Stephen Strange: Doctor Strange Appreciation 2021

[mreddie]

Wanda? Scarlet Witch. I like her a lot, but Scarlet Witch is Scarlet Witch, and Dr Strange is well...Stephen.

I'm a DC guy, who likes select Marvel heroes (Daredevil, Dr. Strange, Wolverine ect) that I pick up if I like the writer, but I'm not really invested in the Marvel Universe as a whole.

Thus if they replace Stephen with a new Dr Strange, it's a different character for me, and I'm just not interested in reading his replacement.

Yeah, I was like that for Tony's death in CW2 for awhile. Nothing wrong with Riri but man, Bendis can't write a young woman for hell.

Don't forget, Doom killed him in Secret Wars, too.

I stopped giving a damn about Marvel knocking off their heroes years ago once I realized that they just did it for shock value and sales. Kill someone, let the supporting characters (and fans react), wait a few months, then voilà! The hero returns to life again and after a couple issues everyone forgets the death ever happened. It might make for a nice story in the short term, but knowing that death has no long term meaning in Marvel reduces all the hero death stories to cheap stunts, IMO.

I guess we'll see what they're planning soon. Maybe it's metaphorical Gotcha fans! We just meant that Strange will no longer be a surgeon any more! LOL. Get it? Death of 'doctor' Strange? LOL. Or maybe Marvel will do something novel and actually kill him off permanently. I'd be sad, but also a bit impressed.

In the meantime, I nominate Bats to be the next Sorcerer Supreme. Who better to protect the Earth dimension than man's best friend? Bats! Master of the Mystic Arts, and Best Good Boy. I'd buy that book.

Again, it's 90s Marvel again, Waid Strange was heathy enough, doing this for a sales push is cheap as hell and shows the House of Ideas needs new leadership or new editors.

[SJNeal]

Is this from a Hulk issue...?

[Clea]

Is this from a Hulk issue...?

Incredible Hulk #399.

[DigiCom]

Honestly, I'm not sure who COULD take Stephen's place.

I wouldn't accept Wanda as Sorcerer[ess] Supreme, because she has too much character baggage. And while most of it has been resolved, I don't trust current editorial not to dredge it all back up again (see: nearly every story Hank Pym had in the last 20 years)

Billy would be interesting, but he tends to come as a package deal with Teddy, Tommy, and often the other YA. I'm not sure they'd LET him carry a solo book.

Illyana could do it. She has the skills and experience. But would the X-office let her go?

Jericho had his shot. Going back to him would feel like a retread, especially if it was only temporary. "Doctor Voodoo? He's a second-string Sorcerer Supreme."

Given modern trends, I would predict a new, younger character. Who may or may not be worth it.

[Clea]

Honestly, I'm not sure who COULD take Stephen's place.

I wouldn't accept Wanda as Sorcerer[ess] Supreme, because she has too much character baggage. And while most of it has been resolved, I don't trust current editorial not to dredge it all back up again (see: nearly every story Hank Pym had in the last 20 years)

Billy would be interesting, but he tends to come as a package deal with Teddy, Tommy, and often the other YA. I'm not sure they'd LET him carry a solo book.

Illyana could do it. She has the skills and experience. But would the X-office let her go?

Jericho had his shot. Going back to him would feel like a retread, especially if it was only temporary. "Doctor Voodoo? He's a second-string Sorcerer Supreme."

Given modern trends, I would predict a new, younger character. Who may or may not be worth it.

Stephen Strange = Sorcerer Supreme since the beginning of Marvel. He's a pointless, purposeless character unless he's in this role. Any time they designate a different character to be Sorcerer Supreme, it's only a matter of time before the role reverts back to Strange. That said, Marvel has done its very best over the last few years to utterly dilute the purpose of the Sorcerer Supreme and make Strange indistinguishable from any other random magic user, so perhaps it no longer matters who is Sorcerer Supreme. I am completely ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ about this latest 'shocking' teaser. So far as I'm concerned, it's just more proof that Marvel has no idea what to do with this character.

[SJNeal]

Incredible Hulk #399.

Thanks!

