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Early DR STRANGE by Stan Lee and Steve Ditko, with Commentary
Kayden Hughes
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James Rivera
Brody Brown
Jayden Russell
Gavin Bell
Dominic Bennett
Evan Morgan
Tyler Campbell
Christian Cox
Daniel Powell
Kayden Sanders
Yes! When he first appeared, Dr Strange seemed almost secret, as if not meant for everyone. His short strip was in the back of STRANGE TALES, starring the flamboyant Human Torch, and Dr Strange was not mentioned on the cover at all until HIS sixth episode (and that only a discreet blurb without a picture). The stories were more than a little creepy and well, strange. Lee and Ditko continued turning out the fantasy/horror one-shots that they had been enjoyably doing for years but added a continuing protagonist.
I would say that Mandrake was not much of an inspiration for Strange, but radio's CHANDU THE MAGICIAN was. Both sorcerors had an elderly teacher in Tibet they could call upon for guidance, both were Americans who had learned magic in the East, both used incantations. Another big influence seems to me to have been the 1963 version of THE RAVEN. After that movie came out, Dr Strange gradually lost his sinister, quasi-Asian features and became much more conventional-looking. He rather resembled Vincent Price, in fact. Trimming that mustache and eyebrows with those odd upward spikes helped, of course.
Jaxon Sanders
In STRANGE TALES# 126, Strange became more colorful and overtly super-heroic, more in line with the general Marvel tone. He entered the dimension of Dormammu for a real (mystic) slugfest, and his somber dark blue cloak was replaced by a bright red cape with yellow trim and a pointed collar that gave him a distinctive outline very useful for artists. And of course, in the long decades since, he has been humbled, broken, rebuilt, died and come back, become "NEW! SHOCKING!" gone back to the basics, and all the other fates comic book heroes endure.
But this is Dr Strange as he was, when you picked up a copy of a comic off the newsstand and there was no way to tell what you were getting into. From STRANGE TALES# 120, May 1964, "The House of Shadows!"
At first the strip was called DR STRANGE, MASTER OF BLACK MAGIC! But I suppose Stan thought better of it (maybe a few letters pointed out that traditionally you can't use Black Magic for good purposes and they really didn't want to show Strange sacrificing animals, putting curses on his enemies or raising the dead to use as servants. So he became "Master of the Mystics Arts." Fair enough. Very nice Ditko splash page, moody but not cluttered. We open with Strange heading down the street in his full outfit, not bothering with a concealing trenchcoat or slouch hat or anything. He's becoming known to the public as more than a sort of urban legend at this point. (In the first story he's just "a name spoken in whispers.")
Blake Williams
I'm positive I've sat through this plot more than once in Old Time Radio shows, a reporter going into a seemingly haunted house. LIGHTS OUT, maybe. I love the faces Ditko gives to his bystanders, they have personality and individuality. And throughout this story, the crowd shows that tough-minded New Yawk attitude that wouldn't be impressed by the sky falling in. Naming the reporter "Brinkly" takes nerve, it'd be like a story today where the woman anchor is called "Couric."
Get in there, Alan! Now we see Dr Strange do a little astral traveling. His spirit is made up of ectoplasm, apparently, the same as ghosts, and it sure looks like a ghost to us. It's just as well no one tried to start a conversation with the immobile body of Strange while the spirit form was flitting about. ("Huh! What a snob, just ignored me.") There's the amulet opening to reveal a crystal eye which floats up to fasten on Strange's forehead. So now he has an All-Seeing Eye talisman in front of his own Third Eye.. gotta be powerful mojo there. Uh-oh, things don't look good for Allan Stevens. He should have covered the dog show at Madison Square Garden instead.
Jayden Martinez
This is Stan Lee's knack of bringing the fantastic into sobering contact with the mundane. A powerful sorceror being told, "Quit shovin' back there, Mac!". That's a neat shimmer around Strange in the lower left. It looks as if Ditko used some White-Out to draw lines through the art and break up the solidity. Page six is classic Ditko before he moved into the pyschedlic light shows of the following year. Enough gloom and shadows and swirling mists to choke a Shoggoth.
Luke Cox
Page 7: Here Dr Strange rattles of the bizarre names of the various beings he calls on. The idea is that, rather than using his own magical abilities, he draws on the much greater supernatural powers of higher beings. These are just random names now, although they will be fleshed out and gives histories in years to come. It's interesting that Strange calls upon the Dread Dormammu, who will soon be revealed as a malevolent tyrant and one of our hero's biggest enemies (if not THE biggest). By drawing on Dormammu, Strange is in effect recognizing him and perhaps giving the Dread One some sort of worship. Perhaps he doesn't quite realize the implications at this point. "You dare speak thus to ME?!" Dang, if I had a nickel for every time Stan used that line, I could buy a pizza.
