Recently in "DEFENDERS": Doctor Strange. Hulk. Namor...One by one, the Defenders dissapear, most of them removed by the force called Alice to live out their personal tortures. Hellcat has just returned from Hell after recieving a proposition from Hellstorm. While the Black Knight, Hellcat, Daredevil, Wong, and Regina Garney watched her son Mark break down into hysterics at the mention of "devil", they failed to realize that not all those missing were taken by the same power...

New York City. Knob Hill Aparments.

BBBBRRRRING!

.....

BBBBRRRRING!

Phone's ringing.

BBBBRRRRING!

...Tired.

BBBBRRRRING!

...Phone's ringing.....

BBBBRRRRING! BBBBRRRRING! BBBBRRRRING!

..........

BBBBRRRRING!

"Damn phone..." He fumbles carelessly with it from the bed. On his pillow, he murmurs into the reciever. "Hello?" An attractive female voice answers him.

"...Hello? Is, uh...I'm looking for Mister Richmond. Um, Kyle Richmond?"
"Speaking."
"Kyle? Is that really you?"
"Well -- Don't tell anyone, but Kyle's actually been cloned...A few times, really. Each of us is a different part of his personality. Known which one I am?"
"Oh my G-- Kyle, that's not funny! I don't have time to joke right now!"
"It's 'his sarcastic side'. Just like that movie--"

"Kyle! For God's sake, shut up and listen! This is Patsy."
"...I've known a few Patsies."
"Then this is 'Patsy' Patsy."
"....."
"Kyle, this is Hellcat."
"...Patsy? I'd heard rumors, but...Man, you never know--"
"I'm not the first to do it*."
"True. How'd you come ba--"

(*Nighthawk found his way back into the land of the living from a coma in Marvel's NIGHTHAWK mini-series. -Will)

"Kyle...We don't have time for this! It's a long story, but I'm back, the Defenders too."
"...I barely recognized your voice, it's been so long..."
"Just -- Look, please, we're in big trouble we don't understand and there's only a few left. We need your help, Kyle...Nighthawk's. Any we can get. This thing, this 'Alice' -- It's already taken Stephen and the Hulk, probably more."

Kyle Richmond lies sprawled in his bed, and as he realizes that the sun has set, the moon's light hits his face. A low grunt is made, one of resistance. Beads of sweat dot his forehead.

"....."
"Kyle?"
".........."
"Kyle? Oh God, are you there? Kyle tell me you're--"
"Yes! I'm here, damn it. I'm just.....

"Alright. Alright. Okay...I'll do it. I don't know what 'it' is, but I'll do it. But listen, I'm not exactly the, uh...Same Nighthawk I used to--"
"Kyle, we'll take you as you come. Can you can talk to anyone else?"
"Like who?"
"I tried calling Isaac but no one picked up..."
"Is-- Christians? Gargoyle?"
"Yes! Can you--?"
"Patsy, I haven't talked to Isaac in...I don't know how long. But I haven't even heard of him since...You know, the stuff. On the moon*. Really I haven't been much in the publ--"

(*Referring to Marvel's final DEFENDERS arc, culminating in #152. -Will)

"It's fine, Kyle...Forget I mentioned it. Just get here fast, please."
"At Doc's place, right?"
"Actually, no...Um...Come to the phone booth at One Hundred Eleventh and Main Street."
"...Patsy, what the Hell are you doing there? What's--"
"It's a long story. I'm here with Wong and the other ones left, and we'll keep trying for others...111th and Main...Thanks so much, Kyle. *click*"

The noise jolts his ear. He lies there, the silent phone still by his ear, staring up at the dark ceiling. For the moment, it is only a black plane. But lying there, inhaling and exhaling, gritting his teeth, a transformation begins to take place.

"Ghh...Ah-ahck.....GAAHH--"

His body squirms on top of the sheets, the sound of splitting flesh resounding. Still again, he sees the ceiling as a landscape of piercing light and crowded, seething creatures that look on him with fear.

He's achey from lack of sleep. He's tried, but for a time he's not sure of, he hasn't been able to rest -- The night brings form to his inner darkness along with visions...Visions of times past.

