Marvel just revealed the origin of its ultimate villain, the monstrous One Below All, and its true connection to the all-powerful One Above All - Marvel's supreme being and most powerful character. The One Below All is a Cthulhu-like source of evil who secretly works behind the scenes of Marvel's multiverse to permanently stop the cycle of creation. In the epic Immortal Hulk from Al Ewing and Joe Bennett, fans learned that the One Above All and the One Below All are essentially the same being - like Bruce Banner and the Hulk, they're inextricably linked, even though they have very different purposes in the cosmos.
Now, fans have learned where the One Below All actually came from. In Phillip Kennedy Johnson, Nic Klein, and Matthew Wilson's The Incredible Hulk #3, fans learn the story of Udru, aka Brother Deep, an eldritch monstrosity who the Hulk slays in the issue. In a text-page detailing the monster's history, fans learn that when the One Above All created the Marvel universe, there was one being that "sprang from no creator, only from itself" - the Mother of Horrors. The Mother of Horrors is the sole being who didn't emerge from the One Above All's will, and she created a godlike son named Udru, who was intended to challenge the One Above All's power and supremacy. When the One Above All witnessed Udru, he transformed into the One Below All for the first time:
Though the One Above All's only weapon was love, now His heart burned with the green flame of RAGE. He broke Udru's many hands, struck the light from his many eyes, burned away his golden scales, ripped the wings from his back and cast him down to Earth, blind, burning and screaming.
The One Below All Was Born to Destroy Udru
Those who read Immortal Hulk knew that the One Below All hates everything else in existence, and seeks to bring the cycle of galactic death and rebirth to an end, so nothing new can be created. To this end, it uses all those infused with gamma energy - like the Hulk and his nemesis the Leader - as pawns, playing an incredibly long game to destroy everything that is. However, while fans knew the One Below All was part of the One Above All, they didn't know why he existed. The main theory was a type of cosmic balance - creation and destruction chained together - but now it turns out that the One Below All is the result of an apparent flaw in creation which allowed the Mother of Horrors to be born without the One Above All's permission or knowledge. This vastly deepens Marvel's primordial lore, and makes the One Below All even more of a mirror to the Hulk, who was also a product of Bruce Banner's rage and trauma, rather than something which was with him from the start.
Marvel's Entire Cosmos Has a Fatal Flaw
Al Ewing has been quietly redefining Marvel's cosmos for years now, from The Ultimates to the recent Defenders Beyond, and Incredible Hulk is perfectly building on this foundation. Marvel's multiverse is currently on its eighth iteration, with Galactus acting as a being who feeds on the energy of one version of reality, then eventually births the next. This is the process the One Below All wishes to stop, and almost did using the Hulk. However, it's now clear there are more players at work than anyone knew. The Mother of Horrors is an enemy to both the godlike One Above All and the terrifying One Below All, and the mystery of her existence implies there are elements of the cosmos outside either of their control - something that did not seem to be the case in prior stories.
The Mother of Horrors Is Marvel's Best New Mystery
Interestingly, the One Above All has often been used as a metaphor for Marvel's writers and artists, representing their combined creative input into the Marvel Universe. The idea of the Mother of Horrors existing outside the One Above All's control is therefore fascinating, as is knowing that the One Below All was essentially the result of the supreme being's moral failings - his unwillingness to accept anything that was not of his creation. What do Udru and the Mother of Horrors mean both literally and metaphorically for the Marvel universe, and how did anything that defies the One Above All come to exist in the first place? Fans may now know the One Below All's origin, but there are clearly many, many more secrets still to uncover.
The Incredible Hulk #3 is available now from Marvel Comics.
