Doctor Strange is dead, leaving Marvel's Earth without its top magic defender, so it's up to the Avengers to fill that gap. But they're Earth's mightiest heroes, not Earth's magic heroes, right?
In the November 3 one-shot Death of Doctor Strange: Avengers by Alex Paknadel and Ryan Bodenheim, the late Doctor Strange's teammates will step up to face one of a murderer's row of magical threats that see the Sorcerer Supreme's death as an opening to finally conquer - or in some cases, destroy - Earth.
"The death of the Sorcerer Supreme has opened the world up to a whole host of terrifying magical threats," said Paknadel in the book's announcement. " In Death of Doctor Strange: Avengers, Earth's Mightiest Heroes - exhausted from putting out occult fires on every continent - face a new menace from a familiar mystical realm that may push one member of the team past their breaking point. Expect big action, big emotion, and stark choices."
The "familiar mystical realm" appears to be the Crimson Cosmos, home to Cyttorak - an evil deity that ruled over portions of Earth centuries ago but was exiled to the Crimson Cosmos, a sealed-off realm outside of the main universe. Although imprisoned, Cyttorak was able to still influence Earth in other ways such as creating the Crimson Gem of Cyttorak, which gifted whoever possesses it with superpowers and the onus of being Cytorrak's avatar on Earth.
The current possessor of that gem? Juggernaut. (who is also hinted at in Death of Doctor Strange: Avengers's cover by Steve Skroce).
Check out this preview of Death of Doctor Strange: Avengers, which begins to a flashback to the Illuminati era of the Avengers:
That monstrous figure in Tony Stark's vision is the Crawling, one of a new group of villains called the Three Mothers introduced in October 20's Death of Doctor Strange #2.
According to Marvel's description of this issue and the above preview, it seems the traditionally non-magically-inclined Iron Man might have a way to defeat this magical threat.
Death of Doctor Strange: Avengers goes on sale on November 3.
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