After she was recruited by Doctor Kleinmann to once again do his dirty work, the enigmatic paranormal known as Midnight finally arrived in Washington D.C. As she began to track down Keith Remsen in order to feed upon his dreaming mind, we flash over to the lair of the evil Doctor Kleinmann himself, who has finally seen the cybernetic monstrosity that his minions have made him.

Raving on about the horrible existence that his backfired scheme has inflicted upon himself, the evil Doctor then gloated to his sinister minions about the fate that he has delivered to the young Remsen, a fate disguised as a beautiful foreign princess. With that, we then flash back to the present, while Keith helps yet another person deal with their mental problems via their dreams.

This time, Keith found himself in the dream of one Mr. Steel, a man who couldn't bring himself to face his over-controlling nature, a quirk that eventually drove his wife to leave him. Finally sorting out these issues inside the man's head, Keith got himself pulled out by his sister, Teddy, and watched as Doctor Ballad helped to set the man on the road to mental recovery.

After Mr. Steel was sent on his way, Doctor Ballad told Keith that he'd found out, through professional contacts, that Doctor Kleinmann was indeed still alive, and rebuilding his laboratory. Angry about this, Keith decided to try and figure out just how to get even with the man, once and for all, for killing his parents and otherwise destroying his life.

Failing at this, Keith decided to go out for the night, when he finally encountered Midnight, who'd been tracking him down all day. As she planned her assault on the dreamwalker, Midnight was monitored from afar by Doctor Kleinmann and his minions, who were doing so via several cybernetic implants that they'd used to... enhance Midnight and her powers.

Leading Keith off, Midnight almost managed to get her hooks on him, when his sister Teddy interrupted their almost-kiss. Of course, Keith (not knowing any better) got rid of his sister so he could hook up with this attractive woman that'd shown obvious interest in him, and when they were alone, she attacked him with her bizarre, vampiric kiss.

With that, the two paranormals' perceptions shifted into the mental realm, where Midnight had the upper hand in their fight until Keith simply let go, allowing Midnight access to all of his various dream images at once. Collected from various minds while he tried to help them, the mental imagery was simply too much, too fast, and Midnight fell before Keith's crafty tricks, fleeing into the night.

While monitoring Midnight, Doctor Kleinmann discovered that she'd failed, and he couldn't single Keith's dreaming pattern out of the various images he'd assaulted her mind with. Of course, he revealed that he did manage to get ahold of Teddy Remsen's dream patterns, thanks to a fleeting contact between her and Midnight earlier, and as such, had access to her subconscious mind.

And that was an access that he could use to get at Nightmask from afar...

Note: now, the next issue blurb in Nightmask #4 is entitled 'Kingdom of the Gnome', by which a body can reasonably assume that the evil Doctor Kleinmann battles with Nightmask again. In all likelihood, Keith would've done this to get Kleinmann out of his sister's head, as well as to gain personal satisfaction from his defeat. Unfortunately, this tale was never told... until twenty years later.

This Untold Tale of the New Universe finally wraps up this first major story line in the Nightmask series, and I'll be adding a summary of it as soon as I can.

Peter Barron was an accountant. Well, more correctly, a mob accountant. When he decided to testify against his employers in exchange for immunity from prosecution himself, Barron agreed, tired of living under the shadow of criminal minds. Once he agreed to do so, he and his family were placed in the Witness Protection Program, but this wasn't enough to spare him.

You see, the mobsters he'd turned in found out where he was headed, and they put a bomb in the car that the Witness Protection people were using to ship him to safety. While en route to a witness safe house, Barron stopped the car on the behest of his daughter, who'd spotted a wounded dog on the roadside. While he and an agent went to check it out, the bomb detonated, wiping out his family.

Though his family was gone, Barron continued on, headed to another safehouse. Unfortunately, the mob found this one as well, and placed yet another bomb in the place, powerful enough to totally demolish the house. Barron escaped again, this time through a secret trap door leading into a sub-basement tunnel. Of course, this time, Barron didn't escape unscathed.

Rubble from the explosion hit Barron on the head, dropping him into a coma. Unable to revive him with standard medical care, and needing Barron to testify in that mob trial, the government turned to exceptional means. They turned to the Ballad Dream Institute, believing that their so-called revolutionary dream therapies might be able to bring Barron around when other techniques had failed.

Entering the comatose Barron's mind, Keith discovered that the man was living in a total state of denial, believing that his family was still alive and living on in a bizarre, medieval realm with him. This touched a chord with Keith's own situation, having lost his family to a bomb as well, and he totally freaked out, and bugged out on helping Barron out of his coma.

Totally messed up about all this, Keith wandered off to mellow out for a time, coming back to deal with everybody in the Clinic trying to convince him to help Barron. For the greater good, mind you. As such, thinking about it for a little while, Keith agreed to re-enter Barron's dreams, emerging on the road next to the Barron family's super-tacky golden limousine.

