The Hood was a character that was brought into the Marvel Universe in the year 2002. Since then The Hood, aka Parker Robbins has also appeared in several other comic series and has been a force to be reckoned with. Today we delve into this character and try to fathom just how strong this particular character is.

Parker Robbins was a kid who was brought up in the underworld and has had a great view of all the criminal enterprises that surrounded his city. His dad, Arthur Robbins died when Parker was young, leaving him nothing but a mother suffering from Alzheimer’s. To make ends meet, he turned to crime and there he comes across this ‘large shipment’ that was nothing but a demon wearing boots and a red hood.

This is what begins the tale of The Hood. He soon discovers that he has the ability to fly when he has the hood on and can turn invisible as long as he holds his breath. He tells his partner in crime, John King, that he can only do so for 60 seconds at most but despite this he is able to make use of his invisibility quite well. He gets so well acquainted with the powers of the hood that the mere thought of holding his breath can make him go invisible giving him the ability to go invisible indefinitely.

The Hood’s powers are better seen and understood in the New Avengers series. We see that when Doctor Strange is hiding the New Avengers from Tony Stark and Doctor Voodoo, Doctor Voodoo cannot break through Strange’s hexes and cant find him even though they are standing in the same room. When Tony asks Voodoo if he could say for sure of Strange is in that house, Voodoo replies, “Maybe. He might be in that house or he might not be. I have no way to say. He is the Master of the Mystic Arts after all”. When Parker sees this house he uses his own magic from the Dark Dimension to instantly see through the Sorcerer Supreme’s magic.

This just shows how strong Parker’s connection is to magic. He could do what Doctor Voodoo could not and he could see clearly through the Mystic Arts, something that not all the magic users even know about. To put things into perspective, Doctor Doom, one of the greatest threats to Earth could never use the Mystic Arts.

During the Secret Invasion arc, Doctor Strange uses the Eye of the Agamotto to scan the room for any skrulls. Despite a skrull being present in the room, Strange has no idea about it but when Robbins does the same he is instantly able to find out which of his members are actually skrulls. Just how strong is his connection to magic? We know that Doctor Strange draws upon his magic from the Dragon Lines of the Earth and the Sanctum Sanctorum is placed on the intersection of these lines meaning that the magic cast by Strange is the strongest there. Nonetheless, he could see through it and beat Strange on his own turf.

Parker Robbin’s magical strength does not come from the Dragon Lines of Earth. His strength comes from the Dark Dimension, meaning that even if put up against the entire army of the Empirikul he would have no problems against them.

In a fight against the New Avengers, Robbins starts to destroy the minds of the Avengers and to make sure that the team survives Doctor Strange uses magic from the Dark Dimension that blasts the Hood away but makes Strange lose his Master of the Mystic Arts power. Summing up this fight, in order to beat one incantation of Parker, Strange has to surrender the title of Sorcerer Supreme and lose a major part of his power.

When Doctor Strange goes on a search to find who the next Sorcerer Supreme is, he stumbles into a fight between Daimon Hellstrom and The Hood. We notice here that the Hood is stronger than ever and his bond with the Dark Dimension is quite strong. The fight goes on where the combined forces of Dosctor Strange, Daimon and the new Sorcerer Supreme and the Master of the Mystic Arts, Doctor Voodoo. When the three combine their power they are merely able to constrict his movements and not kill him. Ultimately the three performed a combined exorcism that broke the bond between Parker and Dormammu.

A little later into the New Avengers storyline we see that The Hood comes into contact with the Norn Stones of Asgard. He is guided to them by Loki and is manipulated by her (yes, her) to use the Norn Stone’s power and invade Asgard that had now fallen into Midgard. Parker uses the stone’s strength to completely boost his strength along with the power of all his allies. Together they wreck havoc onto all of Asgard. To just deal with the Hood the complete team of Avengers had to fight him and despite this they could not defeat him. The only time when they could control him was when the Norn Stones decided that Loki was to be their master again making Hood nothing more than a normal man in a red cape in the midst of battle with the Avengers. Yeah, not fun.

The New Avengers were of the belief that as long as Parker does not have the hood with him they would be able to control him as they believed that the hood acted as a temporal plane from Earth to the Dark Dimension from where Dormammu could power him. But this is later proved to be false when Satana Hellstrom states that the hood is merely a token and Parker does not need to wear it to use the powers that come along with it. He is now ‘bonded’ with Dormammu and hence is able to conjure magic from the Dark Dimension directly.

All of this proves to show just how strong Parker Robbins is. Flying, invisibility, power of the Dark Dimension and once a master of the Asgardian Norn Stones; his strength isnt something that one can dismiss at all. This is The Hood – Declassified!