Making Marvel Mine: Essential Doctor Strange Volume 1 (Strange Tales 110,111, and 114-168)

Alright, I’ve been putting this off for well over 5 months.  So let’s finally just sit down and talk about this.  I tried just talking about the behind the scenes stuff to cleanse my palette so that I could focus on the comics themselves.  Seeing how that was over a month ago, and still, no dice, I guess it didn’t quite work.  So, today, I guess I’m just going to come clean.  If I’m to be damned, I want to be damned for who I really am, and so time to slay a comic book sacred cow:  I really didn’t care much for the original Lee-Ditko Doctor Strange.

I wanted to love this book, I really did.  The Lee-Ditko team was so truly exceptional on Spider-Man, that I had pretty high expectations going into this book.  So maybe that was the problem?  But the truth is, after about halfway through, when Ditko leaves Dr. Strange (and Marvel), and a whole new creative team(s) come on board, I honestly started enjoying the book much more.

There are a number of factors here, and there’s no one person to blame.  But let’s start with Stan Lee.  Lee has always been a corporate man, happy to work on whatever there was to work on, in the name of the business.  And he can write anything, and over the last 70 years, the man pretty much HAS.  But where he really shines, not surprisingly, are on projects he really, truly cares about.  That’s why his work on Fantastic Four, Spider-Man, and Sgt. Fury stand out so much from things like *cough!* Ant-Man.  I’m not saying that he didn’t care about Dr. Strange at all, but clearly he wasn’t as invested as he was in other projects.

Then there’s the business of Steve Ditko.  Make no mistake, Ditko’s art is dazzling.  It’s a fascinating thing to look at as art.  The problem is, in my mind, that it doesn’t work as well when it comes to telling an actual story.  Part of the problem, of course, is that there’s little thinking going into the story logic.  Things just happen, because magic!  And the whole thing often falls into the familiar fantasy pitfall of “Oh no, my magic isn’t as strong as his!  But suddenly, just in the nick of time, suddenly my magic IS stronger than his!  Hurray!”  Now, I realize variations of that happen a lot in comics, but it really feels like it happens in nearly every issue.  And the blame for that lies on the plot, and for the most part, the plot is all Ditko.

And then there’s the larger agenda, what is the work actually trying to say?  Frankly, that’s muddled, at best.  Certain issues are easy enough to work out- Issue 143 is especially interesting, as it opens with Strange literally bound and gagged, and over the course of the issue uses his powers to force his antagonist throughout the issue to release him from his bonds, freeing him to finish his work.  It’s Stan Lee’s last script on the book, and the 4th to last issue for Ditko, who was wrapping up his Eternity Saga, and the story seems to be his criticism on Marvel (and Lee in particular) for trapping him and his artistic genius.  I get that.  But if the Eternity Saga is his swan song, then what is it trying to say as a whole?  I’m not really sure.  And I went looking, and as far as I can tell, no one else is either.

Every (good) review I’ve read about this book celebrates the artistic genius of Ditko’s art, but no one seems to have tried to analyze its story.  And that seems like a disservice to me, both to Ditko himself, and to the others who have followed him.  What he was trying to say mattered to him, I’m just not sure what it was.  And I’m sorry, but I think like a writer and an analyst, much more so than as an artist. I’d love to see someone who understands the work better than me analyze it and better explain to me what Ditko was trying to say, but for now, just being interesting to look at isn’t enough of a story for me.

There’s no question that Ditko single-handedly created the visual language of magic in the Marvel Universe.  I don’t in any way wish to downplay that.  But while world building is all well and good, it rings hollow to me, all style with little substance to the stories.  And unfortunately, the work that follows often gets blasted, simply for not being Ditko.  And that’s totally unfair, in my opinion, because Ditko told his story, he said what he came to say (even if it was confusing), and to simply dismiss the rest of the Essential is callous.  No, the people who followed him up weren’t really trying to do anything deep and philosophical, they were just trying to do a superhero book.  With a very odd sort of superhero.

Artistically, there’s some real gems to follow up Ditko.  Bill Everett was one of the true masters of the Golden Age of Comics, and to see his work channeling Ditko’s own weirdness is quite fascinating.  And without question I’m glad he designed Umar (more on her in a moment), not Ditko- I’ve never found Ditko’s women to appear overly feminine.  Marie Severin follows, and while her style departs even more so from Ditko’s, there’s a fascinating strangeness to it (sorry about the pun).  Issue 158’s second splash page, with the Living Tribunal explaining how he will destroy the earth, may be my favorite image from the entire book.  Dan Adkins isn’t as much fun to look at as Severin, but he still pulls wonderfully weird and alien imagery.  Adkins is also very adept at maximizing what he can do with a splash page, and using it to demonstrate scope and epic proportions.  And George Tuska’s one fill-in issue is okay, I guess.

My point is, if this is supposed to be an artist showcase book, which seems to be the general consensus and would work to explain away my issues with Ditko’s plotting, then even more so, simply writing off what came after Ditko seems unfair to me.  There’s excellent art all around in this book.

Anyway, let’s talk briefly about the main characters.  Dr. Strange was a surgeon, but also a total asshole.  Or at least that’s how he’s presented.  He won’t heal people who can’t afford his services, which, actually doesn’t seem all that unreasonable to me, med school loans are expensive.  But then he’s in a car accident, and his hands are injured beyond repair, so his career goes tits up.  He searches the world in search of any form of healer, because he’s desperate and stuff, and eventually stumbles upon the Ancient One, an old wizard in a cave in the Far East (because it’s 1963, okay?).  The Ancient One won’t cure him, but will teach him magic, so there’s that.  The Ancient One had another student, Baron Mordo, who is EVIL.  Why the Ancient One had a good student and an evil one is never really explained, but suffice it to say, Strange and Mordo grow up to be arch-enemies.

Over the course of the series we encounter other mystical enemies.  There’s Nightmare, who’s basically Dream of the Endless but evil.  Mordo occasionally works for the Dread Dormammu, fearsome leader of the Dark Dimension, whose head is constantly on fire.  There’s also the Mindless Ones, who are like Cyclops from the X-Men, but completely mindless; Umar, Dormammu’s far more competent sister and lady wizard; and some other dudes with weird names.  There’s Eternity, the physical manifestation of, well, eternity, and try not to think about that too much and just except that he’s awesome.  The Living Tribunal is basically a three headed cosmic judge god.  And there’s Clea, who lives in the Dark Dimension, but works against Dormammu, because she’s in love with Doctor Strange.  Oh, and Strange has a manservant, named Wong.  He’s more awesome now than he used to be in these comics.

And that’s basically it.  The cast doesn’t change much, Strange and Mordo really have a Superman/Lex Luthor dynamic going for them, so there’s not much room for other villains.  But the art is often very, very pretty.  Doctor Strange is alright and all, if that’s what you’re into.  It just turns out, I’m not that into it.  Your mileage may vary, I suppose, but no matter what, my one suggestion when reading it is this: please don’t let the “Cult of Ditko” ruin the back half of this collection for you.  There’s plenty of fascinating, artsy comics in it after he leaves.  Don’t blame them for simply not being what came before, okay?