Carter Turner
Page 8, and there's the secret of the House of Shadows. Whoa. Maybe just a bit like the legendary Gardinels? You know, from Manly Wade Wellman stories? Those eyes are surreal.
Isaac Clark
Last page: I have to say Strange looks rather like your traditional villainous necromancer dismissing a demon in that top row of panels. That's quite the joker, saying what they just saw in front of them was "trick photography, like the do in the movies." And here's the payoff of the whole affair. The scoffing, hard-nosing skeptical crowd draws back as Dr Strange returns... way back. Stan just loved those long-winded purple-prose closing captions and they work just fine.
Liam Bailey
Wyatt Phillips
Connor Turner
Dylan Ramirez
Hunter Lee
Matthew Taylor
Ethan Barnes
Ayden Taylor
Evan Sullivan
Page 1. Holy cow. This is heavy stuff from the subconscious of Steve Ditko. Imagine you are ten or eleven, and you just finished a light-hearted Human Torch strip in the first half of the comic, all colorful and sassy, typically super-hero stuff. Then you come to this and it takes your breath away. What is going on here? Who is that ominous figure on an evil unicorn, prodding a sort of red spider-critter toward an all-white ghost? Why is the ground wet? Who knows? Why is
there a sinister eye in the shrubbery, or for that matter why are there tentacles uncoiling from it. Because it's the universe where nightmares come from. It has its own logic. It's a universe away from Johnny Storm's carefree laughter as he plays tag with some masked bank robber.
Kevin Thompson
Page 2. Dang. I am STILL not sure what we're looking at in this first panel. Your guess is as good as mine. Then we meet the villain. Quite a concept, "Nightmare," the ruler of the dimension where we go when we dream. Dr Strange would tangle with characters who are embodied concepts rather than living creatures of flesh and blood, most notably Eternity itself (the universe within a human outline) but nothing could beat Nightmare.
Panel Two shows how Ditko envisioned Evil as Eastern Europe, with ragged peasants in chains and hulking brutal secret police. Why is the ground wet, again? Beats me. Maybe they were hosing the blood away. Nightmare has a sort of David Bowie-look there; Ditko basically associated short neat Brylcreem hair with everything decent, while dry wild shaggy hair was a sign of degeneracy. I bet as the Sixties hit and the streets were filled with longhaired bearded freaks, he got all agitated and thought it was a sign of the end times. Panel four is evocative. Is Nightmare being shown his two enemies in a pair of eyes... Sure seems like it. Panel 5 is another mood-setting glimpse into the nightmare world. Is that some robed denizen going on a mission there? Hard to say. And what are those drops splashing into a blob of something or other, Sheesh. When we see Dr Strange himself in his "shadowy candlelit apartment", he seems downright normal after where we just were.
Robert Baker
Page 3. Here the representatives of everything sane and established and authoritative admit they have failed. A uniformed cop and a doctor with his black bag say they are useless against this sleeping sickness and have come in desperation to the Unknown for help. All that's missing is a college professor. It's funny that in a few years, Ditko would likely have not included this scene (if he did a mystic character at all). After he went overboard with Ayn Rand, he showed all useful knowledge as coming from Logic and Reason, with of course no room for grey because everything was either All Good or All Evil with no shadings. After Rand, I don't think he would have shown Dr Strange as anything other than a charlatan to be exposed by the hero.
Ian King
Page 4.
Interesting that Strange invokes Dormammu when casting a spell. At this point, Stan was just making up wild names but of course we soon get to actually meet Dormammu.You know it's a bad-ass dimension when you have to walk between giant rattlesnake fangs!
Connor Watson
Page 5. Nightmare seems to have captured the souls (or spiritual essences or ectoplasm or whatever) of the humans he has affected with his sleep spell. That's a typical Ditko version of a cell they're trapped in The floating demon head with a door for a mouth is also classic Ditko. You notice in panel four, that when Strange steps through that door, there is no back to the demonhead he just entered.. .it's just a doorway in open space. That's quite a drop in panel 6, watch your step, Doc.
Adam Price
Page 6. The cross-hatched area around Nightmare's bolt is a nice touch. It makes the blast itself look brighter by contrast. Quick thinking there, Dr Strange. That sash is not there just as a fashion statement. I am sure he could also dip it in water, twist it and give Nightmare a stinging wet-towel sort of snap. ("That's what I think of you, Nightmare.")
