Nightmare on Bald Mountain!
In Rutland, Vermont, the site of an unusual number of strange activities in both the Marvel and DC universes for such a small town, dark cultists perform a ceremony intended to summon Dormammu. Dormammu appears and promises to come the following day, Halloween, if they provide the chosen sacrificial victim.
The priests are working on that at that very moment. The Ancient One appears to Dr. Strange, saying he will tell him of the dangers of Dormammu if he will follow him to the sky. Strange does so in his astral form, and realizes it was an illusion. The cultists break into the Sanctum Sanctorum and seal his body so his astral form can't return to it. They bring the body to Rutland.
Wong, who was knocked out by the cultists on their way out, tells Clea what happened. She summons Hulk and Namor, who helped Strange in the last issue as the new Defenders. They mystically track Strange's body to Rutland, where the locals are putting on the annual Halloween parade (which involves early representations of cosplay in comics, and which again is often featured in comics by multiple publishers).
The heroes confront the priests as Dormammu beings to appear. Strange's astral form, which was piggybacking in Wong's body, leaves and rejoins his own body, which the priests had meant to offer as a husk for Dormammu to possess. Strange defeats Dormammu (because the nearness of the Earthly plane weakens the Lord of the Dark Dimension) and the cultists are crushed in a rock slide. The Defenders successfully conclude their second outing.
The Hidden World
Reprinted from SUB-MARINER #36
A story that wonderously breaks all forms of physics in the way that only 1950s stories could. A "second moon" has been hidden in the solar system and when it comes near Earth, it sucks all the water up from the planet, presumably because of its gravity, even though nothing else is affected. Humanity seems doomed and blames Namor, since he is known for his water theme and hatred of humans. Namor however is persuaded by his girlfriend Betty Dean to try to help. He opens an underground spring and leaps on top of the water, which then carries him to the new moon "at supersonic speed" across space. When he arrives, the aliens who live there explain that their moon takes all the water from Earth whenever it crosses its path, but they only take enough to survive and then the water eventually flows back to Earth. Namor, completely changing his motive for coming to the moon, tells them to keep all the water as revenge against humanity. However, he later realizes that this will kill his own Atlantean kingdom as well, and changes his mind once again. He releases the entirety of the Earth's water from the moon, which luckily is all kept in one tank, and flies back on it "faster than the speed of light." His fellow Atlanteans congratulate him for saving them, and he grumpily complains that the humans will probably blame him for it (as they should, at least for the plan to keep the water on the moon).
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