As he rises, Kyle exhales into the stale air in his cubic apartment. The room is illuminated by a horrible, constant light that only he notices. In a particularly bright area, to him, surrounded by otherwise invisible scaled rodents, lays a pile of wrinkled blue and yellow material.

Their whimpers are pitiful as they scurry away from the mound and the approaching figure of Kyle Richmond as its shape alters. His shock white pupils glow gently against red irises. Hoarse, raspy words escape his dark lips.

"I guess it's started, then....."

Kyle holds the costume up to the inverse light, where others would see only the black. He sees what he should.

A hawk, in the dark of night.

RRRRRIP

Interlude. Elsewhere.

She had only just left the room. Their voices were still lingering behind her when she felt something dragging at her being. She had expected a void.

This is what she found.

"Od's beard..." Whispers Brunnhilde, the Valkyrie, looking out over a jagged cliff at the broad plane of gray, dusty hues. great river nearby runs black, like nothingness, and her shining blue eyes follow its trail to a form she knows all too familiar, and the tired souls at its base.

"I've not heard mine name uttered as such in some time. However, when the ship Naglfar ceases its construction, 'tis understandable." The sudden, phantom voice, whose tone is unmistakable to the Valkyrie, causes her to jump. Even as she turns, she can feel the pulsing presence behind her.

A single commanding eye greet her. "Lord Odin!" She exclaims, then quickly kneels before the king amongst gods. He places an ancient hand on her shoulder, her motion to rise. "Mine lord, why art thou here? Is this not...?"
"There is no doubt that it is indeed Hel, riding daughter."

"...But the dead," She says worriedly, turning again to the ghastly bodies, standing still as death below, to cast her warring arm at them. "Their toenails no longer build the barge of Ragnarok, and they but stand there. 'Tis as though they are without meaning, Odin!"
"And why should they have any meaning, Brunnhildde, in the absence of their grim mistress?"

Valkyrie feels Odin come closer, the power burning off of him and warming her from the still coldness around her. "Sire...Thou couldst not mean....." Looking at their lifeless bodies, a collection of husks, she stops herself. She can feel the lack in the underworld, and the All-Father speaks ever true.

"I saved thee from a certain dark fate, just now," Odin says, a comforting murmur as thick as the trunk of Yggdrasil in her ear. "The pale creature would have taken thee, had I no use for thee here. But thou were plucked by mine hand so that thou may see this."
"Then thou knowest?" She asks in a hopeful way. "My allies, the Defenders, and this being called 'Alice'..."
"Thou needn't worry. 'Tis a base force, one of the simplest, oldest little things upon Midgard. Yon fellow warriors already are gaterhing against it.

"I have no worries for them, though, my Valkyrie. I would not have had worries for thou, either, if indeed the vile thing of fear had been successful in taking thou. Thy defending heroes are of strong mettle...'Tis a coming danger that I hath brought though here to notice."

Goosebumps crawl up and down her thick skin. "My lord, I..."
"Shhhh...Thou need not but listen, child, that you may begin to understand what is transpiring at this very moment. The land of Hel and its peoples sits motionless, its ruler Hela vanished from her horrid throne. She eats not from her dish Hunger, nor strikes with her knife Famine.

"Think, o' Valkyrie...Wonder. Could such a force truly dissapear for no reason at all, no trace left in its stead? If Hela merely left temporarily, would her peasants stay slack-jawed and taskless as such they are? There is war on the horizon, its outcome unforseen even to this old god. 'Tis the oldest battle. I know thou will be strong enough when it calls. But thou must prepare."
"My king, can thou not aid me...?"
"It is not my place to do so, beautiful one.

"Think on these things, mine child of Valhalla. When thou leavest, simply follow the light from outside. Thou shalt do as thou must.....And through Thought and Reason, I shalt ever be watching."

And as Brunnhilde listens to Odin's words echo and fade, she feels that wonderful presence she's long missed ebb until finally, it is no longer there, leaving her alone with an army of common, lost souls.

