REVIEW: New Avengers Annual, #1

[Vic Vega]

I thought it was a nice little tryout for a Doc ongoing, but the story itself doesn't
deal with Strange's loss as much as it shows the results of it.

I get that this is an esemble book but the loss of a major character's soul needed to be addressed in a more detailed manner than an offhand remark.

And if Doc needed blood magic to defeat that thing he is offically a whole hell of a lot weaker than he was in his own book.

[Clea]

I thought it was a nice little tryout for a Doc ongoing, but the story itself doesn't
deal with Strange's loss as much as it shows the results of it.

I get that this is an esemble book but the loss of a major character's soul needed to be addressed in a more detailed manner than an offhand remark.

And if Doc needed blood magic to defeat that thing he is offically a whole hell of a lot weaker than he was in his own book.

I hope that Marvel plans to address and ultimately rectify the fact that Strange has lost some/all of his soul. Since we've seen this mentioned before in Waid's story (The Doctor is Out), I don't assume that this situation arose because of anything happening in the pages of New Avengers. We just don't know yet what caused it. Regardless of the cause, I think it provides the basis for a terrific Dr. Strange story that could be quite insightful about his true nature, depending on how Marvel intends to play this out. When Waid mentioned this in his Strange mini-series, it seemed to come out of the blue and then was never mentioned again, but now it's resurfaced in an extremely high profile title so I assume that Hickman or someone is going to follow up on this. As a fan, I hope the resolution doesn't involve ending up with Strange being a dark, dour, soulless badass because, IMO that's simply the opposite of who Strange is. Or at least who he was in his previous solo books.

As for whether or not Strange is stronger or weaker now than he had been in the past... hmm. I am of two minds on that. He isn't all powerful or invulnerable to harm. In his own series, Strange's power level has run the gamut from being kind of a run of the mill sorcerer who had to struggle merely to fight against another human magic user like Mordo, all the way up over time to someone who has single-handedly defeated Shuma-Gorath, defeated death, and tangled with/defeated god like beings. In his own series, Strange had to struggle to overcome his opponents, often by resorting to dangerous types of magic. He quite literally destroyed himself in order to defeat Shuma-Gorath. He is willing to take extreme measures when he has to, even if it causes his own harm or death. Speaking just for myself, I don't think that every single Dr. Strange story should put him in this sort of extreme situation because the character just can't sustain this sort of constant, fundamental damage, and also just from a storytelling perspective. Strange can't always be on the verge of extreme self-destruction. After a while, it loses it's impact. For now though, I think that Strange's portrayal in the Annual and in the latest issue of NA is very much in character for Strange. He would destroy himself to save an innocent individual and the entire world if he thought he had no alternative. What's missing here though, is that in the past, when faced with seemingly overwhelming odds, Strange usually found a way to resolve the problem without sacrificing himself. Strange is clever. In the past, I suspect that Strange might have found a way to transport the other dimensional parasitic demon back to its own dimension or into a pocket dimension. This remains my fundamental issue with the whole Zom PIS. Strange has dealt with out of control Hulk in the past by sending Hulk off to a pocket dimension where Hulk could do no harm. Strange's gut reaction is 'first, do no harm.' It's a doctor thing. But anyway, I get that for the purposes of this story, Strange felt that he had no alternative except to use blood magic. That's okay so long as the writers explore and resolve the repercussions of what they've done to this character.

[GreenScar]

Wow, Marco Rudy and Stephen Strange = made for each other. An ongoing Doctor Strange series with artwork done by Rudy... that'd be ace. I wouldn't be able to get to the comic book store fast enough.