Samuel Hall
Page 7. Here is where Nightmare does that Nelson laugh from the Simpsons. ("HA-ha!") Got ya. Strange should have backed down the path but he stepped up on the platform and now he's screwed. That Spinybeast has zero cuddle factor. Not sure just what that Thing is at the bottom of the crevice but I don't like the looks of it.
Easton Phillips
Page 8."May the mighty Dormammu be your slave!"- oh, Stan, really? That's just asking for trouble.
Alexander Young
Benjamin Diaz
Sebastian Peterson
Brandon Mitchell
Liam Rogers
Wyatt Cruz
Kayden Parker
Owen Davis
Charles Long
Oliver Rodriguez
Clunky, ungraceful inking by George Roussos (then calling himself Bell). Ditko would not have agreed to it of course, but comics history might have turned off quite differently if he had provided pencils and not inked them himself.
For one thing, he could have easily handled a third monthly strip, He was still doing stories for Charlton at this time,. Maybe a new character of his own, maybe taking over the Avengers after Kirby had moved on.
But also, having another inker would let Stan make corrections and changes to the penciled art, Ditko's unfinished figures were often hard to distinguish from each other, and when the inked art came back in, there wasn't time to make changes if Stan didn't like something or had decided to take the story somewhere else,
But increasingly Ditko would have been enraged by such changes. It may have been standard comics practice at the time... that's why there were editors in the first place.. but I can't see him putting up with it gracefully,
Jack Wilson
He stalks
Luis Smith
Not the warmest smile you'd see that day, that's for sure,
Connor Lopez
Adrian White
Hunter Clark
Josiah Bailey
Caleb Moore
Carson Brown
Ryder Perez
Brody Rodriguez
You just get back to your own dimension
From STRANGE TALES# 118, back in March 1964, Dr Strange as I liked him best. The very earliest tales, before the red cloak, when even Stan Lee and Steve Ditko didn't seem too sure about who this Dr Strange was or what he could do. Ditko's visuals are absolutely wonderful in this one, the plot is fondly reminiscent of a 1950s drive-in sci-fi movie and the whole thing just works very well. And the dark undertones have a gravitas that would be soon lost. Here, Dr Strange is not the Sorceror Supreme... he is the Master of BLACK MAGIC!
Colton Martinez
Like the wings on Hawkman's helmet/mask, the red Cloak of Levitation was a badge of honor bestowed upon Doctor Strange following his defeat of Dormammu in Strange Tales #127 (Dec 1964).
Similarly, Hawkman "earned his (Honor) Wings" in Brave & Bold #42 (Jul 1962) following his defeat of the recently escaped Byth Rok, the Thangarian "master thief" and changeling whose earlier pursuit through space had brought Hawkman & Hawkgirl to Earth in the first place.
Yes, that was the in~story explanation for the red cloak with yellow trim and for the new amulet. From Lee and Ditko's point of view, my guess is that it was a move to make the strip brighter and more super~heroish. Blue costume, red cape and yellow trim had worked for Superman.
There was also the artist's device of instant recognizability from part of the character. Ditko had said he wanted the hero to be identifiable even if the reader only saw a glove or outline. The curved hooks on Strange's new cloak certainly did this.
Cooper Scott
Looking over the first year of the strip, Dr Strange quickly became less exotic~looking and more typically heroic in a short time. The odd barbs on eyebrows and mustache, the slanted half~closed eyes and thin body were all soon lost as Strange became more average in appearance.
Strange, particularly in these early stories, always fascinated me as a good guy with one foot firmly in the darkness, conducting his business in unlisted areas of reality in places too weird for mundane humanity even to imagine. I note also that many of the early stories (the debut story with Nightmare, for example) have Strange confronting the victims with misdeeds of their own and Scaring them Straight.
Jack Jenkins
Lucas Lopez
Grayson Murphy
Thomas Moore
Zachary Brooks
Lucas Stewart
Jacob Myers
Adrian Hughes
Angel Miller
Jason Turner
Pretty sure this is a retread of some earlier story.
Christopher Baker
I remember a pre-code comic about this, where a reporter entered a supposedly haunted house, experienced nothing out of the ordinary, and came out the next morning... only for all the bystanders to run away in fear. Then the reader finally got a good look at him, his flesh was rotten and falling off exposed bone, with the implication being that the house had killed him and made him a living dead without him even noticing.
Think it was an EC story, might've been Atlas.
Eli Allen
Ack! Sounds great. Love pre-Code horror.