The Valkyrie takes a final look at their hollow faces, each seeming to meld together with the next, as though they are all one melancholy field of ash.

Chilled a final time, she turns to the white light behind and follows it.

New York City. 111th and Main Street.

"Lookit, willya? Freakin' heroes usin' th' payphone..."
"...He saved me once, ya know..."

"Listen, Natasha, it attacked me. At my own apartment -- I panicked. I...What? Well I'm sorry I had you safety in mind. I thought I was doing you a fa...No. No, look --"

".....Thought she was dead--"
"--Didn't you see that TV special? She got better....."
"They always do..."

"I'm calling you now because you're the only other capable person I would involve in this. Sure, take it as a compliment if you want...Take it however you want, I'm still asking you.....

".....Ha! Pretty damn pathetic, on the street like that...Figured they'd have the respect to keep it away from the common man......."
"...Guy in red's pretty hot, if you ask me...Dardevil....."

"What the Hell was what? Oh, that's just the kid...You know, the kid. Oh. Yeah. Okay -- Look, I can't explain it all now, just get to -- Well, I'm relieved to know SHIELD's tracers still work. Right. 'Bye."

Daredevil hangs up the phone in a nearly silent click that is a bomb dropping in his ears, drowning out the passing, swelling mass of chatter around him. It still doesn't drown out Mark's shrill wailing. Or his mother's increasing heartbeat.

"What did you just say?" Regina asks firmly to the teenage girl. She and her friend look at each other, then at her again, nodding in the scarlet-clad hero's direction.
"Daredevil. He's hot. Not sure why he's--" Mark's blaring sobs increase again, bringing an annoyed look from the girl. "What's wrong with him?" Gina's own face becomes darker.

"Gina--" Hellcat begins and tries to keep her back. The mother passes her child to Wong, who holds him with a natural comfort.
"What's wrong with him.....Everytime you say that word, he gets worse. Don't say that word."
"Regina..." Says the Black Knight, but even his will is overpowered by that of a desperate mother.

"Daredevil?" The other teenager snickers. "What, is he your boyfriend, or--"
And they all feel it, especially Daredevil, the air around them suddenly humid, almost seering. The vigilante can't see her, but he knows that something is happening as her heart pumps boiling lifeblood at a dangerous pace. The two girls have the priviledge of watching paralyzed as Gina's face fades to a depthless black, her eyes and hair pure flame.

Hellcat watches as well. The fire is strangely familiar to her. "Gina...?"

The young womens' trembling faces come alight in the transfromed mother's illumination. "Dont say.....That word." Her breath is dotted with embers.
"Gina, please," Daredevil exclaims, injecting himsef between her and the cowering girls. "Just calm down -- They don't know. Back off, okay?" He says strongly, and gradually, her flame dies down, but only after another look from her glowing eyes.

"...Patsy, what was that?" Daredevil asks.
"I slept," Gina answers for her, taking Mark back from Wong and soothing him.

"Toldja he's hot...Just like a real hero!" Comments one of the girls as they quickly make their exit. In their leaving, Daredevil finds himself aware of a familiar heartbeat, an alluring scent of distinct foreign perfume above that he didn't notice before.
"Seems that I have some competition, red." The voice is like a meticulous and alluring whisper in its raspiness. Stripped from the shadows comes the lithe form in black leather, highlighted by pale skin and lustrious red hair.

Her grace is like nature, seeming to almost float through the air, and once landed, her beauty is just as obvious. "You're lucky I showed up. It looks like you're hardly able to keep your own group together..."
"They're not 'my group.' No offense to anyone, but we're not much of a collection as is. That's why we're making calls."
"Who else, then...?" The Widow asks.

"...Uh, well...Me..." Says another phantom voice. Hellcat has already begun to smile before the others acknowledge him.
"Nighthawk!" He hovers in the air, his body barely visible in the dark, arms folded unconfidently. "Well don't just wait up there, Kyle..." She says, motioning, "Come down here and--"

She stops. He has already come forward, and as the streetlights cast away his facade, a sullen figure is revealed. It is Kyle Richmond, but with two spanning bat-like wings keeping him aloft, he is immeadiately something new to them.

