Short version: Doctor Druid is tired of being a joke so he accesses true druid magic and becomes way to powerful, which leads Daimon Hellstrom to kill him.
Longer version: This is a reboot of the Doctor Druid character. It plays with his origin and emphasizes his recent feud with Doctor Strange in the pages of Secret Defenders.
It also is more of a horror comic than a superbook, and ties in with this same creative team’s work on Hellstrom.
Druid is sick of being a laughing stock–and seen as inferior (which he is) to Doctor Strange, so he calls upon ancient druid Gods and undergoes an elemental transformation.
After invoking the druidic powers, Nekra (who we as readers know is long dead) approaches him for assistance.
She’s secretly working for Hellstrom, who just took the throne as Satan. In that role, he apparently can’t tolerate Druid’s invocation of these powers. Or he’s just being a dick about it. He is Satan, after all.
Nekra kills him, and Son of Satan then throws Druid’s body in a trashcan and lights it on fire…Turning him into a literal dumpster fire.
Overall, this is more interesting as a Warren Ellis comic. He is not “the” Warren Ellis yet. But you can see his style and interests emerging here in the way he plays with expectations via his choice of character focus, and how he uses comic book tropes both satirically and in a way that makes his story less predictable. Overall, though, this book is just good not great. Wait. It’s actually great for its time. 1994 is the nadir for Marvel, and Druid shows that we as readers should (and soon will) expect much more from the art form than what this publisher is putting out.
I was in high school when this came out, remember it fondly. Ahead of its time, Ellis was a rising star but Manco does not get the props he deserves, a truly underrated artist. I dig your reviews and ambition to review every MC.