Lilith (Marvel Comics)

Lilith is the name of two fictional characters appearing in American comic books published by Marvel Comics. The first version is the daughter of Dracula. The second version is a demon.

The first character named Lilith was the daughter of Dracula. Like her father, she is also a vampire, although her powers and weaknesses differ from most other vampires. She first appeared in Giant-Size Chillers Featuring The Curse of Dracula #1 (June 1974), and was created by Marv Wolfman and Gene Colan. Most of her solo appearances were written by Steve Gerber, who would later use a supporting character he created for these stories, Martin Gold, in the two-issue miniseries The Legion of Night. The character subsequently appeared in Vampire Tales #6 (August 1974), The Tomb of Dracula #23 (August 1974), 25 (October 1974) and 28 (January 1975), Dracula Lives! #10-11 (January–March 1975), Marvel Preview #12 (September 1977), The Tomb of Dracula #60 (September 1977), Marvel Preview #16 (June 1978), The Tomb of Dracula #66-67 (September–November 1978), The Tomb of Dracula (vol. 2) #5-6 (June–August 1980) and The Uncanny X-Men Annual #6 (1982). Her apparent "death" occurred in Doctor Strange (vol. 2) #62 (December 1983). She made a posthumous appearance in Doctor Strange, Sorcerer Supreme #9 (November 1989). Lilith returned years later in Ghost Rider (vol. 3) #82-85 (February–May 1997), Spider-Man Unlimited (vol. 2) #20 (May 1998), Dracula: Lord of the Undead #1-3 (December 1998), Witches #2 (August 2004), Nick Fury's Howling Commandos #2-6 (January–May 2006), and Legion of Monsters: Morbius #1 (September 2007). Lilith received an entry in The Official Handbook of the Marvel Universe Deluxe Edition #18 and in The Official Handbook of the Marvel Universe: Horror 2005.

The second character named Lilith is a demon sorceress who is known as the "Mother of All Demons". She first appeared in Ghost Rider (vol. 3) #28 (August 1992).

Lilith is Dracula's oldest child and is his only child by his first wife, Zofia, who was forced on Dracula by his father through an arranged marriage. After Dracula's father died, he renounced Zofia and forced her and their infant daughter to leave Castle Dracula so that he could marry his second wife, Maria, the woman he truly loved. Lilith was raised by Gypsies to whom she had been entrusted after her mother's suicide. Lilith's foster-mother was the Gypsy elder Gretchin. When Lilith was a young girl, Dracula, now a vampire thanks to the Gypsy woman Leandra, attacked and murdered many Gypsies, including Gretchin's son Arni, enraging her into seeking revenge. She cast a spell upon Lilith to make her into a vampire, but one with rather different powers: unlike conventional Marvel Comics vampires, she did not fear holy symbols, was not able to be killed by being out in the daylight and did not need to sleep in a coffin lined with her native soil. As part of the curse, she would haunt Dracula, ever opposing him, until Dracula was finally, irrevocably destroyed. Whenever she was "killed", she would be reborn by her spirit taking over the body of an innocent woman who wanted her father dead; this included the ability to shift forms and clothing between Lilith's own form and that of her "hostess".

Lilith normally appeared, when in her own form, as a tall, beautiful woman with long black hair and a family resemblance to Dracula, dressed in a red and black skin-tight costume and cape with a bat-like ornament in her hair. As a vampire, she could change into a wolf, a bat, or mist (the latter either wholly or partially), and had limited control over weather, as well as the ability to command bats, wolves, dogs, rats and mice. Although she could drink blood, she was not dependent upon it for sustenance.^{[volume & issue needed]}

In the modern era, Lilith's spirit possessed a woman named Angel O'Hara, who had come to hate her father and want him dead when he accidentally killed her husband, Ted Hannigan, after finding out that she had married him secretly and was carrying his child. Lilith killed Angel's father, but allowed her to live her life when Lilith was not using their shared body. Angel was eventually physically separated from Lilith by Viktor Benzel, a distant descendant of Gretchin and the heir, along with his brother Karl, to much of her occult knowledge; Viktor used this knowledge to create separate bodies for Angel and Lilith.

At one point, Lilith and Dracula agreed to avoid each other, but the agreement broke down. When Dracula was stripped of his vampiric powers toward the end of the 70-issue series The Tomb of Dracula, he asked Lilith to bite him and restore his powers, only to be refused. In issue #5 of The Tomb of Dracula magazine that soon followed, Lilith and Dracula fought once more and Dracula revealed to Lilith that the curse that made her his eternal nemesis also prevented her from being able to actually kill him. Lilith was destroyed, along with her father and the rest of Earth's vampires, when Doctor Strange used the Darkhold's Montesi Formula to eliminate vampirism and all vampires from the world. The Montesi Formula eventually weakened and both Lilith and her father returned to life.^{[volume & issue needed]} Lilith subsequently appeared as Dracula's antagonist in the three-issue Dracula: Lord of the Undead limited series in 1998, and as an agent of Nick Fury's Howling Commandos in 2006.

Lilith, the daughter of Dracula, was ranked #24 on a listing of Marvel Comics' monster characters in 2015.