Name: Dominators
Universe: Post-Crisis
First Appearance: Legion of Super-Heroes #32

History:
Many thousands of light years from Earth lies the Dominion Homeworld, a planet that houses the alien race known as the Dominators. A race of conquerors, the Dominators adhere to a rigid caste system, position in which is designated by the size of the disk each Dominator wears on his forehead. The leaders of the Dominion, those Dominators wearing the largest castedisks, comprise the most brilliant military strategists in the galaxy and have made it possible for the Dominion empire to crush many independent worlds — including their own sister planet. destroyed millennia ago in an intrastellar conflict. Its fragments, now an asteroid belt, circle the Dominion Homeworld. In addition, the Dominators level of technology and science is hundreds of times beyond that of Earth's; the Dominators have even developed a way of melding nature and technology, actually "growing" their machines and weapons rather than building them.

Having discovered the planet Earth during the course of their military probing, the Dominators surreptitiously kidnapped a number of Earthlings for genetic testing. What they discovered alarmed them greatly. It had long been their belief that each member of any given alien race was genetically identical to others of its race; but the Dominators discovered that, of all alien races, Earthlings were the only ones to possess the "metagene," a genetic oddity in many humans that, in times of great physical stress, unleashed from within them latent superhuman powers.

Afraid that Earth might become a spawning ground for an unpredictable and unbeatable super-race, the Dominators banded together representatives from the worlds of Okaara, Duna, Khundia, Daum, Psion, Gil'Dishpan, Thanagar, and the Citadel. Together, the nine races formed an alien alliance that travelled to Earth. The Alliance decimated Melbourne, Australia, established it as their military base, and issued their ultimatum to the United Nations: the Earth could either surrender its super-heroes... or be destroyed.

The citizens of Earth — to the Alliance's surprise — stood behind their heroes and refused to surrender A worldwide coalition of super-heroes began a retaliatory strike against the Alliance but, despite Earth's might, the invaders were able to fight the super-heroes to a standstill... until the Daxamites, physically the most powerful Alliance race, learned that the Dominators had used them like puppets by sending them on what the Dominators knew to be a "suicide run." The Daxamites changed allegiance and, side by side with Earth's champions, drove back the Alliance.

When retreating, the Dominators unleashed their ultimate weapon: a "gene bomb" that wreaked havoc with the meta-gene in all of Earth's super-powered beings. Almost instantaneously, the Earth became a world without heroes as every super-being fell, ill beyond the curative capabilities of known medical science. Having no other hope, the Martian Manhunter led a squadron of non-metagene heroes to secretly invade the Dominion Homeworld and steal the secret of the antidote to the gene bomb.

The Dominators' activities between the 20th and early 30th centuries are undocumented. By the mid-30th century the Dominators declared war on the intergalactic federation known as the United Planets. The war lasted two decades until the Dominators sued for peace and entered into diplomatic negotiations with the president of the United Planets, who charged the Legion of Super-Heroes with the responsibility of safety escorting the Dominion ambassadors to Earth for peace talks. Their voyage took them through another dimension, in which the Legion was nearly destroyed by a band of assassins led by the deposed Dominion dictator who had originally declared war on the U.P.

In the late 30th century, the United Planets collapsed under its own bureaucratic weight, leaving its many member worlds to their own devices. Since that time, the Dominators have quietly conquered a number of former U.P. worlds... including Earth.