I seem to remember an Old Time Radio show from the 1940s with a similar plot. LIGHTS OUT maybe or QUIET, PLEASE,. I used to listen to those shows on CDs while driving at night and got myself properly creeped out!
Lucas Miller
Almost certainly. Stan cranked out so many short horror stories all through the 1950s, he had to dress up the same plots over and over. It's really only by chance that you happen to read one of those old stories and think, Hey! They reused this for Dr Strange or the Fantastic Four,
David Thomas
Matthew Torres
Grayson Morgan
David Ward
Joshua Allen
Asher Bennett
The doctor will freak you out now
From STRANGE TALES# 110, July 1963. I could write a book about the early appearances of this character. Dr Strange WAS Strange, anyway you look at him. He was inspired in par by an old radio series CHANDU THE MAGICIAN, also a Westerner who learned sorcery and who called for help on his ancient Tibetan teacher known as Yogi (not a bear). A few months after the strip started, the movie THE RAVEN was released and Dr Strange lost his vaguely Asian features and began to look more like Vincent Price. The duels between Strange and Mordo seem to be influenced by the wizardly fight between Price and Boris Karloff in that fine little horror/comedy.
Page One. What a weird outfit for a Silver Age hero. A loose long-sleeved tunic with a high curved collar, long orange gloves with black speckles, orange sash around the waist and an abstract symbol on the tunic of a demon or bat or something. Not to mention an elaborate gold amulet as big as his face...!
Carter Ward
Page Two. Dr Strange acted like a doctor. His receptionist saw you in, you told him your symptoms, he made a diagnosis and decided on the treatment. (Those upward barbed shapes on his mustache and eyebrows, along with the very high white streaks in the hair, gave Strange an unsettling and demonic look. This disappeared quickly as he became more conventional looking.)
Jose Howard
Page Three.Here's the beginning of that great Ditko imagery. Dreams are pink bubbles that float over the sleeper, and in them are twisting dripping paths hanging in space. A shadowy figure wrapped in chains, standing in bare briars. The white ghostly spirit of a man leaves his seemingly dead body and enters someone else's dream ... creepy art.
And right from the start, Dr Strange encounters conceptual beings. Beside human sorcerors and dimensional tyrants, he spends much of his career tangling with abstract incarnations. Nightmare, Eternity, Death, Despair....
Colton Flores
There's a page missing.
The story has no end.
Asher Roberts
Now you can have your very own Eye of Agamotto errr Buddha.
luckymojo.com
Charles Watson
Confound it. My apologies, I do that at least once when I try to post. Let me know if there's a page of Popeye or something up by mistake,
Sebastian Gutierrez
Of course the 1963 epic CLEOPATRA with Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton was a big hit at the time, So not only did Strange meet her, but so did a time-traveling Iron Man over in TALES OF SUSPENSE,
Jaxson Butler
Eli Morales
Matthew Gray
Joseph Fisher
Caleb Nguyen
Camden Scott
Luis Allen
Eli Young
Grayson Howard
I think someone dressed up as her in a book too, was it Sue?
Levi Wood
Strange was bluffing.
In one of your previous posts he let Mordo live because he has a no-kill code.
That was Stan's doing. Ditko had no compunctions about Evil getting what it deserved.
Mason Martinez
Tom Wolfe even mentions this story in his 1964 THE ELECTRIC KOOL-AID ACID TEST. “Kesey is young, serene and his face is lineless and round and smooth as a baby’s as he sits for hours on end reading comic books, absorbed in the plunging purple Steve Ditko shadows of Doctor Strange.”
This led to him making a guest appearance in a DR STRANGE #180 (written by Roy Thomas and drawn by Gene Colan with Tom Palmer inks) running into Strange and Clea in Times Square at New Years Eve.
Luis Barnes
Oh, I DO have a vague memory of that! Black wig and everything,
And of course in FF #19, Sue was back in ancient Egypt and got herself in time-appropriate garb,
Jordan Ross
Ah, I remember now, it was Karen in Daredevil #5.
Isaac Ramirez
>The mighty mormammu
Another of Dormammu and Rorkannu's bros?
Aiden Stewart
Of course, people do violate their personal moral codes as well as professional ethics, Maybe if angered enough or feeling in immediate moral danger, even Dr Strange might have crossed the line,
And Steve Ditko might not have minded the hero killing a villain, but the Comics Code Authority sure did, Back that page would go, to be rewritten or redrawn.
Tyler Thompson
I don't mind that panel at ALL! Thank you.
Carter Myers
Good heavens, that movie was on everyone's mind that year, I should watch him sometime,
Austin Lewis
Dormammu's mom??
Stan's editor should have caught that, No, wait...
