Doctor Strange - Becoming The Sorcerer Supreme

By 1972, Doctor Strange had had a somewhat chequered history. Created by Steve Ditko, he first appeared in Strange Tales #110 in 1963. Strange Tales was an anthology title at the time, featuring two separate stories, and Doctor Strange became a regular feature alongside, first, the solo adventures of the Human Torch, then Nick Fury, Agent of SHIELD.

In 1968, Marvel's owner, Martin Goodman, secured a better distribution deal for the company which allowed them to publish more comics. So Doctor Strange and Nick Fury both got their own titles, the latter starting with a new #1, and Doctor Strange continuing the numbering from Strange Tales with #169. Unfortunately, due to low sales, the book was cancelled in 1969 with #183.

The writer at that time, Roy Thomas, was fond of the character and included him in, first, The Sub-mariner #22, then Hulk #126, gradually assembling a mismatched team of superheroes. They debuted as The Defenders in Marvel Feature #1 in 1971, graduating to their own title the following year.

Meanwhile...

This was an interesting time at Marvel Comics. Having been "David" to DC Comics' "Goliath" for the first 10 years of their life, Marvel had now bested the giant, overtaking them in sales. Inside the company, though, not that much had changed. Martin Goodman had sold the company to Perfect Film and Chemical Company in 1968, but he had stayed on as publisher and Stan Lee was still the Editor. In 1972, however, Goodman retired, and installed his son Chip as publisher.

Chip didn't last long. Stan Lee's contract with Perfect Film - who had recently been renamed Cadence Corporation - was due for renewal in 1973, and concerned that he might leave Marvel, they promoted him to President and Publisher, ousting Chip Goodman. (Lee stepped down as President after less than a year, but he remained Publisher.)

With his new responsibilities, Lee decided it was time to step aside as Marvel's Editor-in-Chief, and named Roy Thomas as his successor. 

"Stan tried to give me the job in a kind of half-assed way. He didn't really want to relinquish his major claim to fame, which of course was being the creative force behind Marvel Comics."

So, at first, Lee divided the responsibility between Roy Thomas as Story Editor, Production Manager John Verpoorten, and Art Director Frank Giacoia. Only when this three-way management structure proved unworkable, with no one individual having final say over editorial decisions, did Lee make Thomas Editor-in-Chief.

Now Roy Thomas could give Doctor Strange a chance at another solo series, so he put him in Marvel Premiere, a comic used to showcase characters to see if there was a market for them to launch their own titles. 

The first two issues of Marvel Premiere had been devoted to The Power of Warlock, Roy Thomas's reworking of Jack Kirby and Stan Lee's "Him" (who I wrote about here.)

But then with #3, Doctor Strange debuted in a story plotted and drawn by Barry (not yet Windsor) Smith and scripted by Stan Lee. Story-wise, there's not much to it; Strange senses a mystical menace, and is spirited away to a strange land where he faces his old foe, Nightmare. However, Nightmare is working for some other, greater menace who remains a mystery. Stan Lee's scripting is typically verbose and flowery, but lacks the old spark that made his Silver Age work shine. It's not a strong start for the series, serving very much as an amuse-bouche for a meal that won't arrive for another two months, given Premiere's bi-monthly schedule.

The next issue is again drawn by Barry Smith, but it's written by Archie Goodwin, picking up the thread of a looming, unidentified menace. Goodwin gets the story going now, borrowing heavily from H. P. Lovecraft's Cthulu Mythos, and specifically citing an arcane tome called The Book of Nameless Cults which Robert E. Howard created for his contribution to the Cthulu lore, a short story called The Children of the Night. Howard even receives a credit:

Plot-wise, though, Goodwin's story owes more to Lovecraft's The Shadow Over Innsmouth, a story about a small New England town whose inhabitants all have strange features thanks to the influence of the amphibian god whom they worship.

With the next issue, Marvel Premiere #5, a problem begins to emerge with the book; yet another new writer, Gardner Fox, picks up where the previous writer had left off, along with new artist, Sam Kweskin.

This trend continues for the next few issues, with a revolving door of artists such as Frank Brunner, P. Craig Russell and Jim Starlin. At least the writer, Gardner Fox stays on until #8. Fox was a legend in the comics field, writing thousands of comic stories, most notably for DC, creating the original Flash and Hawkman during the Golden Age, and putting together the Justice League during the Silver Age. He'd quit DC in 1968 when they refused to give him (and other long-serving creators) health insurance.

Since then, he'd been concentrating on writing prose novels, something he'd done throughout his career, but in 1971, he sought work at Marvel. Now in his sixties, and with Marvel being a very different company to work for than DC, his work here feels directionless and dated. The story devolves into Strange battling and defeating one Lovecraftian monster, only to face yet another the next issue, and a lot of the time, it's as if Fox is barely paying attention to the words he puts in his characters' mouths:

What do you mean, "hints"?? She literally said don't 

go there because they used to perform living sacrifices!

