Monday, May 28, 2018

Doctor Strange: Mystic Apprentice

Doctor Strange movie tie-in

Doctor Strange: Mystic Apprentice

Eminently skip-able origin elaboration may be worth it for those who've never read the Lee/Ditko original. (*** out of *****)


It's unclear why Marvel chose to release this one-off origin issue of Doctor Strange. Perhaps it was a pilot for a new series?

Whatever the case, they needn't have bothered. The original material here reads like deleted scenes from the Doctor Strange movie covering in unnecessary detail the time Strange spent trying to master the mystic arts in Kamar-Taj. Art and story are adequate, but nothing special.

The remainder of the issue reprints the Doctor's origin story from Strange Tales #110. For anyone who hasn't read the original Stan Lee / Steve Ditko story, this is the highlight, but c'mon, who hasn't?

Just as this comic reprints that story, we reprint here our review of that story from way back in March of 2013:

There were pretty much three big talents at Marvel in the early days - Stan Lee, Jack Kirby and Steve Ditko. In my opinion, Ditko was the least of the three, his writing/plotting was generally inferior to Stan's and his art was inferior to Jack's - I'd rank it below even some of the holdovers from Timely like Don Heck.

But Steve Ditko did have a few really high notes, and one of them was the early tales of Dr. Strange in Strange Tales. Ditko co-wrote and drew this character's stories from the very beginning - this story, "Dr. Strange Master of Black Magic!".

The story opens with a very well drawn, moody scene of a man waking from a nightmare on a rainy night. The next day he visits Dr. Strange, who agrees to help him. First Strange briefly visits his aged master halfway around the world via astral projection, then later that night he actually enters the man's dream where he confronts not only the dream-figure that has been tormenting the dreamer, but also an embodiment of nightmares themselves!

Even though Dr. Strange needs a little rescuing himself by his mystic mentor, what's amazing about this story is that it manages to do all of this in just 5 pages. And Ditko really seems much more appropriate as the artist of Dr. Strange than he does of Spider-Man.

Every Dr. Strange fan ought to have read this story by now.

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