Ayden Wood
A lot of later reprints changed it to Dormammu, but I think the initial intent might have been to have them be different names. Mormammu got mentioned pretty often in early stories, too often for it to be a typo.
Caleb Allen
Oh, wait. Here's that page from DR STRANGE #180 in 1969.
Tom Wolfe was a celebrity in that era, one of the best-known of the New Journalists, Sometimes I knew what he was talking about in his books, not always,
Him and Hunter S Thompson,...
Samuel Allen
Journey into Mystery #75 had a "the house itself is a ghost" story
Ian Brooks
It's called "tinkering around with names til you get it right".
Jace Long
Huh. I never noticed that.
I did catch that Valtorr sometimes manifested Vapors and sometimes Vipers, but no reason why he/sher/it couldn't have both.
Austin Diaz
Here's Sue indulging some daydreams,
Benjamin Campbell
Ian Adams
Sue indulging in her daydreams leads to her fucking Namor
John Thomas
Gabriel Martinez
I always thought she never really loved Reed. She kept that engagement hanging for so many years, But the fame and luxury of being in the Fantastic Four were worth it,
David Foster
Nathan Evans
Cameron Gutierrez
Nolan Gonzalez
Lincoln Evans
Why am I remembering it as a skiing accident that fucked up Strange's hands in his origin?
Robert Ward
Grayson Richardson
That was someone else. Schemer I think?
Hudson Morris
Joseph Stewart
Page 1. It sure seems Stan Lee had little faith in the Dr Strange strip getting anywhere. Maybe he was thinking of the failed Dr Droom stories in AMAZING ADVENTURES not long earlier and didn't expect a revamping of Droom to become popular. According to a letter he wrote to a fanzine, he didn't feel the character was anything special but maybe something could be done with it.
Brayden Sullivan
Page 2. The reference to India is another clue that Stan was thinking of the Old Time Radio show CHANDU THE MAGICIAN. The locale would soon be changed to Tibet. Of course, Tibet was not only the site of LOST HORIZON but where everyone from the Shadow to Mandrake the Magician learned their outre skills.
John Stewart
Page 3. In a typical TALES OF SUSPENSE or STRANGE TALES story of that time, Stephen Strange would be being set up to be the villain here. His pride and arrogance would lead to him being punished and humbled, and in a real way, that's what does happen to him here.
Strange's disinterest in doing charity work is oddly foreshadowing Ditko's own later beliefs. Stan scripted this dialogue but at that point Ditko was still talking to him and I wonder how much of Stange's hubris they worked out between them.
Jackson Flores
Page 5. You would think the Ancient One would know better than to call on Dormammu for help. The Doylean answer of course is that Stan is just throwing out nonsense names without giving any thought to what beings they represent. But the Watsonian answer? Hmmm, well I suppose a mystic can siphon off power from Dormammu without the Dread One being aware of it. I'm not sure how the technical aspect of invoking these beings works.
The little model of the Ancient One on his throne reminds of us of Voodoo dolls, of course. Another neat little understated touch.
Luke Jackson
No, I just found it, it was from a re-imagining of Dr Strange's origin in Strange #1 (Nov. 2004). I always assumed that was his canon accident, it was just a Marvel Knights story.
Carson Howard
Page 6. Some absolutely great visuals from Steve Ditko. The beams from Mordo's eye, the iron clamp which can't be seen in a mirror. When he was on his game, Ditko's imagination was up there with the all-time greats in comics.
Isaiah Campbell
Page 7. Panel one, that design in the window was an homage to the Spirit's home in the Will Eisner classic strip. How an underground crypt had a window is beyond me.
So Stephen Strange faces a crisis he never expected to have to deal with. He is a completely lost soul, only concerned with himself? Or will he step up and do the right thing? The snows have eased up enough that he can leave now, get back home and make some money as a consultant. Forget about the Ancient One and Mordo, they're not his problems.
Nicholas Collins
Check out that final panel. Strange is still being called "Master of Black Magic," rather than the "Master of the Mystic Arts" And the close-up of his eye shows it is gaining the epicanthic lid fold, what most Westerners in those days inaccurately called "slanted." Like Dr Droom before him, Strange acquires quasi-Asian facial features as part of learning mysticism.
With STRANGE TALES# 121 (June 1964) Ditko drops this and Strange returns to his previous white American face. We'll never know why he did this at this point, but I will keep bringing up my pet theory that Ditko saw the 1963 movie THE RAVEN with Vincent Price and Boris Karloff* and this influenced him.
____
*They were in the movie. They didn't go to theater with him, that is. Sheesh.
