Stephen Strange: Doctor Strange Appreciation 2021

[DigiCom]

Sure, it's a standard of the pulps. I wonder where it came from? What inspired Lost Horizon? Was it relic of the Victorian occultism?

According to Wikipedia:

Hilton is said to have been inspired to write Lost Horizon, and to invent "Shangri-La" by reading the National Geographic Magazine articles of Joseph Rock, an Austrian-American botanist and ethnologist exploring the southwestern Chinese provinces and Tibetan borderlands. Still living in Britain at the time, Hilton was perhaps influenced by the Tibetan travel articles of early travelers in Tibet whose writings were found in the British Library.

Hilto wrote a LOT of books & short stories. Lost Horizon is simply one of the two best-known (the other being Goodbye, Mr. Chips)

[Albert1981]

Because schools are far more efficient both in singular and multiple. A school sets a standard of education that applies to everyone, not just people with the privilege or interest to learn. It is easier to learn in school and from someone who should be knowledgeable about the subject. Being self taught means a lot of trial and error, learning bad habits or just wrong things. Hence my assertion that being self taught means MORE studying and practicing than being taught by a mentor.

What's in red may be your opinion, but what actually happens in the comics and movies is up to the creators / editors. And clearly, from the comics and movies and the link you posted, your opinion is not how things work at Marvel.

And that's not entirely correct in the Doctor Strange movie. If he thought it was fake news, why would spend all that time and effort to hunt down the Ancient One?






That's a weak analogy. Being an art critic doesn't mean you don't know how to paint or sculpt. Real art critics have credentials. Rando person on the internet offering their opinion / advice does not.

It's unreasonable, in my opinion, to expect a work like Marvel comics that has multiple authors and collaborators and restrictions over 60 years to confirm to the same writing techniques as a work that has a single author with practically no restrictions. Those 'rules of magic' you posted can simply NOT be enforced over 60 plus years and every comic Marvel has released in that time period. It is simply impossible. A comic writer can set up a framework that works for him, but any other writer can come along and completely trash or ignore what he's done. And yes, different mediums require different frameworks, to do different things. Books have so much more room to develop and explore, whereas video mediums aren't concerned so much about the framework, but how it's going to look and move things along.





If that's the case, perhaps you shouldn't have said you didn't like it and agreed with others who thought it was cheap and lazy.





I never said Hiddleston's Loki was NOT taught magic by his mother Frigga, so I don't think you understand what I'm saying or thinking. I don't need some youtuber or a deleted scene to gather that information because it was outright stated and shown in one of the Loki episodes.

Nor did I say YOU were sexist, I said your negative critique of Sylvie Loki being self taught was sexist, when you give Hiddleston's male Loki a pass for being able to use ENCHANTMENT magic with zero teaching, studying, or learning. Watch the episode. Hiddleston Loki tells Sylvie Loki he does NOT know how to do ENCHANTMENT magic.

FYI, depending on the context, some people consider "chick" a derogatory sexist term.




It's meant to be awkward, since they are different versions of themselves. It can be interpreted as Loki learning to love himself, though some interpret as just another example of his narcissism.

No doubt, learning on one's own is WAY harder than being formally taught. I don't disagree with you on that. In jazz music, Reinhart, Bruback and Ellington pretty much taught themselves and I don't think anybody would question their musical bona fides. I just think for storytelling purposes, it's just better if magic users are taught. Doing magic on one's own could be interesting, but I think it's more fulfilling if there's competition with other students while learning. Rivalries can develop. Friendships could be formed. Mistakes could be made that have consequences that affect OTHER people. And would you really be entertained if Rocky Balboa and Daniel-san LaRusso were NOT taught in their movies by wise mentors? I see where you're coming from, but in MY opinion, I think it's still lame that she just mentions almost off-handedly that she learned magic on her own without any foreshadowing (again in MY view). Episode three was pretty rushed in my opinion, so that might color my views on what happened. If Sylvie was a dude, I wouldn't feel any different. Yeah, Stephen went to Nepal/Tibet to find the Ancient One, but he acted like magic was bullshit for much of their earlier interactions.

