Essential Doctor Strange #1

Plot

Cultists who oppose Harry Potter books and Dungeons and Dragons games claim that those books somehow contain instruction in real occult magic. 'Fraid not. If you want to learn real black magic spells that actually work, you should start here.

The high Marvel Silver Age prose style, rich in polysyllabic adjective and epithet, seems odd and dated anymore in the mouths of mere superheroes. But it still seems natural coming from the likes of Dr. Strange, the Ancient One, and Dormammu. In fact, you can't imagine mystic, hyperintelligent characters speaking any other way.

The perennial problem with occult themes in comic books is that they seem to be full of arbitrary, drop-in plot devices that lack the campy, contrafactual charm of "scientific" explanations. But Dr. Strange does it right. The repeated use of murky characters and symbols like the Crimson Bands of Cyttorak, the Omnipotent Oshtur, the eternal Vishanti and the all-seeing Eye of Agamotto gives the magic presented here internal consistency and the appearance of a system.

Steve Ditko's art, of course, defined the look of Dr. Strange; it is vaguely psychedelic, much more impressionistic than the art of Jack Kirby, and well suited to drawing the weird dimensional landscapes seen here. This material is presented as just the inked line art, without colour. The art itself is strong enough to stand up to the loss of the original colours, which were made by primitive printing processes in the original books in any case.

Other classic artists who contribute here include the much cleaner and more conventionally Marvellish Bill Everett, and the dark stylings of Marie Severin.

Most of the important characters from the Dr. Strange mythos, including the Ancient One, Baron Mordo, the dread Dormammu, Umar the Unspeakable, and Clea are included here.

This book covers the entire run of Dr. Strange in -Strange Tales-, which he shared with Nick Fury, Agent of Shield. Many of the covers that are printed here refer to the other stories, but you also get some fine Steranko cover art as a lagniappe here. True believers, assemble. This is great stuff.