This one is ALSO named with a Macbeth quote! Why 3 out of 4!? Inker Don Hudson returns to wrap us up. Everyone spends the first 4 pages recapping at each other, the heroes exhausted, Melinda begging Xandu not to ruin everything.
So, like, one assumes every graveyard in the world must be emptying out, right? Surely not just this one. That seems like it would be a… big event. Cap & the cops fall back, but Cap worries they’re only delaying the inevitable. Back on the death world, Xandu and Strange are having another anime beam fight when Xandu says it’s too bad they didn’t bring Cap, as he would like to see what the wand would do to his shield, and Strange has an idea. He sends a zap through time and space to hit the Crystal of Kadavus, which is inexplicably at Cap’s feet.
Did Cap just make a love connection? Look at that face! Xandu is obviously not pleased about this baffling development, and goes through a portal after her. The cops are obviously completely confused, but Cap has heard enough to guess who Melinda is. She uses her command over the dead to stop the zombies, but then Xanny appears on the scene. He’s trying to force Melinda back to the Death Dimension with him, but Cap (somehow) yoinks her out of his grasp and runs off… until a zombie reaches up out of a grave and grabs his ankle.
Some pretty weird dialogue in this. Peach pits? I legit don’t know what’s going on. Xanny says Strange couldn’t bring any more sorcery into this plane than already exited here (??) and Melinda says he just combined the 3 sources already present in her (???) making her far more powerful than Xandu (????). She gives him a zap that makes him drop the wand, which Spider-Man webs to himself. Xanny launches into a big “how could you betray me?” speech to the woman he’s been ignoring and silencing this whole issue.
What two worlds are those? Doesn’t much look like Earth!
Melinda’s explanation makes no sense. Cap “instinctively” knew she had to become “the true queen?” Come on, Roy. and the attempt to paper over how Spidey and Wanda didn’t really do anything on this entire adventure doesn’t work. Well, Melinda says it’ll be lonely there, but she’ll be ok, and magicks the gang home, where Strange arrives in a normal suit & tie, everyone making up a cover story for him as some regular doctor on the spot. I guess he’s a secret? I know precious little about the good doctor. Everyone decides it’s time to go home.
Aaaaaalrighty! I cannot imagine what could’ve led to her being so devoted to a lunatic with such bad taste in facial hair, but what do I know about love between magicians? That does it for the final battle between Xandu, Spider-Man and Dr. Strange. Melinda never appears again. Xandu is among a bunch of nobody villains obviously chosen at random to die when Punisher blows up a bar in the mid-2000s, a fate shared with a few other nobodies we’ve seen on this blog. Most of them got better, of course, but Xanny stayed dead. His goofy tale is ended.