There was a time a long time ago, I would have tended to dismiss the opinions of people whose articles I read online (if they didn't work for a major publication or something). I mean, I DO respect Pauline Kael's and Roger Ebert's reviews of movies more than MOST online critics. But I've definitely softened my views over time. Just because you don't work for the New Yorker and/or the Chicago Sun-Times doesn't disqualify folks from giving really interesting and insightful opinions on blogs and videos. I appreciated how that writer took the time and made the effort to share her thoughts on magic and writing in general. And I felt I learned something from her. Definitely influenced my thinking on fantasy fiction a bit. I do agree that it IS difficult to make consistent rules for magic in comic books, but I applaud Marvel and DC for trying. I definitely don't think they should give up. I see no problem at all from taking successful ideas from other fantasy mediums IF it's possible to apply them to the comics. And to be honest, I was talking mostly about the movies and shows, not the comics. I said I was OKAY with how things went down in WandaVision. I still felt it was SOMEWHAT problematic to have Wanda (a complete magical amateur) defeat this deadly witch who has been practicing magic for CENTURIES in a matter of days. Jac and the writers did a great job of trying to make Agatha a formidable opponent with such tight time constraints, but I think a little bit more time with Agatha and Wanda interacting would have helped make the final showdown a bit better. I wouldn't call what happened cheap and lazy, but yeah, I think things were rushed. But I though it was WAY better than the REALLY quick exposition about how one learned magic on one's own. Sorry, I just don't agree with that creative decision and it has nothing to do with characters having vaginas or dicks or whatever. Regarding the word chicks, I guess you can call it sexist. But I could have easily gone the Al Bundy route and just called the ladies "leg shavers" like he did in Married with Children. Now THAT would be sexist even according to me.

I would never give Loki a pass if he learned magic on his own. I wouldn't like it either. But in my defense, I just got confused between THIS show's Loki and the Loki who died in Infinity War. This time travel/alternate reality stuff mystifies the **** out of me. You're talking to a dude who read more Hardy Boys books than comics as a kid, so these wacky concepts just feel weird to me. I get that Loki is learning to love himself and I agree with you about the narcissism stuff, but ****, this romance feels REALLY rushed from where I stand. I LIKE Hiddleston and Di Martino, but I do miss Mobius's and Loki's interactions a lot. The Loki romance is sort of displacing the Mobius/Loki bromance and I think that's a shame.

[DigiCom]

Regarding Wanda & Agatha... I liked the way Wanda won, because she DIDN'T defeat Agatha by being more powerful or knowing something her opponent didn't.

She won by using what little she knew, and a bit of social engineering. If Agatha hadn't been in full monologue mode, and actually paid attention to what was going on, she wouldn't have lost.

Instead, she was over-confident, and let herself be trapped. It was her ego that defeated her, not Wanda's training.

[DigiCom]

Oh, and you are forgetting one huge thing about Sylvie:

She isn't human.

Not only is it possible that Frost Giants have a talent for magic that humans don't, but she went on the run when she was biologically still a young child. She could have been studying on her own for CENTURIES. Given that she had nothing else to do than hide from the TVA, she may have spent more time learning than Loki did.

[Albert1981]

Deus ex machina is by definition NOT earned. It's an a$$ pull that comes from nowhere. If a writer needs to use deus ex machina, he isn't doing the work.

I'm not sure a book about Doctor Strange's death and the investigation into that will be the best example of the character, but hopefully it will do the character justice ... and not be all about Black Cat.





That article is nothing but holy jumping to conclusions, Batman!!! Haven't read Reptil, but if that writer actually had someone getting their spells from the internet, that only illustrates my point regarding the futility of these single author rules of magic advice.






What Doctor Strange stories have you read? Even in the movie Doctor Strange is dealing with creepy death cults and the supernatural threat of otherworldly Dormammu. That finger hands thing was beyond creepy. In the comics, Doctor Strange firmly has a foot in the supernatural and Lovecraftian horror. That said, the MCU is not going to go full on, wet your pants horror movie. Doesn't really fit their universe / style. I'm more curious about how they are going to water down Blade.

I read the stuff about Benjamin Franklin and the thing with Doom looking for his mother's soul. I didn't find those stories scary. I found the Monkey's Paw to be creepy as hell though. Deus-y stories I can sort of live with, if the "good guys" had got their asses kicked, overcame difficulties using their intelligence and determination, and if the stories have a somewhat ambiguous ending. I mean Platoon and the Lord of the Flies were kind of deus-y at the end, but they didn't feel TOO cheap to me, you know? I'm not a fan of Strange dying because the whole premise of the story sound gimmicky to me. But I wanna learn more about Strange, so I'm gonna have to do some "research" by reading this new book. Yeah, the Reptil stuff does prove your point about how difficult it is to have consistent rules in magic. But by not having them to a certain extent, it does hurt the magical/mystical corner of the Marvel Universe I think. Yeah, the MCU is too family-friendly to have blood-drenched horror stories, but since Marvel keeps saying this is its first horror flick, then I imagine it will be a little bit scary? I gotta ask, do you think Blade is more of a supernatural or street-level character? I feel he's more of the latter.

[DigiCom]

I gotta ask, do you think Blade is more of a supernatural or street-level character? I feel he's more of the latter.

He literally hunts vampires for a living. Nothing else. He may be street-level in power, but he's definitely a supernatural character.

