Using the present-day Dr. Doom as narrator, this issue begins the tale of Victor von Doom's destined descent. Here, we discover the adolescent von Doom, a gypsy child on the move in Latveria. In the waning pages of the book, his father dies of hypothermia, and he is left an orphan. Among his dead mother's effects, he finds why others labelled her a witch, and goes from being a troubled youth, to a magic-obsessed loner. The episode ends with a stranger offering him a way out of the social grave he's dug for himself. For reasons as yet unclear, someone in America is looking for Victor von Doom...