Marvel Premiere 3-A

"While the World Spins Mad!"

Lost in thought on Bleecker Street, Greenwich Village, Master of the Mystic Arts, Doctor Strange wanders into the path of an oncoming truck. With an ostentatious display of sorcery, Strange halts the vehicle with but a gesture.

The Mage enters his Sanctum and magically seals the doors shut. Strange is disturbed by an uneasy feeling that some presence is closing in on him in the comfort of his own home.

The Doctor looses his astral self to further investigate, requiring a consultation with his mentor, the Ancient One. The wizened mystic delivers a cryptic warning to his former pupil.

As soon as the confabulation is ended, Strange realizes something is greatly amiss. Even in his astral form, he cannot leave the room. Sensing that his spirit form is being detained deliberately, so that the corporeal body is unguarded and vulnerable elsewhere in the Sanctum.

Stephen Strange hardly notices the growing surrealism of the scenario unfolding, as he flies towards his physical body. But hold, an eldritch beam of energy appears to be arrowing towards the immobile figure. The astral form is unable to prevent the bolt usurping Strange's body and then addressing him with a tone of contemptuous familiarity.

Astral form fights physical form, until the invader abandons its hi-jacked host body. Reunited once more with his mortal shell, Doctor Strange discovers the outside world has gone completely insane. Nature now operates under new, bizarre rules.

Trees parody his likeness to convince the good Doctor that he's lost his sanity - and like a good boy, should just give up fighting against it. Submit, and be at peace.

With no other recourse left, the mystic uses the all-seeing Eye of Agamotto to pierce through the illusion obscuring his vision. The orb relays the earlier evening's events. Fancy-Pants Magician walking home, not concentrating, truck approaching, truck colliding with foolhardy magician. Did that really happen?

Indeed it did. The Doctor is in a city hospital, deep in the throes of a... Nightmare. The covert assailant is finally revealed. Old foes come back to haunt, but with prophetic mumblings of a greater, deadlier power still to manifest.