Xavier Rivera
Dr Strange fans would be well advised to watch THE RAVEN. Aside from the comic book connections, it's a fun movie with a great cast, Boris Karloff, Vincent Price, Peter Lorre and a young Jack Nicholson,.
Christian Jackson
Hudson Ward
At first, Strange and Mordo were shown fistfighting in their astral forms,. After THE RAVEN, the beams of light from hands began,
Ian Thomas
Asher Cruz
Gavin Scott
Evan Sanders
Looks interesting
Jaxson Peterson
Nathan Roberts
What I heard is that Ditko just showed up with the art for the first Dr. Strange story one day without having had any kind of dicussion with Stan about the creation of a new hero, and Stan figured he'd just dialogue it and run it in one of the books that was meant to have a Ditko 5 pager. It explains his "eh, we'll see how it's received" attitude towards it.
Liam Lewis
I really enjoyed it, But it IS a Roger Corman drive-in flick from the early 1960s, Someone used to today's pacing and having everything CGI tweaked might not like it,
One joy was seeing Karloff trying to hide his annoyance at Lorre's irrepressible ad-libs. "Oh, so you're defending yourself, you coward!' Quite a line.
Grayson Peterson
Personally I really like how Dormammu was at first treated as just another power to be called upon of but later on his real nature was revealed.
Hudson Morgan
That seems entirely possible, But Dr Strange was so obviously a reworking of the Dr Droom strip that Stan had done with Jack Kirby in AMAZING ADVENTURES that he must have noticed it,
A Western physician travels to Tibet, undergoes a trial and is endowed with mystic powers by an elderly wise man, This is marked by his getting quasi-Asian eyes,. Stan must have thought, this seems kinda familiar,.
Josiah Reyes
We can try to reconcile how the Ancient One still called on Dormammu for power even though he knew what the guy was like.
It could be just necessity. There were only so many extra-dimensional beings you could invoke, I guess,
Andrew Cook
Strange's origin story was a clear retooling of Dr. Droom's origin, but the earlier stories weren't very similar at all.
Note that Ditko had worked on that one particular Droom story too, it was one of the rare but cool Ditko-inking-Kirby jobs.
Mason Garcia
>Someone used having everything CGI tweaked might not like it
Modern CGI doesn't hold a candle to 80s special effects as far as I'm concerned, which this reminds me more of, so it's cool.
Jaxson Adams
They were already publishing Dr. Strange, people asked for an origin and they had deadlines, so why not just recycle? Figured that's the resoning.
Ryder Lopez
I prefer practical effects, myself. Actors actually interacting with real physical objects is just more convincing to me than the best cartoon objects that can be created.
CGI is so thoroughly used now to change minor defects, adjust color and shadows and texture, that many recent movies look like animation to me. Nothing is genuine,
Adam Wilson
Ditko inking Kirby pencils gave us some amazing stories! FANTASTIC FOUR #13 and HULK #2 are worth studying,
I never understood why the Dr Droom stories started out all mystical and supernatural, then switched to alien invaders. Quite a misjudgement in my opinion,. Maybe this was what Ditko saw as a mistake that could be corrected,.
Chase Nelson
I mean, I prefer practical on certain stuff too, just look at Little Shop of Horrors. But stuff like the Ghostbusters' proton packs and the like still looks flawless to me. Also, even the CGI in Jurassic Park.
Michael Perry
I think it goes back further than the origin story, though. Ditko had inked Kirby's pencils on the first Droom story, He saw the series flop and might have thought, :"This would work with all-out mysticism." But at this point, we'll never know.
Isaiah Bennett
Yeah, I'm not one to advocate getting rid of CGI entirely. Obviously it's a tool with many uses, When it's rushed or not well executed, though, it tends to take me out of the movie,
We certainly would not have had any of the Marvel superhero movies if they had to be done with practical effects.
John Bennett
Brandon Young
Eh, honestly I could do without most of the MCU.
Hell, the Dr. Strange movie focused way too much on the CGI fest and forgot the mood and incantations.
Dylan Johnson
Luis Murphy
Owen Allen
I like the little flavor text in the credits.
Brandon Collins
Hunter Cox
Jack Lewis
I enjoyed the way Stan kidded the letterers in those credits. It'd be ":Written with inspiration by Stan Lee" and "Drawn with Genius by Steve Ditko." Then "Inked with a Pen by Sam Rosen."
Carson Reed
I would have liked the movie to have much more of a shadowy, eerie mood.
And I never took to the way the write Strange as being just like Tony Stark in attitude and speech,. Ugh! All wrong. But then, the movies seem to be doing well enough even if I don't like them,.
