Dorian Gray

Dorian Gray is a man who became immortal via an enchanted portrait of himself by Basil Hallward. His image in the portrait ages while Dorian himself remains young, and whenever he is injured the painting takes the damage while Dorian instantly regenerates. However, if his portrait is ever destroyed, or if he looks at it directly, all of the wounds the image displays will be visited upon Gray in full, effectively killing him in a very gruesome manner.

Dorian does not have a significant role in any of the League of Extraordinary Gentlemen comics. His portrait hangs in the Secret Annex, suggesting he was a member of a mid-19th century League.

Other Media

Dorian Gray has a large role in the film adaptation, added as an editorial mandate alongside Tom Sawyer, in which he is played by Stuart Townsend. A narcissistic, immortal man of wealth, Gray is said to be old enough to have met a much younger Allan Quatermain at a university, and also has an ambiguous past relationship with Mina Harker. He is recruited into the League of Extraordinary Gentlemen for his immortal abilities, as all of his injuries and aging appear upon his magical portrait instead of himself. He and Mina have a brief sexual encounter while travelling with the League. While the team accuses Rodney Skinner of treachery, it is actually Gray himself who has compromised the League and stolen fundamental parts of their powers: Jekyll's potion, the designs of the Nautilus, a sample of Mina's vampiric blood and a sample of Skinner's invisible skin. Gray was blackmailed into working for Professor Moriarty, as his portrait was held hostage. In Moriarty's Mongolian fortress, Gray and Mina fight an unwinnable battle due to their mutual invulnerability, until Harker shows Gray his portrait. Gray rapidly ages until he becomes a rotten corpse while the disfigured face in his portrait becomes a young man once again.

In the novelisation, Dorian Gray states that he is no longer on speaking terms with Oscar Wilde due to a fallout, alluding to the real-life controversy surrounding Wilde's homosexual activities. While it is implied that Gray and Wilde were lovers, Gray insists that he ended their friendship because he could no longer tolerate Wilde's egotism.

Source material

Dorian Gray is the antihero of the novel The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde.

Alan Moore featured Dorian Gray in a faux-Wilde short story in his erotic graphic novel Lost Girls. The story features Gray engaging in homosexual activities with Basil Hallward, which is analoguous a brief sexual encounter between the character Harold Potter, husband of Wendy Darling from Peter Pan, and a young soldier at the hotel at which the graphic novel is set.