He arrived just in time to help Barron defend his family against a gaggle of rogues bent on slaying them, rogues that looked remarkably like the mobsters he'd agreed to testify against. Studying what was happening, Keith decided that he had to play along with the bizarre, medieval aspects of the dream until he could figure out how to snap Barron out of this.

As such, his Nightmask persona rode along in the tacky royalty-mobile (complete with a big ol' crown on top) to the Barron family palace. Once he got there, Keith decided that he had to see that Barron couldn't save his dream family when these hit-men attacked next, so he could face the fact that they were gone and get on with his life - a life in the real world.

So, when he spotted these thugs scaling the walls of Castle Barron, Nightmask did nothing, allowing them to get the drop on Barron himself. When his family was in danger, Barron also found himself pinned down by Nightmask, and his dreaming family was blown up by the mobster rogues. This, of course, was exceptionally hard for Keith to do, and hard for Barron to deal with.

However, Barron finally did emerge from his apparently self-induced coma, and angry at those who slew his family, he readily testified about their shady dealings in order to put them away for a very, very long time. While this occurred, however, Keith began to come to terms with his own inner demons, and finally managed to begin dealing with his parents' fate.

This story began while Keith himself was having a dream. A rather... personal dream, you could say, as he was hanging out with several scantily clad actresses (and Lita Mercado) in a lake, when things took a turn for the bizarre. For one thing, all of the swimming girls were chased off by some... thing. A big thing. Some type of cybernetic horror girl thing with big spiky treads for legs.

After this thing roughed him up for a minute or so, Keith woke up and, investigating what the heck had happened, found out that his sister, Teddy, was also having nightmares. He'd decided that she was either just having nightmares by herself (an odd coincidence), or that she was feeling more hostility towards Keith than she was letting on.

The trick was, the bizarre thingee that Teddy manifested in his dream as referred to Keith as Nightmask, which nobody had done before. This was why Keith was so confused, as he usually had to identify himself as such first, or people just called him 'Keith' if they knew him. Perhaps this was a shade of Doctor Kleinmann's attacks on Keith, or just simply psychology, one could never tell.

Keith definitely couldn't.

At any rate, the members of the Institute had a sort of football game against the local hospital interns that next day, after which Teddy showed a whole lot of hostility towards her brother. This helped Keith to decide what was ailing his little sister, if not how to help remedy the situation. Still thinking on it, Keith and company returned to the Institute only to find somebody waiting there for them.

Introducing himself as Joe Greyfox, the youth asked Doctor Ballad if he could help his father, as he'd taken a lot of 'natural sleeping herbs' and put himself out for over two days now. Ballad refused, thinking this a matter for simple (and immediate) medical treatment, and Joe wandered off, though not before Teddy offered to try and help herself.

Having felt useless of late, she just wanted to do something helpful and, seeing the opportunity, she offered. Of course, she only managed to do this after dodging Keith, who wanted to face Teddy about her rather... grumpy behavior during the day. After she managed this, she bailed out on the place, and nobody noticed that she was gone until much later that night.

Using his dream powers, Keith discovered that Teddy was asleep - and in the dreams of Joe Greyfox's father! She was having some sort of verbal argument with Joe's brother about medical treatment in the dream, when all was suddenly replaced by something calling itself Tarenyawajon, Sender of Dreams! This freaked Teddy out, of course, and woke her up suddenly.

Naturally, this had a disruptive effect on Keith, who'd been in Teddy's dream at the time. Once he'd recovered from this, he went out looking for Teddy, and found the house she'd run to in her dreams. Breaking in, Keith discovered the two Greyfox brothers arguing over their father's bed, with Teddy off to one side, crying. Naturally, this set Keith off... and how!

He started a fight with David (the other Greyfox son) thinking Teddy was being held here against her will, until she told him otherwise. After this, Keith offered to try and help the old man himself, and another brief scuffle ensued between the two Greyfox brothers. Joe won in the end, and Keith then managed to finally get to sleep - and into the comatose man's head.

There, he experienced the same dream that Teddy did, once again meeting up with this Tarenyawajon. This thing, a transformed version of David Greyfox, had Nightmask on the ropes, until a second Nightmask, Teddy herself, entered the dream and helped beat the monster back. Upon defeating this monster, Keith and Teddy woke up, and so did old man Greyfox!

Upon his revival, Charlie (the old man) accused his son David of poisoning him with herbs, at which point he pulled a gun, threatening to kill everybody in the room. Teddy, ignored by the now armed David, threw her wheelchair at the man, knocking him over the banister. This caused him to fall to his doom, as he'd broken his neck on impact.

Discussing this, the Remsen kids figured out that Charlie Greyfox must have been helping them win their battle, as they both managed to pull stunts in the dream that they'd never been able to before. However, this whole encounter did manage to show one thing: that Teddy herself also has the ability to enter the world of dreams, even if it isn't as powerful as Keith's...