Caleb Collins
Still like the "Black Magic" tag more than "Mystic Arts." It sounds ominous and dangerous to fool around with.
Caleb Martinez
Heh. If they were being as faithful as possible to these early strips, the movies would have had an Asian actor play Dr Strange,
Easton Jones
Heh, looks like Spidey
Samuel Butler
I have to wonder if the features and skin tone on Wong would go over all that well today,
Joseph Richardson
Zachary Martin
Landon Parker
Aaron Murphy
Marvel stopped coloring Asians light yellow in the 70s. How to color different races' skin was big back-and-forth issue in the four color printing era.
Mason Wilson
Jayden Bennett
I remember that! The Shang-Chi book had letters from someone called William Wu who kept objecting to the yellow coloring (and the way Shang-Chi himself was orange). It looks as if Marvel took his criticism seriously enough to change things,
Jace Young
Christopher Walker
Tyler Thompson
Jace Morgan
Asher Rivera
Matthew Cruz
Sebastian Rogers
This is such a classic Steve Ditko scene, the hero striding past a crowd that is criticizing or doubting him, He used this over and over after leaving Marvel.
"Everyone else is wrong, I know I'M right! That's all that matters."
Jackson White
Basically how Ditko was in real life too.
Isaac Sanchez
i can't help but wonder why the Screaming Idol had its mouth always closed tight,
Joseph Miller
I'm almost afraid to start discussing Ditko's beliefs because his critics and defenders will come in and start a debate that will last all night and not get anywhere, It's an interesting topic but frankly I'm burned out on it,
Levi Hughes
Anthony Garcia
The visual of immaterial astral images throwing punches doesn't seem that inspired to me. Pretty soon we'll see the elaborate beams and cages and shields of mystic force,.
Jonathan Walker
he looks like a vampire
Justin Williams
What's really droll is that people have ALWAYS thought that civilization was going to Hell in a handbasket, the morals were lost, that people were degenerate and decadent, You see references to this viewpoint back to ancient Greece and Egypt.
I think what causes this is people thinking that what they were taught as child to be virtues were really enacted in the world,. Then, when they see the gulf between the ideals and the reality, they feel let down and think the world has gone downhill.
Alexander Walker
So true. Personally, I like my Masters of Black Magic on the sinister side. It gives them so charisma,
Jonathan Nguyen
>Farewell Doctor Doom
Henry Cox
I wholeheartedly believe that Ditko brought his true A-game to Dr Strange. That first shot of Eternity remains fantastic to this day. I frankly dislike his Spider-Man a good deal.
Kevin Hall
Wow! all these years and that eluded me
Gabriel Bailey
A stunning moment in the story and one of the greatest imaginative concepts in all of comics! So glad you brought it to mind.
Gabriel James
Luke Scott
Juan Gomez
Ayden Hughes
Brody Rogers
Parker Hall
Joseph Morris
Carter Bailey
Ethan Bell
Isaac Peterson
John Ramirez
Josiah Mitchell
Jose Jones
Aiden Green
Henry Wright
Ryder Cooper
Kayden Turner
Chase Gutierrez
Adrian Hill
Jonathan Collins
Kevin Gonzalez
Jonathan Morgan
Looks to me as if Spidey is at a crossroads between various whacky dimensions. With no way home, you might say.
Angel Cook
Panel 4: "It's actually for Chicken Kreplach! I KNEW it!"
Jackson Lewis
Panel 4: "It's actually for Chicken Kreplach. I KNEW it!'
Stan's sense of humor cropped up no matter what,
Gabriel Powell
Jack Kirby never seemed comfortable drawing Ditko's characters. Spider-Man's costume in particular gave him trouble, one reason why we saw Ditko ink Kirby's pencils in SPIDER-MAN #8 and STRANGE TALES ANNUAL #2 ton keep the look up to model.
Dr Strange as drawn by Kirby seemed too mundane and solid to appeal to me, However, this portrait shot in the first panel really works. (JOURNEY INTO MYSTERY #108.)
Samuel Thompson
Both of them had issues with each others' characters. Ditko did a Strange story where Strange fights Loki and Thor also eventually shows up, both of them look pretty off there.
Lincoln Sanders
god he used to look exactly like Vincent Price. that's awesome!
Wyatt Harris
And for years Strange's dialogue sounded like Vincent Price in my head. Perfect casting.
Gavin Rodriguez
Yes, that story should be coming up,
Ditko and KIrby had such wildly different design senses. Somehow, though, Ditko inks over Kirby pencils worked great!
