Appearing in "...Perchance to Dream."
Featured Characters:
Supporting Characters:
Antagonists:
- City of Dreams (First appearance)
- Nightmare
Other Characters:
Locations:
Items:
Vehicles:
Synopsis for "...Perchance to Dream."
On a stormy night, Doctor Strange is awakened from sleep by the presence of an intruder in his home. He easily deceives the masked figure, but his magic bolt unexpectedly disintegrates the man. Strange follows the assassin's mystical trail back to his home dimension.
He finds an ancient and apparently abandoned city. Its warmth and darkness lull him, but he manages to shake off its enchantment and dispel the illusion, revealing it to be colder, crumbling, and filled with sinister magic. Now on his guard, he finds himself under attack by one of his most dangerous enemies: Nightmare!
Strange can barely maintain a shield as Nightmare brings the city down on top of him, but then he remembers that Nightmare can only rule the dream world, and he was awake when he left his home. Gambling that the Nightmare he faces is also an illusion, Strange rends him apart with a magical blast. Nightmare vanishes, to be replaced with the colossal figure of Eternity.
Eternity tells Strange he is too powerful for the world, and that it is time he become one with the universe, but the mystic master is too wise for this game. Knowing Eternity to be yet another illusion, he banishes it too and finds himself alone.
He walks the silent city, listening to a very faint hum which in time also ceases. A mental voice congratulates him on his quick thinking and reveals that the assassin he pursued was merely a scrap of the being's dream, sent to lure him to this place. Now Strange has roused him, and he will wake soon. Doctor Strange still cannot see his enemy -- until he realizes that the other being is huge, large enough to bear the entire city on his back, and that Strange is standing on top of him.
His most powerful blasts have no effect on the being. Calling on every ounce of his wit and skill, Strange casts one last spell; the enormous being, now fully awake, turns his eyes on him, effortlessly reducing him to dust and then to nothingness.
The creature, puzzled at his disappearance, begins to laugh -- it was just a dream! He settles back down to sleep. Elsewhere the real Doctor Strange, who had teleported away and replaced himself with a doppelganger at the last second, silently escapes the creature's dream world, sealing the portal behind him.
Back in his Sanctum Sanctorum, a weary Strange goes back to bed, leaving a note on his door to tell Wong he's decided to sleep in.
Notes
- Also contains two sets of pin-up art, one done by Mike Machlan and Joe Sinnott, the other by Bill Reinhold and Linda Lessmann (including Black Panther, Hulk, Iron Man, and the Punisher).