[Albert1981]

Regarding Wanda & Agatha... I liked the way Wanda won, because she DIDN'T defeat Agatha by being more powerful or knowing something her opponent didn't.

She won by using what little she knew, and a bit of social engineering. If Agatha hadn't been in full monologue mode, and actually paid attention to what was going on, she wouldn't have lost.

Instead, she was over-confident, and let herself be trapped. It was her ego that defeated her, not Wanda's training.

Oh, I liked HOW Wanda won. It was pretty clever writing by Jac and her team in my opinion. She didn't magically punch her way to victory over Agatha, and I really appreciated that a lot (most MCU stuff end with the villains being dispatched that way). She used her brains and that was cool. I just wanted Agatha to be even MORE threatening and vindictive. I wanted her to act like a totally jealous bitch who was disgusted with Wanda and do some nasty reality warping to give the Scarlet Witch a hard time. That would have been crazy! But I guess budget constraints might have played a role in limiting the battle to just laser blasts/lightning bolts/fireballs or whatever.

[Albert1981]

Oh, and you are forgetting one huge thing about Sylvie:

She isn't human.

Not only is it possible that Frost Giants have a talent for magic that humans don't, but she went on the run when she was biologically still a young child. She could have been studying on her own for CENTURIES. Given that she had nothing else to do than hide from the TVA, she may have spent more time learning than Loki did.

I think you and Reviresco are on to something! Sylvie "feels" human to me. She did a lot of hand-to-hand combat earlier on with not much magic involved, so I didn't "feel" she was godly in any way. But if she has been living for centuries, I could see her learning a thing or two over time. I would prefer, I'm being redundant here, if she was trained in a "school", but maybe gods don't have time for formal education? That's why I like magic users who are not bestowed powers from others or are born with them. I think it would be impossible for Stephen to learn magic on his own because he wasn't inherently magical. That's what makes him cool in my opinion.

[Albert1981]

John is more cynical than noble, but yeah. Occult detectives have been around a very long time, at least since the mid-19th century (but you can actually make a case for one showing up in the Bible). In comics, they've been around since the very beginning: Siegel & Shuster created a character called Doctor Occult in 1935 (three years before Supes!).

The earliest Doctor Strange stories also fit that mold. It didn't really become action fantasy until Ditko changed up his art style and made him look like Ronald Coleman/Vincent Price. Since then he's gone back & forth.

I always felt like Constantine was more of a "heavy" when compared to Strange. John easily could fit into the world of "hardboiled" crime fiction (in a magical sense) in a way that Strange can't. Strange is not "tough" enough to be a magical Mike Hammer. And that's fine. I like Strange as an action/adventure character. But I think him being an occult detective would be hilarious. He's certainly quippy enough.

[DigiCom]

Oh, I liked HOW Wanda won. It was pretty clever writing by Jac and her team in my opinion. She didn't magically punch her way to victory over Agatha, and I really appreciated that a lot (most MCU stuff end with the villains being dispatched that way). She used her brains and that was cool. I just wanted Agatha to be even MORE threatening and vindictive. I wanted her to act like a totally jealous bitch who was disgusted with Wanda and do some nasty reality warping to give the Scarlet Witch a hard time. That would have been crazy! But I guess budget constraints might have played a role in limiting the battle to just laser blasts/lightning bolts/fireballs or whatever.

Yeah, budget & the pandemic screwed up a lot of things. I'm just old enough to be content with what I can get, instead of getting worked up over what might have been.

I think you and Reviresco are on to something! Sylvie "feels" human to me. She did a lot of hand-to-hand combat earlier on with not much magic involved, so I didn't "feel" she was godly in any way. But if she has been living for centuries, I could see her learning a thing or two over time. I would prefer, I'm being redundant here, if she was trained in a "school", but maybe gods don't have time for formal education? That's why I like magic users who are not bestowed powers from others or are born with them. I think it would be impossible for Stephen to learn magic on his own because he wasn't inherently magical. That's what makes him cool in my opinion.

Yeah, I can't see Asgardian royalty attending high school.

It's strongly suggested, by the way, that Frigga taught Loki more or less in secret, because she saw that he wasn't the jock type.

As for learning how to do magic on one's own... I think it would be plausible that a dedicated scholar could track down some real spell books and learn a few tricks. Not Master-level, certainly, but enough to get out of a jam. After all, where do you think all that magical knowledge came from? Somebody did the research. Somebody wrote those books. And over time, as adepts studied, together & separately, people with greater skills & power arose.

Now, I would agree that Strange was not philosophically inclined to seek out magical knowledge... until his accident, science worked great for him, and he literally had to have magic shoved in his face before he believed it. But if someone was exposed to magic at the right age, and underwent an ordeal that made it a reasonable solution for their problems? They might just go looking in old bookstores & libraries for answers.

They might even find answers.

