The 70's Englehart/Brunner Marvel Premiere run is now available on Marvel Unlimited.
I don't blind date I make the direct market vibrate
Doctor Strange #2 Aug 1974
"A Separate Reality!"
While Silver Dagger becomes aware that Dr. Strange still lives,
Strange himself travels deeper into the Orb of Agamotto in hopes of finding it's center.
Along the way he is attacked by a giant soul stealing creature. Saved by an entity appearing as the Silver Surfer,
Strange also gets the "Surfers" aid in freeing the other souls trapped inside the creature. Realizing his physical body is missing,
Strange is taken to a castle where he finds his body among a bunch of beings resembling the Defenders and other allies of Dr. Strange.
When the Queen who appears as Valkyrie arrives, Strange is offered to stay for tea. However he refuses and the heroes attack.
Strange fights them off until the queen stops the fight and tells him that he has a choice between life or death as a way out of the Orb.
Choosing life, Strange takes a illusionary Aragorn to fly to the center of the Orb.
Script by Steve Englehart, pencils by Frank Brunner, inks by Dick Giordano
So the rumor is Strange is getting relaunched as Doctor Strange, Surgeon Supreme.
Basically Strange M.D.
DR. STRANGE: SURGEON SUPREME #1
Written by MARK WAID
Art by KEV WALKER
Cover by PHIL NOTO
The impossible has happened! Doctor Strange’s hands have been healed, restoring his surgical skills - but now he’s being torn between his obligations as the Sorcerer Supreme and as a neurosurgeon. And when he’s forced to choose which vows to uphold, who suffers most for it? After all, magic always has a cost…Be here for a brand new era of magic…and horror from Mark Waid (HISTORY OF THE MARVEL UNIVERSE) and Kev Walker (BLACK PANTHER)!
Nice. While it always prompts eye rolling when a series is relaunched with the same writer, I'm just glad that Waid is continuing to write Strange. His current run has been one of my favorites ever with the character and I did not want his time with Stephen to be over.
I just hope Marvel has plans to use Jesus Saiz elsewhere because everything he does looks so gorgeous. I'll miss him on Strange.
Have Stephen’s hands been healed before for any meaningful amount of time?
I hope this change is permanent. Strange isn't going back to just being a physician at this point. Certainly, he shouldn't. He "learned his lessons about arrogance" at this point. Magical evil sees him as a target to be eliminated. He couldn't just quit even if he wanted to. I see no particular reason now to have some trauma laid against him that gives him "extensive nerve damage" in his hands again. For what?
I've read pretty much all the Doctor Strange stories, and no, they were never fully repaired. His hands are rarely discussed in fact. However, in The Flight of Bones #1, Strange's hands are deteriorating even more and he contacts Dr. Keith Wilmott, a famous surgeon, in hope of recovery. In #4, Strange's hands seems to "recovers" but I think it means to be back as the status quo, and not fully healed.
Last edited by Morsoth; 09-11-2019 at 09:02 AM.
Doctor Strange: Sorcerer Supreme #68 Aug 1994
Stranger at My Heels
Strange continues to try and convince Stevens
to merge with him.
Script by Dan Abnett,, pencils by Melvin Rubi, inks by Rich Rankin
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Was this relaunch really necessary?
Seems like the only major difference between this and past Strange runs is Strange now has a day job, or at least his old day job. So, uh...double-identity problems, ahoy? I'm sure Waid knows what he's doing but not sure what to think about it.
Also looks like they're switching from the last costume to the classic look?
At the end of Peter B. Gillis' run, they were healed. In Gillis' run, Doc is forced to kill an innocent, which costs him his control of white magic, and he has to turn to black magic and then he fakes his death and then he actually dies, kind of, but more transcends (because he has a lot of excess power at that point) and then he is re-tied to reality. And is presented as being a wiser, kinder man. In Doctor Strange, Sorcerer Supreme #3 (March 1989) he visits his friend Morganna, who was badly injured during all of that. (He is also breaking the news to her of his engagement/wedding to Clea. Morganna gives her blessing (Heh! Pun!) noting that most other women would not survive. Morganna then comments: "I noticed something. Your hand--it doesn't tremble any more." In a caption box, it is stated: "A car crash--a surgical career ended, a mystic one begun--but the trembling never stopped without resorting to a spell--and now it has, without his noticing. He HAS changed."
This fit in nicely with the theme of Gillis' story, which was healing. A few issues earlier, Doc commented that he had learned that evil done cannot be undone, but it can be healed. And we had a couple nice issues of him healing others only to realize that he, too, had been healed.
But Gillis then left the book with issue #4 and Roy Thomas took over. In issue #9 (November 1989) he started a plotline that required Morganna to think that Doc was still dead. Oopsy! He had missed that Doc had shown himself to her after his "death." To cover up for his scripting blunder, Thomas re-wrote the above scene, stating that it was never Doc, but Clea in disguise and then she cast a forgetting spell on Morganna. So that nice healing thing was wiped out for no reason other than to cover up for Thomas' blunder.
"Age is not defined by years, but by regrets...I'm an old man now." --Fighting Yank, "Project Superpowers"