The story of Nightmask began on July 22nd, 1986, at approximately 4:22 PM, when that bizarre astronomical phenomenon known as the 'White Event' occurred. This flash of otherworldly light, in addition to granting thousands of folks across the earth paranormal powers, managed to snap young Keith Remsen out of the coma he'd been in for months.

Upon awakening to a hospital room occupied by his sister Teddy, physical therapist Lita Mercado, Doctor Lucian Ballad, and an unnamed orderly, the ordeal Keith had recently endured came back to him in a flash. He was on his way to the Kleinmann Institute, the home of theoretical dream researcher Horst Kleinmann, where his parents had built upon their own psychological dream theories.

His family was there to see him off, when a man slipped an extra suitcase in with Keith's luggage, a suitcase filled with an explosive device. When the family went to help Keith load his luggage onto the plane, the bomb exploded, killing several people, including his parents. Furthermore, his sister was crippled for life, and shrapnel from the bomb case was embedded in his skull.

After a little counseling by Doctor Ballad (a professional psychologist), Keith began his physical therapy program, which he needed to rebuild his body after being comatose for so long. Though this exhausted him, Keith continued to be plagued by nightmares of his parents' deaths. However, his dreams eventually took an odd twist, and Keith suddenly found himself presented with a bizarre, betentacled dreamscape.

He discovered, in his dream, a man being dragged down the hospital stairwell by a mass of writhing tentacles, and tried to help free the man. Hysterical, the man started babbling about 'the Gnome', a monstrous creature that was wouldn't let him escape. After talking to him, however, the man suddenly recognized Keith: he was one of the people he had tried to kill with that bomb in the airport!

Realizing that he'd been made, the fearful man fell over in a cardiac arrest, and the dream suddenly fell apart. Waking up with the help of his sister, Teddy, Keith found out that his sister had apparently shared his dream, and managed to wake him up when he started convulsing. Just then, a man from the next room was wheeled into the emergency room, as he'd just had a heart attack.

Realizing that he wasn't dreaming alone last night, Keith had Teddy drew up the guy in his dream, and after digging though hospital records (with Lita's help), the two identified the man, who'd also been caught in the bomb blast (it went off early). Starting to think that there may be something to the Remsen kids' claims, Doctor Ballad ran some tests on them, with Lita volunteering as the dreaming host.

Sure enough, Keith managed to slip into her dreams, now that he knew what he was doing. Studying the data, the four returned to the hospital to further investigate this psychological miracle, when Keith passed out again in the car. This time, having experienced the bomber's dreams once before, he was able to automatically lock onto the man once he'd fallen asleep.

Once he arrived in the man's dream, Keith found out the whole thing was a sort of set-up, as the 'Gnome' that was haunting his dreams wanted to meet Keith firsthand, having spotted him in the previous dreamscape. Of course, once he was seen, this 'Gnome' jumped all over the unprepared Keith, and would've killed him, if not for his sister Teddy, who managed to pull him out of the dream again.

The next morning, Keith discovered that the man he wanted to bring to justice would never regain consciousness, and decided that he would enter his dreams one last time. However, he did some research on the images he'd seen in the terrorist's head the night before, and discovered who this 'Gnome' was. Seeking out an abandoned hospital room, Keith homed in on the bomber's dreams.

Prepared this time, Keith managed to reveal the 'Gnome' as Doctor Horst Kleinmann, an insanely jealous man that thought Keith was being sent to his Institute to spy on his work. Fearful that Remsen would steal the technology to his cybernetic dream interface, Doctor Kleinmann had the Remsens bombed in the airport before they could even get to his precious Institute.

Of course, while the two fought and argued, the bomber finally died at last, and his dream universe began to dissolve. Fleeing for what safety they could find, the two dreamsmiths found themselves cornered by the collapsing dream, and though he hated the man, Keith nonetheless tried to pull Doctor Kleinmann out with him. This failed, and the villain fell into the abyss that was now the dying man's mind.

Keith, on the other hand, managed to get out of the dead man's dream unscathed. Of course, this was again thanks to his sister, who'd managed to track him down (suspecting what he was up to). Resolving to use his dream powers to help people after this, Keith left the hospital with Teddy, Lita, and Doctor Ballad, in order to form their own dream clinic...

This tale began in the middle of a dream, a dream originating in the mind of Doctor Henry Salinger. Near a long line of people, Keith managed to finally find Henry, though he took the form of a small child in his dream. He was fearful of what lay at the front of the line, though Keith convinced him to take a peek at the man. Of course, when the two got there, the man had no eyes!

Henry freaked out at this point, and ran back to his hiding spot. Of course, Doctor Ballad had Keith pull out of the dream at this point, as he was no longer making any progress. Talking to Doctor Salinger in private, Doctor Lucian learned that the intense depression his patient is suffering from was a result of his being offered some sort of humanitarian award.

Soon after, Teddy went out to enjoy some free time by herself, while Lita put Keith through his paces in the exercise room. Her theory was that he'd be more useful in his dream persona if he were in better physical shape. This theory was supported by Doctor Ballad, so of course, Keith was being worked quite extensively. Of course, things weren't all roses for Keith.

For instance, we learn that Doctor Kleinmann didn't die after his defeat at the hands of Nightmask last month. In fact, he'd been rebuilt by his minions with primitive cybernetics; nothing fancy, just big and clunky parts that allowed the genius to minimally get around. Of course, his minions had also repaired his cybernetic dream interface, so the bad Doctor was planning to get even...

