Originally Posted by
Kurt Busiek
I think the way you're asking the question suggests that you want Dr. Fate to occupy the same role in the DCU as Dr. Strange does in the Marvel U, and I don't think I'd bother with that, because I don't think that the Marvel and DC universes should be mirror images of one another, with all the same "slots" and different characters occupying those slots.
I think Dr. Fate should be the best Dr. Fate he can be, not an imitation Dr. Strange.
That said, while I haven't thought about Dr. Fate much, a couple of problems the character has historically had are:
1. His mask is inexpressive. That makes it hard for the character to show emotion, which is always a problem. The trouble here is, the mask looks great, so you don't want to get rid of it. It just makes it hard for emotional storytelling.
2. For long stretches of his history, Fate's personality is in the helmet, not in the person, which makes it hard for readers to care about both the person and the hero; there's an emotional disconnect. And when they make the person and the hero have the same mind, the same personality, they seem to go with a weaker or inexperienced personality, which doesn't have the presence Dr. Fate has at his best. I don't have a real solution for that, either, but it'd bear some thinking.
But the main thing I think I'd work with if playing with Dr. Fate is that DC, unlike Marvel, has a lot of interesting heroic magicians, from Fate to the Spectre to Zatanna to the Demon to Baron Winters to Traci 13 and on and on, and Fate doesn't seem to connect to those guys very often. I think it'd be interesting to set Fate up as an important member of a mystic community, rather than a lone gunfighter. Again, not sure where I'd go with that because I haven't thought about it much, but I think that might help make the character feel like his own thing, and less like Dr. Strange with no expressions.
kdb