Avengers (UK) Vol 1 42

*Part 1: Death Masque!

Shang-Chi is wandering the streets of New York on a foggy evening when he finds an effigy hanging from a streetlamp at the corner of Madison Avenue and 57th Street. When he gets closer, he sees that it wears his own outfit. A knife flies out of the darkness, barely missing him, and embeds itself in a window frame. Shang-Chi notices a paper wound around the knife's hilt and briefly wonders why someone would bother sending a written message along with the message implicit in the knife itself. Then he chases the robed figure who threw the knife. In an alleyway, a second robed figure ambushes him from above. The two remove their robes, revealing themselves as Si-Fan assassins. After a brief fight, the two kill themselves with poison capsules.

Shang-Chi returns to the effigy and cuts it down. The message on the knife is a birthday greeting from his father, Fu Manchu.

In Fu's New York headquarters, Ducharme announces a servant, who reports that the two assassins have failed. Fu goes into another room, where five robed figures sit at a table with seven chairs. He calls in two new figures to replace the fallen assassins.

• Part 2: The Enemy Within!

On his way to confront Fu Manchu, Shang-Chi is dragged down a manhole by another Si-Fan assassin. After a long, brutal battle in the sewers, the man takes poison. An oriental woman, whom Shang-Chi had earlier dismissed as a prostitute, helps him out of the manhole. Another assassin appears and throws a shuriken, which hits the woman in the leg; this one also takes poison after a brief fight. Shang-Chi takes the woman to her apartment. After she makes him comfortable, she tries to garrote him, but he nearly strangles her with her own hair. She dives out the window to her death. A second effigy drops down in front of the window with a second message.

• Part 3: The Council of 7

Shang-Chi kicks down the front door of Fu Manchu's headquarters. Fu learns that another assassin has failed, so he reconvenes his Council of Seven. Five members file in. A servant fetches the other two from the hall. Fu addresses the group and berates them for failing to kill Shang-Chi. When he pounds the table with his fist, one of the robed figures slumps forward. A servant lifts its hood and reveals a third effigy of Shang-Chi. Shang-Chi removes his robe, briefly explains that he ambushed two council members and substituted himself and the effigy for them, and launches himself at the remaining five.

Shang-Chi puts his training to the ultimate test. He is the equal of any one of the Si-Fan's best assassins. Now he faces five of them at once. A long, grueling fight ends with the defeat of all five. He hurries to catch Fu but finds Ducharme instead. She says, "Your father ... has just left, Shang-Chi ... perhaps you may still ... catch him ...," and appears to be under the influence of opium. Fu has indeed just left, by helicopter, on his way to "the heart of America."

The Asgardian Enchantress and the Olympian god of war Ares scheme to place the legendary Hercules under their control. Overcome by the Enchantress' love potion, he is sent to attack the Avengers.

While on her way to attend an Avengers' meeting (in which the team would vote to decide whether to induct her as a member), the Black Widow is shanghaied by S.H.I.E.L.D. agents and asked to act as a double-agent behind the Iron Curtain. She agrees, but is unhappy to have to leave Hawkeye again.

Hercules attacks the team. The Avengers eventually bring him back to his senses but he is dismayed to discover that because he left Olympus, Zeus has declared him exiled on Earth! The Avengers charitably house him for the duration.

Forced to battle a lone Mindless One while his mystical powers are depleted, Doctor Strange seeks cover in his astral form to recharge his mystical abilities, the Mindless One with an indestructible victim (thanks to a spell that protects Strange's body) seeks a beatable opponent. Strange then returns to the Dark Dimension where he seeks to enter Umar's castle, traveling to the caverns deep below, he is aided by Veritas, a being that helps Strange reach Umar's throne room. While Umar is frightened by the visions under Veritas' cloak, Strange is able to conjure up a mystical screen showing Clea's location, however Umar fires a mystical bolt into the screen that threatens to kill Doctor Strange's love.