Later that night, after a depressed Teddy got back from her little trip, she and Keith slipped into Doctor Lucian's dreams, in order to see what made the man tick. Once there, the youths were deposited into the Carnival, a happy time from Doctor Ballad's youth. Of course, Keith eventually had to reveal himself in order to save the Doc from a statue some miscreants tipped over.

This led to a big ol' lecture about privacy, which was abruptly ended when some feds came to yell at Doctor Ballad about the whole Salinger thing, and his federal funding was threatened if he couldn't help the depressed old doctor. Realizing how much Lucian was protecting them, Keith and Teddy decided to re-enter Salinger's dreams, since Keith could home in on 'em now that he'd experienced one.

Upon showing up in the dream, Keith was dropped into a war zone, and found the little Henry cowering from a man in red fatigues, a man gunning down the people at the front of the ever-present line of folks. Keith attacked the man, having a bad mental reaction to the death, only to reveal the uniformed man as Doctor Salinger himself! Waking up in a panic, Keith and company raced to the doctor's apartment.

They found him on the wall outside his window, ready to jump. Keith climbed up to talk to him, when he realized that the Doctor was experiencing intense guilt about events at one of the many free medical clinics he used to operate in the third world. It seems that the government promised him unlimited funding in exchange for allowing them to test out an experimental serum he'd developed on his patients.

The serum was originally meant to modify violent behavior, but something went wrong, and the serum killed everybody it was used on, despite the fact that it'd worked perfectly on a smaller test base before. Though the government had apparently altered his formula, Doctor Salinger felt personally responsible for the deaths, and couldn't deal with it any more.

He tried to jump, but Keith and Doctor Ballad caught him, convincing him to want to live. After this incident, Doctor Ballad lost that government funding he was receiving, but after overhearing Salinger's story, he didn't care too much about that. Once they'd gotten Salinger off the building wall, Keith and Lucian took him back to their clinic for more therapy...

Meanwhile, on the French Riviera, we are introduced to the mysterious Midnight, a raven-haired vixen that feeds on the dreams of others. After she fells a rich American gambler, she is recruited by Kleinmann's minions for a special mission against the Remsens, and having nothing better to do, Midnight agrees to go along with them, for the time being...

Though he wasn't sure he was ready to, Keith finally made the trip back home. Sure enough, he found himself assaulted by bad memories and a severe depression upon seeing his now-empty home. Realizing his mistake, Keith prepared to leave, when he was met by an old friend. This friend, Dan Brody, was revealed to be a friend of his from high school who 'was going places'.

After talking to the guy for a bit, Keith realized that there was a problem, and after he left, Keith followed him for a while. Eventually, Keith saw him buying some pills from a guy named Devlin on a local street corner. Seeing the true depth of Dan's problem (having watched him pop a handful o' pills immediately after buying them), Keith decided to help his old pal somehow.

Waiting until Dan got home to take a nap, Keith then donned his Nightmask persona, entering the dreams of his old pal. Upon his arrival, Keith was seized by Dan, who was wielding some sort of high tech grappling device; his dream was taking place in some sort of Star-Trek style space craft, and 'Crewman Brody' seized this intruder right as the ship was attacked.

The foe of Brody's ship, the diabolical Valkor, defeated the craft, placed it into a tractor beam, and towed it into the nearest star's gravity well. When the craft started to melt around the dreamers, the true aspect of this nightmare became apparent to Keith, as it appeared that Dan had had a bad experience with fire before. Not wanting to melt down himself, Keith pulled out of the dream.

After Dan woke up and left, Keith went in to talk to Dan's dad about him. He then verified that Dan was trapped in a fire when he was five, and saw where the sci-fi stuff in his dreams came from; his room full of posters, models, and toys revealed him as a terminal fan-boy. Having learned all he needed (from there, anyway), Keith promised to help poor Dan, and then left.

Journeying back to that infamous street corner, Keith confronted Devlin the drug dealer, though he quickly realized that pounding the man into paste wouldn't solve Dan's problem. As such, he homed in on Dan's dreams one more (he'd just passed out in a local park), and donned his Nightmask again, in order to help his old pal. He then dropped into a bizarre alien world.

Dan was being menaced by a gaggle of alien, meat-eating plants, when the Captain of his ship, his dad, saved him as he did before; he'd pulled Dan out of that fire years ago. Just then, a group of more ... sinister alien types surrounded the two starship crewmen, transforming into a wall of fire soon after. In this fire, however, Dan's dad couldn't help him, as he was buried alive by that Valkor character.

However, Nighmask tried to encourage Dan to fight back on his own, when he was assaulted by ... things ... from Dan's own subconscious. Thinking to further edge Dan on, Nightmask transformed his appearance into his normal self; seeing his old pal Keith in danger, Dan indeed fought back enough to save him.

Once this was done, Keith changed back into Nightmask, and the two fought the things together. At this point, the evil Valkor himself appeared to menace Dan and Keith, and Nightmask attacked it first, hoping to encourage Dan to fight his problems head-on. This eventually worked, and Dan defeated Valkor, revealing it to be none other than that dealer, Devlin.

Having dealt with all of these bizarre issues in his subconscious, Dan mustered the will to stay clean for a week (if with help from a rehab counselor or two). Thinking Dan's problems solved, or at least on their way there, Keith decided to return to the Institute back in Virginia where he worked with Doctor Lucian and the others. After all, he still wasn't comfortable at home...