Following the events of Secret Wars and "Daredevil: Born Again" Season 3, Matt Murdock and Frank Castle (The Punisher) manage to escape from Cell Block D. However, the New York they return to is not the one they left behind. Mystical and quantum fractures intertwine, causing crime and sorcery to bleed into one another. Doctor Strange’s reality wards are beginning to unravel.
In the center of this chaos, Wilson Fisk (Kingpin) emerges from political exile as a "savior" with a new global ideology called Reign. Fisk is no longer alone in this dangerous doctrine that fuses crime, law, faith, and science; at his side is the genius scientist Ruby Thursday (Thursday Rubinstein), who has merged organic-biomechanical intelligence with human neural systems. Ruby has redesigned the MGH (Mutant Growth Hormone) substance into a quantum-based structure under the banner of “biological divinity,” binding disbanded, corrupt AVTF officers and street gangs to Fisk through this substance. She supplies both the technological and genetic soul to Fisk’s vision of a “new world order.”
The network Fisk and Ruby build markets MGH as the divine rung of a genetic revolution, but in practice, it creates physical and moral mutations throughout the city. When the efforts of Luke Cage, Iron Fist, and Jessica Jones to protect their streets fall short, cosmic, mystical, and street-level heroes are forced into an unconventional alliance. The new Defenders — Doctor Strange, Daredevil, Scarlet Witch, Luke Cage, Iron Fist, Ant-Man, Jessica Jones, Namor, Venom, and The Punisher — find themselves clashing at the heart of this corruption.
This first chapter ends with Kingpin and Ruby Thursday’s creed — that “power is necessary for salvation” — tearing the city apart, and the Reign ideology embedding itself like a virus into the subconscious of humanity.
