After a brief encounter with the Thor Corps, when pulled from the time stream by Zarrko, the Tomorrow Man, Demonstaff embarked on his own mad quest. Once a brilliant scientist, Hallan Gorko had an interest in exploring the fabric of reality, and he was convinced he could create a device to enable him to explore alternate worlds and parallel timelines. His first attempt to open a portal resulted in an accident that left him critically injured and changed forever. His employer, Mr. Dunbar, wanted to shut down the experiment, but Gorko's wife, Ellene, convinced Dunbar the project was too vital to discard. Ellene expanded on the work of her husband, developing a device called the Dimensionizer, which Gorko would eventually steal for his own evil purposes. With this device, Dunbar thought they were now able to pierce dimensional barriers, but the initial test with it produced a second tragedy when Ellene was accidentally sucked into the rift she had opened. When Gorko found out, he went mad over losing his wife and blamed Dunbar for all of his misfortunes. Dunbar had Gorko placed in a clinic, but Gorko eventually escaped.
Gorko adopted the identity of Demonstaff and was hell-bent on finding his wife. However, he believed his initial mishap that left him hospitalized was not an accident. He believed Dunbar sabotaged his experiment in order to get him out of the picture so he could steal Ellene away, and Demonstaff wanted revenge on both of them. He scanned the myriad dimensions in search of his wife, and when he finally found her in Elsewhen, the realm of Warlord Kargul, he forced Dargo Ktor, by kidnapping his wife Salla, to reunite with Beta Ray Bill and Thunderstrike to go there and bring Ellene back to him. Kargul was not about to let Demonstaff get his hands on his wife without a fight, so he banished the Thor Corps to another reality. Kargul feared that Demonstaff could not control the powers at his disposal, but Gorko never had any intention of controlling it. He merely wanted to unleash it. Dunbar had a group of assassins known as the Sanitation Squad hunt down Demonstaff with orders to kill on sight, but Demonstaff was not through with Dunbar just yet. Gorko visited Dunbar again, rendered him unconscious, dressed him in the costume he wears as Demonstaff, and left him out in the open for the Sanitation Squad to find. Dunbar came to just as Kargul's army and his hired assassins spotted him, and he was gunned down leaving Demonstaff ecstatic now that one half of his revenge was complete. Gorko felt his world was destroyed when his wife betrayed him with Dunbar, so the other half of his revenge would be to destroy all reality with the reasoning that if he couldn't be happy, then why should anyone else.
Demonstaff was becoming more powerful and was soon manipulating reality at will. At the challenge of Dargo's wife, Gorko was determined to prove how powerful he was by traveling back through time and correct the events of the past. Demonstaff arrived at the precise moment he was going to initially test his equipment, and attempted to eliminate Dunbar. Firing an energy blast from his staff, Gorko missed Dunbar and hit the control panel in front his younger self and caused the disaster he sought to prevent. It was then he realized Dunbar was not the one responsible for his failure. It was Gorko, himself, that caused the accident which turned him into a being made of pure energy and took away his humanity. Filled with confusion and grief, Demonstaff was through trying to correct the past, and began collapsing the countless dimensions on top of one another in order to hasten their inevitable demise. Demonstaff journeyed to Elsewhen and convinced Dargo to go with him to be by his wife's side, but Thor and the others tracked them to a void that exists between alternate timelines in order to renew their battle. Demonstaff summoned creatures from another world to do his fighting for him, but Beta Ray Bill destroyed his staff and sent the beasts back to where they came. Kargul observed these events in his Imaging Pool, and Ellene couldn't stand by and merely watch any longer. She jumped in the pool and confronted her husband accepting whatever fate he had in store for her. Demonstaff felt beaten now that he no longer had his weapon to alter reality, but Ellene confessed that the Dimensionizer never worked. The power was in him the whole time. Gorko realized he still loved his wife and wanted to atone for his mistakes. He reversed all the damage he caused - including returning the members of the Thor Corps back to their respective realities.
As punishment, Warlord Kargul banished Demonstaff to a void where he will stay for all eternity. Ellene, despite the protests of Kargul, wanted to join her husband for she realized she still loved him. The final discharge of Demonstaff's powers restored his humanity, and try as he might, he could not convince Ellene to leave him to his fate. It can be assumed the two of them are still together in the void where Warlord Kargul left them.