[Albert1981]

He literally hunts vampires for a living. Nothing else. He may be street-level in power, but he's definitely a supernatural character.

I understand that. I was just wondering which way you felt he leaned more to. Blade knows how to use weapons like Hawkeye, but I don't remember him casting too many spells. I actually have watched BOTH Goodbye Mr. Chips and the Lost Horizon. The former was good, if somewhat sentimental. The latter was really interesting too. But parts of it were cut out, which really sucked. Eastern mysticism is pretty cool. I was thrilled that Strange 1 did some shooting in Nepal. I felt Madripoor in Falcon and the Winter Soldier looking like downtown Atlanta as opposed to looking like part of the Indonesian archipelago was disappointing AND lame.

[DigiCom]

I always felt like Constantine was more of a "heavy" when compared to Strange. John easily could fit into the world of "hardboiled" crime fiction (in a magical sense) in a way that Strange can't. Strange is not "tough" enough to be a magical Mike Hammer. And that's fine. I like Strange as an action/adventure character. But I think him being an occult detective would be hilarious. He's certainly quippy enough.

He's had a few occult-type stories. In fact, Flight of Bones starts out that way, until the writer chickened out and made Dormy the villain.

[DigiCom]

I understand that. I was just wondering which way you felt he leaned more to. Blade knows how to use weapons like Hawkeye, but I don't remember him casting too many spells.

Blade is a modern version of the vampire hunters from Dracula (indeed, two of his compatriots in the Tomb of Dracula comic are actually descended from Dracula characters), and similar characters like Martin Hesselius and Carnacki. He comes from a tradition where the supernatural is fought with faith, skill, strength and occasionally science. Spell-casting is actually fairly rare, and usually of the "recite from a spellbook" type.

[Albert1981]

Yeah, budget & the pandemic screwed up a lot of things. I'm just old enough to be content with what I can get, instead of getting worked up over what might have been.



Yeah, I can't see Asgardian royalty attending high school.

It's strongly suggested, by the way, that Frigga taught Loki more or less in secret, because she saw that he wasn't the jock type.

As for learning how to do magic on one's own... I think it would be plausible that a dedicated scholar could track down some real spell books and learn a few tricks. Not Master-level, certainly, but enough to get out of a jam. After all, where do you think all that magical knowledge came from? Somebody did the research. Somebody wrote those books. And over time, as adepts studied, together & separately, people with greater skills & power arose.

Now, I would agree that Strange was not philosophically inclined to seek out magical knowledge... until his accident, science worked great for him, and he literally had to have magic shoved in his face before he believed it. But if someone was exposed to magic at the right age, and underwent an ordeal that made it a reasonable solution for their problems? They might just go looking in old bookstores & libraries for answers.

They might even find answers.

Well, I think Disney is forking out LOTS of dough for the Multiverse of Madness, so I'm fairly certain we'll get a very visually entertaining movie. I wonder if the film will focus on multiverse shenanigans as opposed to Strange's quest to become Sorcerer Supreme. I like Wanda, but I would definitely like to see Clea show up. Maybe even Ghost Rider or Man-Thing. Alternate versions of Iron Man, Captain America, Quicksilver and Spider-Man would just be somewhat unappealing to me. Strange would definitely need a REASON to study magic. If it wasn't for his accident, he'd be more like Stark, Pym, Banner, Richards, and McCoy in loving science and poo-pooing magic. It appears Loki was taught in private by Frigga because yeah, he isn't the alpha male type. I consider books of magic to be like textbooks. They are meant to be used by teachers in helping to instruct students. I don't think they should be ordered by Strange using Amazon or anything. I mean, they're probably LONG out of print anyways.

[DigiCom]

Well, I think Disney is forking out LOTS of dough for the Multiverse of Madness, so I'm fairly certain we'll get a very visually entertaining movie. I wonder if the film will focus on multiverse shenanigans as opposed to Strange's quest to become Sorcerer Supreme. I like Wanda, but I would definitely like to see Clea show up. Maybe even Ghost Rider or Man-Thing. Alternate versions of Iron Man, Captain America, Quicksilver and Spider-Man would just be somewhat unappealing to me. Strange would definitely need a REASON to study magic. If it wasn't for his accident, he'd be more like Stark, Pym, Banner, Richards, and McCoy in loving science and poo-pooing magic. It appears Loki was taught in private by Frigga because yeah, he isn't the alpha male type. I consider books of magic to be like textbooks. They are meant to be used by teachers in helping to instruct students. I don't think they should be ordered by Strange using Amazon or anything. I mean, they're probably LONG out of print anyways.

We really don't know anything about MoM, so I won't even begin to speculate.

As for spellbooks, real adepts know the best place for used grimoires is Avalon.com.

(Actually an investment group. Don't bother. )