His skin on the whole looks unnaturally dark, and in a deep crimson from his abdomen to his bare chest is the emblem of his namesake -- Apparently a part of his skin. His eyes are colored similarly, and his hair is unkempt. His fingers taper to sharp claw-points, his only clothing the black leggings.

"That...Doesn't look like the same Nighthawk I met a little while back*," Daredevil says in concern and suspicion.
The Black Knight draws his sword. "'Tis a demon...!" He cries, but Patsy holds him back.
"Dane, no! Just...Wait..."

"Like I told her--" Kyle says. "I'm not the same Nighthawk. Not....." He sees the expressions on Patsy and Wong's faces. He hears the lightened sobbing of the child. Kyle can't help but lower himself to feet above the ground.

(*The two met soon after Nighthawk awoke in Marvel's NIGHTHAWK mini-series, only to have Nighthawk kill him and bring him back. - Will)

"You know about my eyes, DD...How Mephisto tricked me into taking them from him. It looks like the change -- It's kept spreading since then. Now I turn into...This every night."
"Master Kyle..." Wong begins at the man he's long gone without seeing.
"...We had no idea, Kyle. Are you--" Hellcat asks.
"I feel alright, really. Just sort of -- Different." Kyle's canines flare when he answers.

"This is the best you could do? An under-confident were-demon?" Whispers the Black Widow to Daredevil, scoffing.
"This one isn't 'mine'...Hellcat called him and the others. I'm the one who called my ex-girlfriend into it."
She shoots him a questioning look. "Ex-girlfriend?"
"Whatever. Save it for later."

"Listen Wong, Patsy...Everyone--" Nightwing continues over their whispering, "I haven't really gotten used to it myself, and it's not something I -- We need to get into right now. I'm here to help, and that should be enough." Kyle looks around in curiousity. "...Is this everyone?"

The answer comes with the powerful gusts of wind coming from above. It sounds like a great engine, a sound familliar to more than a few of them, and a sight known to the world at large.

"Don't tell me..." Natasha begins, her hair in a tussle.

The underbely of the descending Avengers Quinjet opens, and revealed are two faces: the opaque face of the Iceman, and a smug smirk below a mask.

"Picked up Frosty here on the way over--" Hawkeye calls out, letting down a rope-ladder. "Ya want in or what?"

Despite the Widow's next look to Daredevil, each approaches the ladder and climbs, one by one, until they are all within the curving vessel. "Thanks so much, Clint," She says, hugging him around the neck, "And you too, Bobby."
"Don't worry about it, pretty lady," The archer answers, "The A-Team's had a little time to relax these days -- And none a' that for me!"
"Once a Defender, always a Defender," Bobby adds.

"I'm glad you feel that way. Now, this," Patsy says, "Is everyone."
"I should hope so," Black Widow says, folding her thin arms.
"Natasha..." Is all Hawkeye says to her, the red-haired woman responding in kind.
"Clint."

Daredevil's keen ears have perked though, and he turns his head about. "No -- No, this isn't everyone. I only hear eight heartbeats, and there were....." He plucks sounds from the air. "Black Knight and Wong...They're both gone. Right out from under us."
"I get the feeling that Dane might not've gone the same way everyone else did* -- But Wong...God, it's happening without us even knowing it now, isn't it?" Hellcat allows her worry to overbear any guilt she might have underneath.
"Which means that we should probably get going quickly on whatever this is -- And by the way, what exactly is that?" Nighthawk asks in his unfamiliar voice. Iceman eyes him, and walks to see his face.
"...Kyle, is that you in there? Kyle Richmond?"
"Don't ask. I don't know what to answer with anymore."
Bobby grimaces with an icy mouth. "Man -- You lose touch for a while and WHAM....."

(*The Black Knight has been shifting between ancient England and modern times since DEFENDERS #2. -Will)

"Me and...DD can explain on the way there," Hellcat says, taking a seat as the deathly quiet Mark and Gina have done.
"I'm sure Dee-Dee has plenty of things to explain..." Black Widow states, sitting next to the red-clad man. Hawkeye has already ventured to the cockpit of the Quinjet, strapped in and readied it.
"Well, since I sorta borrowed this without telling any of the other Avengers, maybe you should tell me where it is we're going?"