[Albert1981]

I think killing off characters and bringing them back later is a creative dead end. I can list several examples of characters who didn't regain their earlier popularity after they were whacked (in my opinion): Clark Kent, Optimus Prime, Spock, Tasha Yar, Jon Snow, Jean Grey, Aunt May, Hal Jordan, Barry Allen, and Wonder Man are a few that I can think of. I don't really consider characters "dead" unless they haven't been appeared in anything for at least a few years. Those who have been gone longer seem "deader" to me. So in the movies, Strange and Vision coming back respectively in Stephen's first movie and in Infinity War didn't seem like deaths at all to me. I think readers and viewers know it's "weird" for people to "die" and then come back like nothing happened. I hope the MCU and DCEU avoids this kind of thing as much as possible. I think it hurts the comic books too.

I might not know THAT much about Strange. But I don't consider him to be a regular magic user. And there's one main reason I feel that way. For him, magic is NOT an inborn power. It is something he has mastered through personal study and enlightenment. He doesn't cast spells based around merely saying phrases without any deeper understanding required. And at least he TRIES to use spells in consistent and intelligent ways. Wizards like Ged, Gandalf, Merlin, Professor Dumbledore, and Harry Potter and magic users like Loki and Wanda were BORN with mystical powers, so they didn't have to work as hard as Stephen did because he was just a normal dude (with a reasonably sized brain). I think a lot of fans LOVE Strange because of that. I do think it helps Stephen if there is a price to be paid for the use of his magic. Going on disgusting diets might be taking things a bit too far, but I understand why Marvel did that. I find it very odd that Strange has become more of a "horror" character these days. I always thought his stories (the few that I know of), were more psychedelic than scary. But horror is a much more popular genre on screen than fantasy is, so I understand why Disney is going that route with his character as well.

[Clea]

Thanks!

My pleasure. I've always loved that line, "But I am a professional." LOL.

[DigiCom]

Stephen Strange = Sorcerer Supreme since the beginning of Marvel. He's a pointless, purposeless character unless he's in this role. Any time they designate a different character to be Sorcerer Supreme, it's only a matter of time before the role reverts back to Strange. That said, Marvel has done its very best over the last few years to utterly dilute the purpose of the Sorcerer Supreme and make Strange indistinguishable from any other random magic user, so perhaps it no longer matters who is Sorcerer Supreme. I am completely ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ about this latest 'shocking' teaser. So far as I'm concerned, it's just more proof that Marvel has no idea what to do with this character.

Technically, he only became Sorcerer Supreme in 1973, but otherwise, I agree with you.

[Clea]

Technically, he only became Sorcerer Supreme in 1973, but otherwise, I agree with you.

Well yes, of course. He was !Master of the Mystic Arts! for many years, doing Sorcerer Supreme stuff until Marvel decided to bump his title up officially once they killed off the Ancient One. Still, it's the only point for the character to stick around. !Doctor Strange: Just Another Random Magic User! is pointless.

[DigiCom]

Well yes, of course. He was !Master of the Mystic Arts! for many years, doing Sorcerer Supreme stuff until Marvel decided to bump his title up officially once they killed off the Ancient One. Still, it's the only point for the character to stick around. !Doctor Strange: Just Another Random Magic User! is pointless.

I sometimes wonder if that was a mistake. Once he was tasked with defending the Earth/universe/dimension/etc. from Primordial Evil™, it became harder and harder to come up with new threats. Even Dormy feels like small change these days. That's probably why he's been depowered so often... so he can fight on a less cosmic scale. When you can face off against Shuma-Gorath, J. Random Necromancer isn't much of a threat.

(There are ways to deal with that issue without depowering him, but I'm not convinced that the current crop of writers can handle that)

But it's too late to course-correct, so we have to play the hand we've been dealt.

[Clea]

I sometimes wonder if that was a mistake. Once he was tasked with defending the Earth/universe/dimension/etc. from Primordial Evil™, it became harder and harder to come up with new threats. Even Dormy feels like small change these days. That's probably why he's been depowered so often... so he can fight on a less cosmic scale. When you can face off against Shuma-Gorath, J. Random Necromancer isn't much of a threat.

