Bruce Banner walks through a remote area of New Mexico, drawn
by the Hulk's voice in his head. He enters a dilapidated barn to find a
skeleton lying on the floor—one that he recognizes as Doctor Strange. The body
has been burned and his talisman, the Eye of Agamotto, is missing. Bruce is
angry but the night is the Hulk's time and so Bruce is able to keep him inside.
Bruce goes to the nearest town to report Strange's murder and finds the place
deserted. He spies someone peeking at him from behind a curtain and heads to
that house to demand answers. Bruce walks in and finds himself facing a
handgun....
Interlude: An alien scientist working on some high tech
machinery is stabbed to death by a killer wearing a ghost costume made from a sheet....
Emulating the Hulk, the angry Bruce Banner fights the man and
takes a brutal beating before he rallies, beats the other man and, picking up
the revolver demands the old lady in the room explain why the town seems
deserted. He is directed to the local saloon; breaking in, he finds the town's
three marshals standing still at the behest of a white-bearded old man bearing
the Eye of Agamotto. The old man explains that he was a vagrant who was beaten
by the marshals and dumped at the edge of town. Badly injured, he made his way
to the barn and found Strange's body burning; he took the Eye and intuited how
to use it. Returning to the town he used the Eye to terrorize the marshals by
showing them their inner selves. Bruce demands the Eye; the vagrant threatens
to show him his inner truth. With a wicked smile, Bruce tells him to go ahead,
scaring the old man so that Bruce has to fight for the Eye. The old man orders
a marshal to save him; the man knocks Bruce down but he rises, clouts the cop
over the head with a bottle and slashes the old man's hand with the broken
glass to take the Eye. And the Eye transforms him into the Immortal Hulk. The
marshals flee in terror and Hulk confronts the old man, threatening to punish
him for hurting Banner, terrifying him by his mere presence. The old man curls
up within himself and Hulk confronts the true killer of Stephen Strange: the
elderly Doctor Strange's astral form....
Story continued in NAMOR: THE BEST DEFENSE.