Issue(s): Defenders #104
Cover Date: Feb 82
Title: "Yesterday never dies!"
Credits:
J.M. DeMatteis - Writer
Don Perlin - Penciler
Joe Sinnott - Inker
Al Milgrom - Editor

Review/plot:
The backstory of Eric Payne prior to becoming the Devil-Slayer is provided. He was a soldier in Vietnam who came back to a country that didn't provide the hero's welcome he needed, and his wife also left him. He became a hit man for the mob, but quit when he killed the wife and child of a newspaper reporter.

Now that reporter, Ian Fate, has become a master of the occult, and he's kidnapped Payne's wife Cory as vengeance...

..and placed her in Dormammu's Dark Dimension. The Beast had been visiting Dr. Strange to talk about a problem he has, and he suggests bringing his buddy Wonder Man along to help as well.

The team fights Fate's demons (that don't look like anything we've seen in the Dark Dimension before)...

...but fail to stop Cory from being stabbed. Except it isn't actually Cory, it's the junkie named Sunshine that the Devil-Slayer had been trying to help.

It seems Fate felt guilty and swapped him in at the last minute. No one seems to mind too much about a junkie being killed, and Fate and Wonder Man take turns yelling at Devil-Slayer for having been a bad person while Dr. Strange and the Beast nod sagely and say "Yep, sad but true."

Meanwhile the rest of the Defenders were off celebrating Nighthawk's recent legal victories...

...when they are all kidnapped by the CIB group that we first saw in Defenders #102. Nighthawk's nurse, and his lawyers Matt Murdock and Sydney Rosenblum are left knocked out but not kidnapped.

And Hellstorm is begging for his father Satan to accept him.

Quality Rating: C

Historical Significance Rating: 2 - some Devil-Slayer backstory.

Chronological Placement Considerations: It's said that "some weeks have past" since the Beast arrived at Dr. Strange's house last issue, and he never wound up meeting up with Dr. Strange until now. Nighthawk, Hellcat, Gargoyle, and Valkyrie are captured in this issue, and shouldn't appear anywhere else until Captain America #268. This issue starts off a long sequence of events that doesn't end until Defenders #115 that leaves Nighthawk dead and Devil-Slayer in jail. The Beast and Wonder Man are not currently members of other teams.

References:

• The Devil-Slayer last saw his wife in Defenders #97.

Crossover: N/A

Continuity Insert? N

My Reprint: N/A