Dominators

Dominators
Interior artwork from Who's Who in the DC Universe vol. 1, 1 (August 1990  DC Comics). Art by Chris Sprouse.
Publication information
Publisher	DC Comics
First appearance	Adventure Comics #361 (October 1967)
Characteristics
Place of origin	Dominion homeworld

The Dominators, collectively known as the Dominion, are a fictional alien race appearing in comics and other media by DC Comics. Coming from the outer cosmos of the DC Universe, they are highly technologically advanced, and live in a rigid hierarchical society, in which one's caste is determined by the size of a red circle on one's forehead. They are master geneticists who can manipulate the metagene to enhance members of their own caste.

Their first appearance was in 1967, in Adventure Comics #361, a story written by Jim Shooter with art by Curt Swan and Jim Mooney, in which they are presented as possibly dangerous to the Legion of Super-Heroes, but do not pose an actual threat. They appeared again in Legion of Super-Heroes #241–245 in the late 1970s, as an adversarial race in an interstellar conflict with Earth in the 30th century.

In 1988 and 1989, they were revived as the villains of the "Invasion!" crossover event involving many of DC's superhero comics set in the present, written primarily by Keith Giffen and Bill Mantlo and featuring art by Todd McFarlane. Giffen also featured the characters as major villains in the Legion series he was writing with Tom and Mary Bierbaum.

Originally depicted having light blue skin with a white circle on the forehead denoting their social rank, their later more villainous designs with yellow skin and a red circle – introduced in the 1970s and accentuated in the 1980s – has drawn comparisons to "Yellow Peril" stereotypes of east Asians, citing features such as "bald heads, slanted, narrow eyes, long, claw-like fingernails, and dressed in robes."