Finally, with Marvel Premiere #9, Gardner Fox is replaced by Steve Englehart, and along with returning artist, Frank Brunner, Doctor Strange levitates to heights he hadn't enjoyed since his creator, Steve Ditko left the strip.

Frank Brunner had previously drawn Marvel Premiere #6 (and part of #4, after Barry Smith had taken ill in the middle of drawing it), but he had left the book because he didn't like Gardner Fox's take on Doctor Strange. "The story was dull! I just didn't like the way he was handling Doctor Strange. It wasn’t 'cosmic'. It was like Doctor Strange was a detective with magical powers. So I quit and they had a couple of fill-in artists, then Roy Thomas came to me and said, "Hey, who would you like to work with?" I had just met Steve Englehart, and we had talked about where Dr. Strange should be going, and Steve could understand the future I was conceiving for Dr. Strange, and he was into it, so I told Roy I'd like to work on it with Englehart. We'd get together and spend an afternoon or evening going over the plot and how it would develop."

Steve Englehart recalls, "We would get together every two months, have dinner, get loaded about 10 o'clock, and talk until 3 or 4. Frank would be thinking about what would look really cool, and I would talk about where I could go with Dr. Strange's consciousness, and we would come up with a sum that was greater than the parts."

Along with other comic luminaries, Alan Weiss, Jim Starlin and Al Milgrom, Englehart and Brunner would wander the streets of New York until the small hours of the morning and take inspiration from what they saw. According to Weiss, "We sort of took New York as this vast stage set. We would launch ourselves to some part we hadn't seen yet, and go explore, day or night." 

Sometimes that inspiration would make it into their work, such as a screening of Disney's Alice in Wonderland at the Lincoln Center which inspired a meeting between Doctor Strange and a hookah-smoking caterpillar, sometimes it was a grand idea that never came to fruition, like a visit to the statues of The Four Continents at U.S. Customs House from which they envisioned the statues coming to life and battling the hordes of Atlantis in a Defenders story. 

A panel from Doctor Strange vol. 2 #1

For their first story, though, Englehart and Brunner had to tie up the loose ends left by Gardner Fox's ongoing story. Over several issues, Fox had had the Doctor battle various Lovecraftian monsters, all of whom were in the service of the mysterious Shuma-Gorath. Finally, Strange meets Shuma-Gorath, an ancient evil from "before man walked the Earth." Unfortunately, he discovers that Shuma-Gorath had been gaining strength by feeding on the magical energies of Strange's mentor, the Ancient One, so in order to defeat Shuma-Gorath, he must kill the Ancient One.

Having done so, Strange takes on the mantle of The Sorcerer Supreme and the Ancient One actually ascends to a higher state of being, where he becomes one with the universe. If that all sounds a little 'Obi-Wan Kenobi', it's worth remembering that this story pre-dated Star Wars by four years.

In Marvel Premiere #12, Englehart and Brunner began what was probably their most memorable collaboration; the saga of Sise-neg. Doctor Strange goes in search of his old foe, Baron Mordo, and discovers that he's travelled into the past using a book written by Cagliostro (a real person who enjoyed a reputation as an occultist and healer in the royal courts of Europe during the 18th century, but who was later considered a social-climbing conman. Historian Thomas Carlyle called him "the quack of quacks.")

For the purpose of this story, however, he's a powerful sorcerer who has discovered the secret of "how to change the past without endangering one's present existence." Mordo, having heard that Doctor Strange has become Sorcerer Supreme, intends to alter the past so that he can obtain the mantle instead. Strange hurls himself into the time-stream in pursuit of Mordo, and catches up with him as he arrives during Cagliostro's lifetime. However, it turns out Cagliostro is actually a time-traveller from the 31st century called Sise-neg. He, too is travelling into the past because he has discovered that there's a finite amount of magical energy in the universe, and in his era, the number of magic users has vastly increased, meaning that the energy which any one of them can possess is limited. Therefore, he intends to travel back to the dawn of creation, in order to obtain all the magical energy of the universe for himself.

"And what is another term for an all-powerful being at the dawn of creation..?"

Strange and Mordo follow Sise-neg as he carries on back through time, watching as the Earth is un-created, then the sun and all the other stars blink out of existence. Finally, Sise-neg appears to them, having become all-powerful, and also now, all-knowing. He reveals that in having achieved God-hood, "I have learned the truth that everything is as it should be, if only one can see it. Reality is always in harmony." He therefore restarts time and creation exactly as it was.

With Sise-neg/Genesis claiming to be God, Stan Lee thought this was a step too far. As Frank Brunner explained:

"When the book came out, Stan finally got a hold of it, and he wrote us a letter (this is when we were in California) saying, "We can't do God! You're going to have to print in the letters column a retraction saying this is not THE God, this is just A god." Steve and I said, "Oh, come on! This is the whole point of the story! If we did that retraction of God, this is meaningless!" So, Steve happened to be on his way to Texas for something, and we cooked up this plot. We wrote a letter from a Reverend Billingsley in Texas, a fictional person, saying that one of the children in his parish brought him the comic book, and he was astounded and thrilled by it, and he said, "Wow, this is the best comic book I've ever read." And we signed it "Reverend so-and-so, Austin Texas." And when Steve was in Texas, he mailed the letter so it had the proper postmark. Then, we got a phone call from Roy, and he said, "Hey, about that retraction, I'm going to send you a letter, and instead of the retraction, I want you to print this letter." And it was our letter! We printed our letter!"

