H... As in Hulk... Hell... and Holocaust!
A new Defenders story: The Hulk gets into one of his predictable fights with law enforcement in New York City. He bounds off and runs into a small girl, who says she wants to be his friend and leads him down a set of stairs into a cave. However, she turns out to be a demon and creates an illusion of several giant Bruce Banners who beat on the Hulk.
The demon shows this scene to the Defenders, saying they need to submit to his master or the Hulk will continue to be tortured. They look for the building where the Hulk is held, but can't find it.
Dr. Strange contacts Daimon Hellstrom, who he knows is an expert on hell and demons. Hellstrom agrees to help. With his magic trident, they find the building. Inside, they split up among the many paths. Each then finds him or herself tortured by personal guilts or fears in the form of illusions--Strange by the spirits of the people he didn't help medically after becoming a sorcerer, Valkyrie by the fear of not having a real identity since she believed herself to have been created by the Enchantress, Nighthawk by fears of his former criminal past, Hellstrom by fears of his mother being attacked by demons.
The demon's master is revealed to be Asmodeus, who asks Satannish to trade the Defenders' souls in exchange for his own resurrection.
The Defenders escape their individual demons and rescue the Hulk. Asmodeus confronts them and defeats most of them with the power of Satannish, but Hellstrom, being the Son of Satan, is not affected. The time runs out on Asmodeus's deal, and Satannish reclaims his soul.
The Shark People
A Namor story, reprinting Young Men #25, a classic version of Namor before his appearances in early Fantastic Four.
Namor works with the police and the press to solve the mystery of several people who have jumped into the river, only to completely disappear. Simultaneously, people on land have exhibited bite marks from sharks.
Namor discovers that they are aliens who learned to "project ourselves mentally" from their own planet into the body of sharks. They can also temporarily change from sharks to people. They wish, "like everyone else from outer space seems to," to conquer Earth. The one "space-shark" who tells Namor about their race then commits suicide by impaling itself on a very pointy rock.
Namor then gets some fishing boats to catch the rest of the space-sharks in a giant net and bring them all on the beach, where they die in the thousands.
Black Knight
A Black Knight story, reprinting Black Knight #4, the original Black Knight before Dane Whitman.
The Black Knight and King Arthur defeat the forces of Sir Guy Wanderell. He insists he was trying to conquer the neighboring lands for love, so they let him go with a promise not to do it again.
However, Wanderell realizes that because no one knows who the Black Knight is (he has a secret tunnel leading up to a trapdoor beneath a table in the castle, and has a secret identity as Sir Percy of Scadia, the winsome poet), Wanderell can also dress up like the Black Knight.
Wanderell then causes havoc all over in the Black Knight's guise. Eventually, the real Black Knight confronts him and defeats him in battle, leaving Percy's secret crush Lady Rosamund loving the Black Knight, and ignoring Percy, all the more.
Beyond The Purple Veil!
A Doctor Strange story, reprinted from Strange Tales #119.
Two thieves try to steal Dr. Strange's purple gem, which acts as a doorway into the Purple Dimension. They are sucked into the dimension.
Strange decides he has to save them, so calling on the power of "Mormammu," he also goes inside the gem.
There he battles the leader of the Purple Dimension, Aggamon. Aggamon is more powerful than Strange, but after an hours-long fight, Aggamon is less willing to put his life on the line for the sake of the battle, so Strange wins. He saves the thieves and Aggamon's other slaves.
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