If you do not know or have never run across the many short run series of the two here is what you need to now. They are two young teens from very different backgrounds that ran away. On the streets the find and befriend each other and are tricked with a group of runaways to head with some bad men to a place of evil. They are used as guinea pigs for a new designer drug. The other kids die, they somehow live and are changed. Dagger is able to hurl purifying light knives while Cloak employs a shroud of darkness that can terrify those who he wraps up inside himself. They wage a war on drugs and operate homeless from a church.
This story has the two accompanied by a young man named Bob Clayton on a chase across Europe after drug runners. They end up off course and stumble into Latveria, the country ruled by Victor Von Doom. They will meet and face him even though they have no chance of beating such a heavy hitter of the Marvel Universe.
Dr. Doom is once again working to save the world with his brand of benevolence. This is what makes him a great character. He believes himself the hero of the story. When Dagger hits him with her light knives they do not work because he does not think of his actions as evil. You see Doom is going to end the threat of nuclear war. He has unleashed a column of light particles that will saturate the world and all nuclear energy will be neutralized. This sounds good to Cloak and Dagger until they realize all the medical advances and power that is generated will be stopped as well. Even though they do not stand a chance they battle Doom anyway.
The fight is awesome. We get a true sense of the potential of Cloak. Doom's back story is shown a bit. It just shows what was great about stories of this time. Bill Mantlo is the writer and he does a great job. I am most familiar with his Iron Man. He takes the story to a place of teaching about making hard choices and living with the consequences.
One of the great ones. If you see it in a back issue bin, pick it up.
BDS
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