"To visit an old acquaintance -- I think almost all of us've met him at one time or another. He's probably lonely out there...

"We're going to Citrusville, Florida."

Wonderland. Namor.

He's drowning. But he doesn't know it.

First came what felt like an absence of existence. And slowly, ever slowly, he could sense rising, a forced feeling, hindered by a weight urging him to sink back down into oblivion.

The invisible force still pulls at his body. Muscles, tendon, and senew wage their battle on the hideous gravity, fueled by his anxiety from experiencing something he hasn't before. His lungs are burning, so he must breathe.

And as he does, it fills him from inside, and he jerks and spasms uncontrollably. His sight shifts to a focus so complete that he can see for miles, perhaps eternally more. It is water, there, opaque and perfect green-blue, falling to shadowy depths as it goes down.

He's choking on the salty water, bitter in his mouth. His eyes closed tightly, he finds himself feeling heavier, and the control his mind has over the body diminishes. The abyss is winning again. He can feel his weakening body sinking down...

Down...

Down...

It would be so easy to give into the relaxing wave of warmth seeping from the back of his head. But the realization comes, and springs him to attention. He struggles again, his throat and head, his lungs, aflame. His sight becomes starry and reddened as he lets out a mighty yawp that must carry forever through the endless waves.

But he fails. It enters him again, as big and cumbersome as ever, and he's sinking again. He struggles once more. He fails. Again, and again. He knows what is true, and he's only beginning to grasp it.

He's drowning. Namor, the Prince of Atlantis, Avenging Son -- The Sub-Mariner -- Is drowning. And with every breath in what was his native land, he drifts closer to the inky chasm, down...

Down...

.....Down.

Unwilling to yield. Unable to die.

Florida. Outside Cirtusville.

There is a lone creature, just on the fringes of what we know -- Where the strangest things are, hiding behind veils drawn by normality. They're always there...They always has been. The Florida swamplands, just on the edge of civilization, is its mask.

Under a layer of fur-like weeds and flora its eyes are but two miniscule embers in the shadows and muck. They observe...The sources of approaching voices.

Observe...Feel.

Feel their apprehension. Their worry. Their guilt and indecision-and-confusion-and-badpleasuredarkness and --

Their fear.....It burns. All but one.

Peer around the tree trunk. Quiet -- Watch.

Observe.

"...So if this 'Alice' guy -- Thing's coming out of the shadows to nab people, what're we doing in mucksville here?" Iceman looks around, observing the dark, bubbling pseudo-land.
"Apparently it doesn't matter where we go, now," Daredevil says cautiously. "None of us are safe."
"Still, I'll ask again: Why here?"
"Alice.....Is taking his victims somewhere, obviously. I could sense it when he -- Touched me. I think what Hellcat has in mind is--"

"Shhh," Patsy holds a slim finger to her mouth. "Look." Quietly, they peer out into the thick of the wood and there they see the faint light of protection. A crimon light.

The darkened trees birth a slothing, gaunt form of green and brown, with a pair of ruby eyes above its trunk. It trudges through the mud and weeds, a higher form of their own, and stops a while in front of the eight.

For moments, they all simply stand there. Then, a child's voice is heard.

"Mommy?" Mark asks weakly, and Gina looks down at him in shock. The others look as well.
"...Y-Yes sweetheart?" She answers. "Are you...Alright?"
"I wanna use swamp-man's swamp, too."
"What...What do you mean, 'use his swamp'?" Mark doesn't answer, simply turning his head to look at the Guardian of the Nexus. And when its eyes meet the child's, they flare slightly. The creature begins to move its cumbersome arms, albeit quite slowly, conjuring an apprehension in its swamp.

Nighthawk wrinkles his nose in looking at Mark and his mother -- For in the darkness, he sees not only them, but the parasitic demonkind latched unseen onto their bodies. He shakes his head, and tries to ignore them.

