After a brief team-up with Namor, The Dweller in the Darkness returns.
He misdirects Strange into fighting Nightmare, which is cool because “real” magic is always simple misdirection, and then teams up with a whole bunch of other-dimension monsters to wreak havoc on Strange and Earth.
The monsters aren’t all that interesting, sadly.
The story also brings back Cyrus Black (above), from Defenders #6. Blast from the past.
And apparently Shakespeare was a mystic.
It ends with Dweller literally lying down and disappearing, after proclaiming himself the victor.
I really wanted to like these issues, but they’re sooooo long, drawn out, and dull. Roger Stern’s Doctor Strange work is generally good, but sadly he’s just the plotter for most of these issues. Ralph Macchio does the scripts for #33-37, and the art is uneven as well, by Alan Kupperberg (#32), Tom Sutton (#33-36), and Gene Colan (#37).