(There are ways to deal with that issue without depowering him, but I'm not convinced that the current crop of writers can handle that)

But it's too late to course-correct, so we have to play the hand we've been dealt.

I think that Marvel did as much as they could with Strange fighting cosmic level threats. In theory, because his foes act on a cosmic/immortal timescale, they will be threatening threatening the earth dimension forever and a Sorcerer Supreme will be needed forever. In the decades he's been around, Strange has defeated these beings and saved earth/the universe multiple times. He defeated Death and is quasi-immortal as a result. He fought in a 5,000 yr long cosmic level battle (off page), he found the greatest love of his life with an immortal alien sorceress from another dimension...

What do you do with a character like that? You either take him and his supporting character set completely out of rotation, and let him becomes a sort of mythic figure in the MU that people can imagine is always out there fighting the good fight against these monstrous cosmic level forces, or you diminish him and his supporting characters and turn him into just another magic user, make his title meaningless, and turn his foes into punching bags for the superhero crowd (which is what Marvel did when they turned him into an Avenger), or you kill him off and give the much diminished, now meaningless title to some other magic user.

Can you tell interesting stories about Doctor Strange, Avenger-Just Another-Random-Magic-User who happens to have a meaningless title of Sorcerer Supreme? ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ Sure. Sometimes. I doubt they'll kill him for good any time soon because they're making bank with him over in the MCU right now, but they are kind of stuck with what to do with him in the comics now. If he goes back to spending the majority of his time fighting cosmic-level magical threats, his comic book sales will tank. In my mind, I draw a sharp line between classic Doctor Strange, and post 90s/Avengers Doctor Strange. In some ways I think of them as different characters. Classic Strange was one of my favorite Marvel characters. I'm not saying all those stories were good, but I liked that they were magic-focused. Avengers Strange I can take or leave depending on the writer and the storyline. Personally I think the best thing they could do with Strange right now would be to kill him off (temporarily), pass the Sorcerer Supreme title on to Illyana Rasputin, and then resurrect Strange in a year or so in a manner in which he could never be Sorcerer Supreme again. Then he could go back to being Doctor Strange, Avenger/Random Magic User Dude. Problem solved.

[Tulku]

Don't forget, Doom killed him in Secret Wars, too.

To be honest, I had completely forgotten that. It is pretty impressive to think that they have pulled the death ploy so many times that I can't even remember every time it has happened.

As usual, Marvel is exploiting the media. So far I have seen media outlets write "Marvel is going to kill Doctor Strange in September" and "Marvel is promising the death of the Sorcerer Supreme"---and Marvel has actually not said anything of the sort. They released an image with 5 words on it, without explanation.

My guess: it will be a Mephisto-based plot line. Doc needs to get to Mephisto's realm to overcome M's mad plan, but the only way he can sneak it "unobserved" is to die and have his soul form then battle for freedom. He defeats Mephisto, exits the realm, uses some left-over power from Mephie to revive his "dead" body and, oh look, he is back among the living.

In the meantime, I nominate Bats to be the next Sorcerer Supreme. Who better to protect the Earth dimension than man's best friend? Bats! Master of the Mystic Arts, and Best Good Boy. I'd buy that book.

Me too! Bats, with his Chew-Toy of Levitation!

[Clea]

To be honest, I had completely forgotten that. It is pretty impressive to think that they have pulled the death ploy so many times that I can't even remember every time it has happened.

As usual, Marvel is exploiting the media. So far I have seen media outlets write "Marvel is going to kill Doctor Strange in September" and "Marvel is promising the death of the Sorcerer Supreme"---and Marvel has actually not said anything of the sort. They released an image with 5 words on it, without explanation.

My guess: it will be a Mephisto-based plot line. Doc needs to get to Mephisto's realm to overcome M's mad plan, but the only way he can sneak it "unobserved" is to die and have his soul form then battle for freedom. He defeats Mephisto, exits the realm, uses some left-over power from Mephie to revive his "dead" body and, oh look, he is back among the living.

Me too! Bats, with his Chew-Toy of Levitation!

Isn't it always a Mephisto-based plot line these days?

[Hypestyle]

I see Doc has some type of presence at the Avengers Academy in California. Nice.