"What's that thing doing?" Gina asks desperately, hugging Mark tight. "What is it?"
"This -- Is the Man-Thing. And I think what it's doing..." Hellcat watches on while the air itself begins discoloring and swirling about.
"Aw, Jeez..." Hawkeye places his hand on an arrow.
"It's sending us to help." All but the Garneys feel the pull of the Man-Thing's rift. As they find themselves sucked in by it, Hellcat calls out to the mother and son.

"Get back in the Quinjet and be CAREFULLLLLLLLLLLLLLL....."

Reality seems to ripple. Within a few brief seconds, her defenders are gone, and Gina Garney looks down at her son, dozing on her shoulder despite what's just occured.

"They're just...Leaving us here? Alone...?" Gina asks herself, and stops, realizing she and Mark aren't the only ones left.

The swamp creature looks her direction, and it appears that it's stare is more for Mark than her. She cradles him closer, feeling the heat seeming to flow off of the monster, and quickly takes a few steps back before half-running to the cold jet. From its window, she sees the creature meld back into the undefined acres of swamp.

On his mother's shoulder, Mark's half-lidded eyes watch the Man-Thing dissappear...And they, too, burn.

Elsewhere.

Matt Murdock, known as Daredevil, is a blind man. Some know this, and some don't.

He's rarely had the opportunity to know true blindness, though, as his other senses increased enough to create a faux sense of vision and perception known to no other.

Now, he honestly knows complete, utter darkness -- As do they all.

"Natasha?" He cries out, unable to feel, unable to form objects with radar. "Anyone? Where did--?"

He soon hears them each calling out similar pleas. "Where is everyone? I can't..." Hellcat hesitates. "I can't see....."

Suddenly, she feels two strong hands grip her shoulders with sharp fingers. Looking up, she finds the familiar yet changed face of Nighthawk, holding her aloft with his leathery wings. In the dark, she can just barely make out his features. He looks back at her.

"I can," He says. "And there's nothing there."

Interlude. Hell.

The pacing has gone on for some time now. His thick, leathery boots made of an angel's sacred hide echo against the makeshift platform of flaming rock entwined with serpents and things that have no names, or none that should be spoken aloud.

He is Daimon Hellstrom, if you ask certain ones. To others, he is the Son of Satan, or Hellstorm, the Prince of Lies. Simply Master to many. Heir to the dark realm of tortured souls. And for some time now, he's entertained the notion of reaching out and grabbing his inheritance early.

Yet with so much power within him, merely in his titles, he continues to march feverishly before a congregation, all commanding eyes and untamed crimson hair that seems to begin and end with his face.

His audience is a mixed one, saying the least. One section, on the outer edge of their gathering, keeps quiet conversation.

"...All over a female? A human female?" A miniature creature, with scarlet membrane wings and blood, mucus, and sperm from its knife-toothed mouth, which almost forms a smile. "How...Delicious."

It speaks to the balding, scarred head, with fingers as roots and tender, empty eyesockets, sitting aloofly beside it. "Delicious? Hell, it's a bad deal all around, kid."
"What do you mean, 'bad'? If Lord Daimon becomes the true lord--"
"Then we're all in for some big changes. Women do that to people."

Offended, the creature looks away. "I hardly see how females have a single thing to do with it. I say it is his fault for letting himself fall so madly in love with a...Creature like that! The red-haired one, who dresses in strange garb, yes?"
"Yeah. And I wouldn't say much of that where he can hear."
"Oh...Oh. Yes. Of course.". The winged demon continues. "It is still strange, when he could have the grotesque bordellos of all the underworld."

"What the Hell would you know, anyway," The head scoffs, looking on at their current master. "You're just a Goddam succubus..."

While the demonfolk perch themselves to squawk and murmur, the rest of the Morning Son's onlookers sit deathly still, watching in a nervous silence.

After a spell, their host stops in the middle of his jagged court, looking over his captive audience, each with a name so entrenched in legend that they've lost meaning. Mephisto. Thog. Satannish. Eblis. Hela. Baphomet. Pluto. To him, they are all simply a different view of one very important subject.

"You."

