Customer Reviews

Doctor Strange, Vol. 1 (Marvel Masterworks) (Dr. Strange)

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It's a pleasure to see Steve Ditko's imaginative artwork nicely reproduced and decently colored in this volume, starring Marvel's most unusual "superhero." The stories can be a bit hokey, but they're still entertaining, clean and concise. Unlike today's comics, these 10 page episodes contained a lot of plot. Unfortunately, Marvel decided not to include the covers of the books, except on the back of the dust jacket. It's true that Dr. Strange was never featured prominently on the covers, but it would have been nice to have them here just the same. Regardless, if you're a Ditko fan or a Dr. Strange fan, this volume belongs in your library.

This is vintage fantastic stuff from the incredible steve ditko (art) and cool writing of Stan Lee. It was worth every penny of it's purchase when it was in print. Now that's it's not I would wait till they put it back into print. Which they will eventually so I would have to pay three times the price of the original book. The price on the ones offered here are just too high and greed based probably. As for the work itself it's brilliant sorcery tales done as only lee and ditko could do them. With Doctor strange meeting many of the key characters of his mythology and most of his most important villians too. I enjoyed the series even after Ditko left it as it was drawn by other great artists like Bill Everett but the ditko stuff is probably the most fun. And these stories have never looked better than they do in this reprint. So hopefully they will reprint this so you wont get ripped off by a superhigh price.

These early adventures of Doctor Strange are perhaps the best work done by the team of Steve Ditko and Stan Lee, as well as the best stories in the Dr. Strange saga. There was creative fervor and passion for the work, wild creativity, beautiful artwork and a fun, hokey old-fashioned feel as well. As a bridge between the corny genre work of the 1950s (horror, sci-fi, etc.) and the modern Marvel aesthetic, these stories are real gems. They're certainly my favorites, and they stand the test of time in ways that other Silver Age comics do not. Make Mine Marvel! (ReadThatAgain book reviews)

This edition of Marvel Masterworks featuring Dr. Strange is amazing still to this day. Ditko creates a magical, surreal, awe inspiring world for Dr. Strange to inhabit. His use of abstract shapes and color are still dazzeling to this day. A wonderfully fun read, with still amazingly original looking characters like The Dread Dormamu and Nightmare are still incredible to look at. While Ditko may not have been as prolific as King Kirby, his gift for telling a story through the movement of the human form and through the emotion of the characters facial expressions is still unmatched to this day. Seek this one out at all cost, it will hold your attention from first page to last. This is a must have whether you're a Ditko fan or not. Seek this one out, it doesnt dissapoint.

When I first started reading Doctor Strange the Master of the Mystic Arts had his own comic book and had stopped sharing "Strange Tales" with Nick Fury, Agent of S.H.I.E.L.D., at which point he was being drawn by Gene Colan one of my favorite artists. By that point in the history of the Marvel Universe the original Doctor Strange artist, Steve Ditko, was working for Charlton Comics, which was below even Archie Comics on the comic book scale as far as my friends and I were concerned. Having already formed a negative opinion of Ditko's artwork it was rather strange, for lack of a better word, to see Ditko was the original artist on Spider-Man when I went back to the pre-John Romita (Sr.) days. But for years I continued to totally dismiss Ditko's art and writer Stan Lee's bombastic prose on "Doctor Strange." But now I am rethinking my position.

When Marvel put out its "Essential" volumes of the first several years of "The Amazing Spider-Man," reproducing the comics in black & white, I noticed that Steve Ditko was a master of composition. When Jim Steranko was doing the art for the "Nick Fury" half of "Strange Tales" he was the hottest comic artist on the planet, but his exotic artwork did not show the complete command of composition exhibited by Ditko. His best work was "Spider-Man," but with "Doctor Strange" there was an added dimension to his drawings as he had to create visual representations for the spells that Strange and his enemies were hurling back and forth at each other.

Volume 1 of "Doctor Strange" in the Marvel Masterworks series collects the Master of the Mystic Art's half of issues #110, #111, and #114-142 of "Strange Tales." In fact, when Dr. Strange was first introduced by Lee and Ditko he was a "Master of Black Magic." In his first adventure (#110) he enters a man's dream and combats his ancient foe Nightmare. His next pair of battles are both against the magic of Baron Mordo and it is not until his fourth appearance (#115) that we finally get to "The Origin of Dr. Strange." Once upon a time Dr. Stephen Strange was a brilliant surgeon who suffered nerve damage to his hands after an auto accident. Told he would never be able to perform an operation again, the desperate Strange travels to a remote mountain top in India in search of the legendary Ancient One. Convinced that there are more important things to do in this world than make money off of surgery, Strange becomes a disciple of the Ancient One and begins to learn the long-dead mystic arts.

In the beginning Dr. Strange was sharing "Strange Tales" with the Human Torch, and it was not until issue #121 that he finally got the bottom third of the cover. The rest of the Marvel Universe rarely intruded on Dr. Strange's world, although there was a fight against Loki (#123) from "The Mighty Thor." Baron Mordo and Nightmare were recurring villains, and while the Dread Dormammu was usually invoked by Mordo at just about every opportunity, Strange did not have his first fight with his greatest foe until issue #126. Dormammu was one of the coolest Marvel villains, dressed up in his funky costume while his face is basically living flame. Once he appears he starts popping up a lot, along with Clea, a young woman of Dormammu's alien dimension who risks here life to help the noble strange who dares to challenge the powerful being.

Strange uses his amulet to help Dormammu defend his dimension from the Mindless Ones, which puts the dread one (temporarily) in Strange's debt (#127). As a result Strange gets a new cape and a more wondrous amulet from the Ancient One, which makes the comic seem a bit like a computer game where you get neat new powers as you ascend levels. With the almost constant battles between Dr. Strange and either Dormammu or Mordo (or both) things get a bit repetitious and redundant, but sometimes someone new shows up, such as Eternity (#138). Still, it is clear that Doctor Strange was a second-class citizen in the Marvel Universe, even though he had a great house in Greenwich Village and his faithful servant, Wong. It could be that Lee was laying on the weird names in the mystic spells a bit much or that Ditko's drawing of magic was a tad hokey. Or it could be that he was just so insulated from the rest of the Marvel superheroes during this period. Whatever the reason, what we have here is good, but not great. However, the character does get there for a while down the mystic road, around what should be Volume 3 in this series.

If you like Steve Ditko, this comic is definitely for you. The drawings are so great that you almost don't pay attention to whether the story is worthwhile or not. It's difficult to find such an imagination displayed in the drawings of a comic. I definitely recommend it.

Lee and Kirby's Dr. Strange was an unusual title in the Marvel lineup. Doc doesn't interact much with others nor on diverse levels. He often talks either to himself (half of his monologue being "By the all-seeing eye, etc. etc.") or he praises the Ancient One who either comes up with some help at the end or is too weak to do much. So when the title worked, it was because Doc had Clea around to interact with or he was tearing around some really weird dimensions. This Masterworks volume is probably the best because it has Ditko's phenomenal settings and it includes the multi-issue battle with Dormammu--one of the best story arcs at that time. (The second volume of Dr. Strange, though the writers are working with great artists, never captures the humanity we saw when Ditko's Doc was running for his life from Dormammu.)