The letter from the fake "Reverend David Billingsley"

which appeared in Doctor Strange #3.

After the Sise-neg saga, which concluded in Marvel Premiere #14, Doctor Strange was given another try at carrying his own title, with his first #1.

Steve Englehart and Frank Brunner collaborated on the book until #6, at which point Brunner decided to leave. The book had gone from a bi-monthly schedule to monthly, and with the quality of art that Brunner was providing, it was difficult to maintain a monthly schedule. There had already been two reprint issues - Marvel Premiere #11, and Doctor Strange #3 - or at least, they featured two or three pages of new material which bookended a reprint of a story from the Steve Ditko era of Doctor Strange.

But also, Brunner had just run out of ideas; "I was out of storylines at that point. I mean, I felt I had done everything I could do, we'd taken him from just a magician to sorcerer supreme and he took the place of The Ancient One, and I didn't have another idea."

Some of Frank Brunner's amazing art from his time on Doctor Strange.

Steve Englehart stayed on as the writer, and whilst the title never quite reached the lofty heights it had achieved with Frank Brunner contributing to the plotting, what followed were fast-paced, trippy adventures throughout the cosmos, with some beautiful art by Gene Colan, who had drawn Doctor Strange previously in the late 1960s.

Their last story together, in 1976 - America's bicentenary year - was to be an odyssey through the "occult history of America." The story starts in typically ambitious fashion, with Doctor Strange and his lover and apprentice, Clea, travelling back to England in 1618 and meeting the philosopher Francis Bacon. Fascinated by Bacon's story New Atlantis, Strange believes it contains the seeds for England's ambitions to create a modern Utopia in the "New World", i.e. America.

The following issue, Strange and Clea travel to 1775, and join Benjamin Franklin on his boat journey to America - Franklin, who Strange is keen to point out, is "quite a ladie's man" even seduces Clea.

However, we would never find out where this story was heading, as it proved to be Steve Englehart's final issue. During his time writing Doctor Strange there had been three different Editors-in-Chief; Roy Thomas, Len Wein and Marv Wolfman:

When Gerry Conway became the fourth, and tried to address the situation of missed deadlines that was all-too-prevalent at Marvel comics at that time - and Englehart had been guilty of that on The Avengers, which he was also writing - Conway took measures to get the next Avengers issue out on time. Here's what both gentlemen had to say about what happened that led to Englehart's abrupt departure from Marvel Comics:

The title of Englehart's final Doctor Strange story was "a comment from me directly. I felt that I'd established some sort of relationship with the readers. I wanted to say goodbye to them."

And so ended one of Doctor Strange's best eras. With Englehart's abrupt departure, Marv Wolfman stepped into the breach as writer and editor.  (When each former Editor-in-Chief had stepped down from the role, they retained the title writer/editor which allowed them to have final say on their own work - a ridiculous privilege that Jim Shooter later did away with when he became Editor-in-Chief in 1978.) 

In his first issue Marv Wolfman wrote an editorial claiming that people didn't want all this philosophical, thought-provoking, clever stuff! No, what they wanted was action and villains! (There'd been plenty of both those things during Englehart's run.) 

Wolfman introduced a completely forgettable villain named Xander, then immediately undid what Englehart had done. Benjamin Franklin turns out to be an imposter, the whole thing is some unspecified "test" by the Ancient One, and Strange is demoted from being the Sorcerer Supreme. The entirety of this issue is little more than a slap in the face to Englehart.

Wolfman wrote the next few issues and an annual, during which nothing whatsoever of consequence happened, then he left. 

Doctor Strange continued until 1986, when the title was cancelled again with #81. I'm about to start reading the remainder of that run, so maybe I'll post again about it when I've finished it...

For the writing of this article, I drew on a number of sources, as follows:

Roy Thomas interviewed by Jim Amash from Alter Ego #70 published by Twomorrows Publishing. 

"An Interview With Steve Englehart" by Richard J. Arndt from Alter Ego #103 published by Twomorrows Publishing.

"The Man Who Saved The Justice League of America" by Shannon E. Riley from Back Issue #45 published by Twomorrows Publishing. 

"Of Doctors and Ducks: An Interview With Frank Brunner" by Jon B. Cooke from Comic Book Artist #6 published by Twomorrows Publishing. 

"Gerry Conway Talks Back" by Dwight R. Decker from The Comics Journal #69 published by Fantagraphics Inc.

Marvel Comics The Untold Story by Sean Howe, published by Harper Collins