With a dirty, long nail, he points into their numbers at the flaming body sometimes called Satannish. His scream is blood-curdling, even here, and he writhes in agony as his form is compressed more and more, drawn along an invisible line to Daimon's finger, and is finally gone completely.

Those watching on would gasp, but they know better. And on his stage of rock and pain, Daimon Hellstrom, the Prince of Lies, conjures a seat for himself. He takes it, looking all the more vital and maliciously content with his blazing trident.

He inhales, ready to speak, and watches the others hold back cringes.

"That will be all, for today. I'm afraid I've still need for guests at the wedding."

The Prince of Lies smiles, and waits contently.

From Russ Anderson, on the M2K message board.

"Defenders #6
By Will Short

After reading Defenders #5, I decided that that was the best issue thus far of Will's run--there was a lot more focus, a greater sense of foreboding, no plot devices manufactured solely to bring the team together. Now, after reading Defenders #6, I must amend and say this is the best issue of Will's Defenders run thus far. Those of you who have read Will's work on MV1 know that he leans toward the Vertigo-esque, and there's quite a bit of that influence in the last two issues of this series, but Will has tempered the sometimes-pretentious verbosity of his early work, and the result is that his amazing ideas show through better. The sequence with the Hulk was chilling--moreso than that with Doc Strange, even--and Alice's remark as he disposed of Luke Cage was as humorous as it was scary. There's a real feeling of danger as the remaining Defenders are picked off one by one. Will does some great work on Avengers, but IMO this is the team book he excels at, the one he seems to be most comfortable with. I'm really looking forward to finding out where this story is going and what the hell Alice is up to. Oh… and Will, don't think you fooled anybody with that "redrum" trick… I saw whose name Mark Garney was muttering, and I look forward to that long-standing Defender's return to the title. :-)"

I've consciously been trying to tone down the extra words in team books recently, seeing as there are so many characters (especially here at DEFENDERS). I agree that it's made it easier to write, and I hope to read as well. Glad you were chilled by the Hulk's sequence -- I was trying to throw in some not-so-subtle symbolism -- And the ominous feeling was intentional, so I'm rather happy you picked up on it. Oh, and about what Mark said: "You'll have to wait" and "Shhhhhh....." Thanks a lot Russ.

From Mike Exner, on the M2K message board again.

"Defenders #6 was the best issue of Defenders put out so far here at M2K. Alice is a fantastic "villain" and I can't wait to see what his motivations are for capturing the people he has so far. Dr. Strange and Hulk both go through sheer torture in this issue and it's great stuff. The thought of all the bodies Hulk was treading on being all the victims of his many rampages was priceless. Not only were the "Wonderland" scenes good, but the interplay between the other members of the cast were good as well. Wong was used nicely, Daredevil was transitioned into the book smoothly (even a reference to my using him in ASM #13), and the bickering, the wonderful wonderful bickering between the members of the team. Dane is known as a hothead so I'm not to sure I like his medieval/leadership/peacemaker thing going on but I'll deal with it. It was almost funny noticing how Daredevil reacted to the Defenders' fighting, almost a "what's wrong with you people?" attitude. My final kudos deals with the little boy. Why the hell was Mark smiling? Does Alice use children in some ungodly way as his power? Frightening thought. Now, my only complaint at all for this issue would be that Namor wasn't in it at all. I'm sure Will's gonna take care of it in #7, but honestly, I don't want to wait that long. Fantastic issue Will. And the guy who wrote you a letter is a genius. Make mine M2K.

Mike III"

All that you need to know about Alice will be revealed next issue -- And perhaps a little after that, as well. I really had fun writing the horrific scenes for Hulk and Stephen. Dane has obviously been going through some different changes recently, so I don't think he's exactly sure how to act right now. Daredevil's pretty level-headed, I think, and if you saw a bunch of heroes arguing with each other like that, wouldn't you react somewhere close to that? I hope you enjoyed seeing Namor, even if for just a bit, this issue, and you can expect him more later. As for Mark...Again, you'll have to wait and see. Thanks for consistantly reading and writing, Mike! You and Russ are both great authors and fans.