Synopsis / Summary / Plot
We start with a flashback to a meeting of the Cabal in Dark Reign. The 5 members (Dr Doom, Emma Frost, Hood, Loki and Namor) are impatiently waiting for Norman Osborn to join them.
Hood impertinently asks Doom about his mother. He has learned that Cynthia was taken by a minor demon and after many attempts Doom freed her. Parker Robbins wonders what now drives Doom. He has enough power to have been able to do that. He has his own country, Latveria, and loads of money. What more does he need?
Victor von Doom is annoyed by the prattle and blasts Hood, but then explains that he's only teleported him to India. The female Loki is disappointed that he didn't kill him.
In the present we see villainous alchemist Diablo who is also annoyed with his low threat ranking in an online report. To increase his cred he's kidnapped Maria Hill, Director of SHIELD. He's going to give her a truth serum of his own concoction and get her to give him all SHIELD's security codes.
Esteban de Ablo claims that he should be feared because the only person who has ever defeated him is Mr Fantastic, and he's not around anymore. But Victor von Doom materialises in the room to dispute part of that. He himself has beaten Diablo before, and the reason Esteban isn't respected is that he's strictly 2nd-rate.
Doom now throws a device which expands to engulf Diablo's left arm. The alchemist responds with balls of light which release small imps. While Victor is dealing with those Esteban attacks the thing on his arm with a chemical which at least seems to stop the tech working. But Doom appears to disintegrate him (but maybe only ports him to India).
Doom assures Hill that he won't tell anyone about this, and she should keep quiet for the sake of her reputation which wouldn't be enhanced by any of it. He leaves and Maria finds herself free.
Next Victor visits Amara Perera in the lab he arranged for her in Cambridge University, England. They discuss what's happened to her ex-lover Tony Stark (in part of Civil War II that hasn't come out yet). It seems that he's dead. Doom assures her it wasn't faked (like the 'death' in Japan in the recent Iron Man #9-11), but Amara also knows that super-characters have a habit of coming back from the dead.
Under questioning Victor admits that he's here because of their last conversation in #9. He'd claimed he was trying to make up for the bad things he'd done (before Secret Wars III turned him good). She'd said he must take as bold a stand for good as he'd done for evil. He now tells Amara she was right. And also that she reminds him of someone.
After Doom has gone Amara gets a visit from Thing, who claims to be an Agent of SHIELD (presumably another effect of CWII we don't know about yet). He understands she knows von Doom, and he'd really like to see him.
Meanwhile Victor has gone to Tony Stark's lab where the Iron Man armours are kept. He's confronted by a hologram of Tony who says he's sent for the Avengers. It appears that Stark has uploaded himself into an AI now that he's dead.
Doom says that he's going to continue Stark's role as Iron Man. Over the hologram's protest he decks himself out in a grey version(-ish) of the current armour and flies off.
But he's being magically watched by his mother and someone else.