The Mutant Misadventures of Cloak and Dagger 4

Crotus tries to drive Cloak and Dagger into committing suicide.

The Mutant Misadventures of Cloak and Dagger #4

Script: Terry Austin
Pencils: Mike Vosburg
Inks: Terry Austin
Letters: Ken Bruzenaj
Colors: Glynis Oliver
Edits: Carl Potts
Trouble: Tom DeFalco

Crotus and two other demons have avoided being sent back to Limbo and have retain Belasco's spell book. Now he plans to break open the barrier to Limbo again. For this he needs to sacrifice "two mutants whose souls are locked in black despair" and settles on Cloak and Dagger, hoping to make them kill themselves to maximise the effect. Dagger has recently lost her sight and is alone in a flat where Crotus impersonates Cloak and tries to destroy Dagger's faith in him. She realises this is not Cloak and lashes out with her light. She stumbles through the flat until realising exactly Crotus is and fires out, destroying him. Cloak is trapped in an energy bubble orbiting Earth resigned to his fate as the air runs out when the other two demons appear. They take on the forms of Cloak's close family and friends to berate him as a failure. He soon spots the repeated phrases and realises they're real so lures them into the dimension in his cloak before the air expires and he collapses. In New York several of the New Mutants plus Boom Boom are tracking the three demons and arrive at the flat where they learn Dagger has killed one. She fires light to guide them to Cloak and Warlock takes them all up into space only to find Cloak's empty cloak and Dagger declares him dead.

As the full title of this series indicates, at the time it was Marvel's position that Cloak and Dagger are mutants, something that's been gone back and forth on many times over the years. Given the soaring popularity of X-Men and related titles it's understandable that Marvel would do whatever it could to seek to attract some of that popularity to other titles and this is one of the issues where their mutant status is actually a key plot point. However it's not clear why it's taken so long for them to have anything to do Inferno. Although only the fourth issue of this series it was bimonthly and came out of a separation of the Strange Tales title which combined the pair with Dr Strange so had been running for longer than the issue number indicates.

A series that hasn't previously been part of the crossover is an odd place to put what is proclaimed on the cover as "Inferno Finale" (not quite as we'll see in a bit) and an epilogue that deals with the fate of Crotus, a character who could simply have been said to have been pulled back into Limbo when the portal reversed and closed. That said it allows Terry Austin the opportunity to write a tale exploring both lead characters under especially adverse circumstances as the demons try to drive them to suicide. Ironically Cloak is already close to death and accepting there is nothing he can do but Dagger has been resisting her situation until now when she agrees to undergo therapy to cope with her blindness. The appearance of some of the New Mutants at the end provides a way for Dagger to get to Cloak was but otherwise feels like it's just there to reinforce the crossover and advertise their presence on the cover.

On the face of it this story doesn't do the best job of introducing the current status quo for readers visiting due to the crossover. However the letters page reportedly carried a piece by Terry Austin summarising his whole run on the strip since it was in Strange Tales so in 1988 this would have been one of the best series for catering to passing visitors. Unfortunately the collected editions (all?) leave out the letters page so it's not doing so good a job at encouraging readers to check out the series (which has been collected in full across two books). But that isn't the fault of Austin or Potts.

Overall this is a straightforward story that takes the aftermath of the crossover and uses it to tell a story exploring the title characters in depth which is often the best sort of crossover issue. Neither Cloak nor Dagger is at their strongest which adds to the sense of despair and makes for a tougher story. It's just a pity that it has a needless guest appearance thrown in at the end.