Marvel Masterworks, Volume 023: Doctor Strange Volume 1 [Strange Tales #110-111 + 114-141]

This book, which compiles the first 30 or so Doctor Strange comics from the mid-1960s, was a lot of fun. All the stories were by Stan Lee and Steve Ditko, the pair that co-created Spider-Man. Lee's writing (as always) is completely ridiculous, but since this is a story about a sorcerer who uses catchphrases like "By the Hoary Hosts of Hoggoth!", it actually sort of balances out. Steve Ditko's art is great, and I loved all his weird surrealist drawings of other dimensions.

I also really liked that at least half the book was an ongoing story, unlike most of the comics of that era, where most stories were only 1 issue long. The main story starts with Dr. Stange's two most dangerous enemies, Baron Mordo (evil wizard) and Dormammu (evil show more godlike thing from another dimension), joining forces against him. Strange has to run to stay ahead of them while also looking for a way to save the life of The Ancient One, his mentor. It gets sort of repetitive in places, and most of the villains (pretty much all of them except Dormammu and Nightmare, really) are basically interchangeable, but even so I liked it a lot. show less

Neurosurgeon Stephen Strange becomes Doctor Strange, Master of the Mystic Arts, and battles the evil forces in the universe with the use of black magic and martial arts. I vaguely remember reading Doctor Strange as a kid, but my favorite comic magician was Mandrake, so Strange was a little too, well, strange for me to love. I picked this up on a pre-movie sale and it turned out to be better than I remembered (even if I still prefer Mandrake). The art is colorful and the story lines entertaining - the baddies are evil on an epic scale and are left alive (because our heroes are good) so that they can come back and try their villainy over and over again. I'd probably not recommend that a new-comer start with these stories as they are not show more very complex plot-wise, but if you'd like to see how it all started, this is a great collection. show less

By the Hoary Hosts of Hoggoth! The wife and I went to go see the recent movie and I enjoyed it enough that I thought I owed it to myself to check out the original story line and artwork. This is 336 full color pages of Dr. Strange comics. Stan Lee and Steve Ditko came up with some pretty weird stuff and Dr. Strange probably ranks with some of the weirdest. This isn't like Lovecraft weird or Algernon Blackwood weird, but they were getting there. Most of these issues are standalone and don't really flow into one another until much later in the Strange Tales series. Not a lot of moral conflict in these first issues either. Dr. Strange never fails to do the right and selfless thing. I'm interested to see how this character evolves into the show more turn of the century. Still, you can taste the rumblings of counter-culture psychic mumbo-jumbo in these first stories. Ectoplasm, ESP, inter-dimensional travel, far east meditation powers, just to name a few. Plus it's married with classic occult tropes. Even demons and "shatan" himself are referenced. All in good fun of course. These are pretty tame but I could see how they might have freaked out some people back in the 60's. Heck, my mother would have burned these in a heartbeat if she ever found them hidden in my room in the 80's. Perhaps that's why they were so popular when they first came out. show less

I was thinking recently that I enjoyed Benedict Cumberbatch as Dr. Strange in the Avengers movies quite a bit, but didn't know a lot about the character's comics so here we are.

It's wild to me that this material follows on the heels of the first Spider-Man story by a year, because while those (IMO) have aged very well, the good doctor's first adventures have not. For all of the praise for Ditko's "psychedelic" style, there aren't really a lot of parts that wow me, and, well, Lee's writing doesn't do much either - what's Strange like as a person when he's not being a super-wizard? Why is a master of the mystic arts living in Greenwich Village? What do any of those weird things he says actually mean? Who knows! (I will reserve some praise show more here, art-wise, for the parts featuring Nightmare, who I guess is a sort of dream spirit? Ditko's design for him in the earlier stories is extremely creepy and weird, although it becomes more bland as time goes on.)

At the end of the day, this feels like 90% of older comics - long periods of time where not much happens followed by one or two issues that have something unusual/interesting going on. Probably not worth it except for diehards. show less

I truly enjoyed rediscovering my favorite comic book superhero. I was 9 when the first Dr. Strange episode came out and I still remember these stories. I think with the advance of special effects that the saga of Dr. Strange would be ripe for film development.

I truly enjoyed rediscovering my favorite comic book superhero. I was 9 when the first Dr. Strange episode came out and I still remember these stories. I think with the advance of special effects that the saga of Dr. Strange would be ripe for film development.