Appearing in "...Where Bound'ries... Decay"
Featured Characters:
- ⏴ Doctor Strange (Stephen Strange) ⏵ (Main story and recap) (Death)
Supporting Characters:
Antagonists:
Other Characters:
- Aragorn (Illusion or holographic simulation) (Death)
- Clea (Only in recap or as a vision in main story)
- Silver Dagger (Only in recap)
- Wong (Only in recap)
- Soul Eater (Only in recap)
- Eternal Vishanti (Mentioned)
- Spider-Man (Illusion or holographic simulation) (Only in recap)
- Silver Surfer (Norrin Radd) (Illusion or holographic simulation) (Only in recap)
- Valkyrie (Illusion or holographic simulation) (Only in recap) (as the White Queen)
- Sub-Mariner (Illusion or holographic simulation) (Only in recap)
- Hulk (Illusion or holographic simulation) (Only in recap)
- Famine
- Shades of the Shadowy Demons (Mentioned)
- Eternity (Mentioned)
Races and Species:
- Humans (Main story and recap)
- Zenn-Lavians (Illusion or holographic simulation) (Only in recap)
- Abstract Entities
Locations:
- Agamotto's Dimension (as a world of unreality inside the Orb of Agamotto)
- The Domain of the Dying
- Real Universe
- the plane of existence where the Ancient One now exists
- Twelve Moons of Munnopor (Invoked)
Items:
- Orb of Agamotto (Main story and recap)
- Cloak of Levitation (Only in recap)
- Eye of Agamotto (Only in recap)
- Silver Dagger (Only in recap)
- Spells
- Hosts of Hoggoth (Invoked)
- Shades of the Shadowy Demons (Invoked)
Synopsis for "...Where Bound'ries... Decay"
While riding the unreal Aragorn through the Orb of Agamotto to the exit at its center, Dr. Strange recalls how he ended up in this world of unreality, what he has experienced here and that he must soon once again confront Death. His journey nears its end as Aragorn descends to an ominous land full of trudging processions of dark-robed men. Strange is greeted by three old men, one of whom claims to be Famine who, with his two brothers, once rode with Death. Famine reveals that Strange has entered the Domain of the Dying and Strange soon encounters people who are suffering and wish to die but cannot. As Strange approaches a shimmering haze, he begins to experience the pain from his injury that had vanished once he entered the Orb. Surrounding the haze is a crowd of people who have been gathering there in the hope that, when Strange passes beyond and dies, they will also be able to slip through. Strange and Aragorn leap into the mist which parts before them and enter a cave behind the mist, unaware of the fact that the mist has solidified after their passage, keeping the others from Death.
Strange and Aragorn travel through the cave which ends in a cliff. When the cliff edge crumbles beneath them, Strange and Aragorn fall until they find themselves in the void of space where Aragorn soon becomes a skeleton after his hoof is struck by a meteorite. Death then appears and reveals that Strange has reached the outside and is now within the depths of Death at last. Strange futilely tries to fight until Death states that he has returned to the real universe where everything dies. Strange then tries to escape Death but his attempt is doomed until he spots a hole in space whose shape is that of Eternity. Death admits that the whole of Creation is the sum of Death and Eternity, and fails to prevent Strange from reaching safety within Eternity's void. As Death distorts the space around the Eternity-shaped void in an attempt to force him out of it, Strange comes to the realization that, since he cannot fight, escape or avoid Death, his only option is to surrender to it. With his situation forcing him to believe that his time to die has come, Strange accepts that death is a part of life, just as life is a part of death, and that death, although remorseless, is not evil but just an experience for the soul. With this new understanding, Strange stops fighting Death, gives up his fear of death and opens himself, growing to fill the huge form of Eternity that he is currently inhabiting so that he will feel Death's touch on all of him at once. Once that happens, Dr. Strange dies.
However, at the moment of Strange's death, the universe around him begins to shudder and fall away from him. Strange then finds himself in a white void where he is greeted by the Ancient One, manifesting as a disembodied head, who congratulates him for winning the first of a series of trials that he must undergo, all unknowingly, as a Sorcerer Supreme, by expunging even the most deeply-held fear of death within him. The Ancient One confirms that Strange is dead on his plane of existence, something that doesn't matter on the Ancient One's plane where they currently are, then reveals that his pupil will live again, reborn into his realm with no physical fears to arrest his development and that, since he will never fear Death again, his life will be touched by Eternity. From that moment forward, he will not age and death will only come from without, in battle, and not from within. The Ancient One then states that Strange may live for 600 years, as the Ancient One did once he won that trial, or he may live even longer, perhaps forever. When Strange admits that he does feel different, the Ancient One points out that the Ankh, the symbol of Enduring Life, is now on his forehead.
Before fading away, the Ancient One tells Strange that there are many other unexpected trials before him of which the Ancient One may say no more, but that if Strange lives his new life well, then he will meet them well, and in the end he, too, will become one with all.
Notes
- Cover art: pencils and inks by Brunner, colours by Wein.[1]
- Plot by Englehart and Brunner, script by Englehart.[2]
- Throughout this issue, Dr. Strange remains unaware of the fact that only his soul was pulled within the Orb of Agamotto and was somehow existing as a solid form within that world of unreality. It won't be until next issue that it is revealed that his real physical body has remained in the Sanctum Sanctorum, in a death-like state, since his use of the Orb. The Cloak of Levitation that he wears while within the Orb is just as unreal as his body.
- Similarly, Strange will not learn that this shadowy realm of unreality is known as Agamotto's Dimension and that it does not actually exist within the Orb of Agamotto until sometime between the second and third times he enters it (in Marvel Team-Up #77 and Doctor Strange, Sorcerer Supreme #6, respectively).
- The fact that Death repeatedly addresses Doctor Strange as "spirit" foreshadows the revelation that it is only Strange's soul that is confronting Death. However, Death also refers to Aragorn as "the other spirit" which is puzzling since that Aragorn is supposedly a creation of the interaction of Strange's mind with the realm of unreality and thus should be soulless.
- The true nature of the denizens of the Domain of the Dying who are doomed to suffer their death throes forever without being able to pass on to death is unclear. If they were like the inhabitants who Strange met in Doctor Strange (Vol. 2) #2, creatures of unreality who had the forms of people he knew from Earth, then the denizens should have been just as soulless as them. However, this story implies that they are actual beings who were somehow trapped within the Orb and are unable to die.
- The old man who called himself Famine implied that he was one of the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse from Christian mythology. While it's possible that he was that supernatural Horseman, assuming that such a being exists within Earth-616, he was definitely not the Axi-Tun warrior known as Famine who won't make his first appearance until next month's Giant-Size Fantastic Four #3.