Henry Morales
From FANTASTIC FOUR #27. I imagine Dr Strange grumbling crankily under his breath, "Reading the memories of stupid fish! How did I get tangled up in this?"
Evan Green
From SPIDER-MAN ANNUAL #2. Now, we all know the average mortal being cannot see Doc's astral image until he wills it to be so, So it seems he made himself manifest so he could give that little sermon.
As to WHY the astral image is walking around on the street, rather than drifting high overhead, who know? Maybe Strange was looking for something he had dropped in the area the day before, like his keys
Grayson Turner
kek what a baller. i love how he explains it so casually too
Alexander Myers
Looks to me like he willed his image visible so he could yell at those darn kids.
Austin Diaz
That's also a good example of "comic book time."
All that dialogue is delivered in less than a second, In fact, Flash had time to say he can't stop his punch while he's throwing that punch...!
No way to explain this, really. It's just the way comics worked.
Connor Rivera
I like the idea of Dr Strange as being a little grouchy.
Easton Rivera
David Johnson
Noah Allen
well clearly Marvel humans are all speedsters. get with the times, grandpa
Nathan Jones
Xavier Miller
Carter Reed
Brody Harris
This means they all sound like Alvin and the Chipmunks,
Cameron Parker
Robert Miller
Gabriel Peterson
Camden Brooks
Josiah Ross
George Roussos' crude inks are not doing Ditko any favors, that's for sure, I'd say Roussos was tied with Paul Reinman for my least favorite inker of that era,
Jackson Wilson
Man Doc is taking a thrashing here.
Andrew Jones
This right here smells dubious to me, With all his studies of folklore and legend, Strange certainly knew what Loki was all about, He should be the last person to fall for this.
Let me try for a No-Prize. Hmm. Okay, Loki has caught Strange off guard and is using his magic to mislead Doc. And because he has no personal experience with the Asgardian type of sorcery, Doc falls for it, Best I can do.
Bentley Bell
miss when gods were actually a big deal.
David Torres
Agreed. And this isn't even Loki in person, only his spirit form,
Landon Stewart
Marvel played it extremely loose with norse mythology. The mythological Loki isn't really a villain.
Grayson Butler
I'd say he is considering he aided the Jotnar in Ragnarok. The Aesir didn't hate the Jotnar for no reason; the Jotnar wanted to undo the world and sink it back into primordial substance
Luis Walker
Did Stephen actually use the term "ZOUNDS!" in-story during this OG run?
Charles Phillips
Waskt loki just a trickster?
Levi Taylor
In some of the Norse myths, yes. But he also got worse over time,. He tricked Hodur into killing Balder, which brought about Ragnarok,. That's about as bad as you can get, causing the destruction of the world and the deaths of all the gods.
Aiden Miller
Not that I recall and I've been re-reading them the past day or so, It seems like something Thor or another Asgardian might say,
Dylan Young
Marvel did create their own version of Norse mythology, But Loki tricked Hodur into killing Balder, which brought about Ragnarok. So he was responsible for the destruction of the world and the deaths of all the goods. That qualifies as villainous,.
Tyler Long
they had a clever idea with it being simply another incarnation of norse deities post ragnarok. the Thor of the previous cycle was even a ginger that died fighting the midgard serpent, and it was the survivors of this cataclysm that birthed the new Odin by grabbing Gungnir and being forced to synthesize. of course this isn't entirely compatible with the Odin Force being the product of Vili and Ve, since two of the aforementioned survivors of Ragnarok WERE Vile and Ve, it's just nice that they tried to explain it at all
Austin Flores
:"Gods," not "goods." See why I sympathize with Stan and "Bob Banner?"
Cooper Butler
Sounds like Roy Thomas at work! He loved explaing comic book riddles and contradictions and he had such a literary mind,.
I remember a lengthy stretch where "our" Thor learned how Wagner's operas and the Volsunga Saga and all that were tied together, Pretty cultured for a lowly funnybook.
Tyler Powell
>"N-NO! IT ISN'T FAIR!"
Mason Thomas
strange looking like he's holding in the shit of his life
Julian Brooks
I rather resent Roy Thomas for creating Red Norvell. right place, right time AND Red gets to 1v1 Thor easily? pardon my french but fuck off with that nonsense
Camden Ortiz
Very early Strange wasn't all that powerful, he always relied more on outwitting his opponent that overpowering them directly. You see even against the likes of Aggamon. I doubt Loki would have been able to get the better of the Ancient One like that.
Loki used to a powerhouse and it's sad to see what Marvel have turned him into today to appeal to the fujoshi crowd.