords of the Splinter Realms against the magical Archenemy unwittingly created by an occult-gathering program of sorceress Amanda Sefton, AKA Magik, that was threatening to destroy creation.
