Dr Strange

I’m not much into comic books – not DC Comics, not Marvel Comics, Japanese comics, underground comics, or graphic novels, though occasionally one or two of them grab my attention. Spiderman, the Freak Brothers, Alan Moore, etc. are fine but most of the rest leave me flat, including Superman (too powerful) and Batman (now too “dark”, “serious” and pretentious).

My favorite is Dr. Strange. Recently I caught the “movie”, if you can slap that loosely defined label on the animated idiocy they released as Marvel’s entry for this superhero. Even The Punisher got a real movie. It looks like it was done by the same people who gave us those more recent Batman animated cartoons, where Gotham City looks like it’s the 30s, everyone is so serious, etc. It seems to have gone straight to DVD, where it belongs – it sucked.

The early Dr Stranges, back in the 60s, illustrated by Steve Ditko, were by far the best. They were incredibly psychedelic, going off into dozens of crazy, bizarre, screwed-up dimensions. Dormammu looked like some weird, crazy villain, not just a ripoff of the devil in Fantasia’s “Night on Bald Mountain”, as this movie made him out to be. Dr Strange vs. the Devil? Come on.

I can't say he was as cool as Spiderman - Strange took himself too seriously and didn't seem to have a sense of humor. But he did end up on the cover of Pink Floyd's album A Saucerful of Secrets...

Dr. Strange wasn’t just a wizard, casting spells, doing magic stuff around like an overgrown Harry Potter. Any kind of magician can do that. This guy went places. Weird places. And met people. Weird people. Eternity? Dormammu? Countless bizarre alien wizards who all thought they could beat The Sorceror Supreme – including some hot sorceresses? That’s my scene. He rescued entire dimensions, saved the Universe, and protected the Ancient One. He’s the man.