Doctor Strange Epic Collection, Volume 1: Master of the Mystic Arts by Stan Lee and Steve Ditko, et al.

Exciting occult adventures, fabulously illustrated

Back in the 1980s and ‘90s, when I was actively reading comics, Doctor Strange was a solid B-list Marvel hero. He has since been elevated to A-list status in the MCU, with the help of Benedict Cumberbatch. Doctor Strange made his debut in Strange Tales #110, published in July of 1963. Strange Tales was a Marvel anthology comic in which Doctor Strange got second billing behind a cover feature starring the Human Torch and the Thing, or Nick Fury, Agent of SHIELD. In 2018, Marvel collected the initial stories of Doctor Strange in one of their Epic Collection paperbacks. Doctor Strange, Volume 1 reprints the sorcerer’s stories from issues 110 to 146 of Strange Tales, ending in July 1966. The volume also includes Amazing Spider-Man Annual #2, which features a Spider-Man/Strange team-up. Marvel’s Epic Collection paperbacks reprint classic comics in full-color on bright white matte-coated paper.

Doctor Strange is the creation of writer Stan Lee and artist Steve Ditko. Probably the second most important artist in Marvel history, behind Jack Kirby, Ditko was also the co-creator of Spider-Man. While the stories written by Lee in this early Doctor Strange run are perfectly good comic narratives of their era, it is really Ditko that elevates these comics into the realm of the exceptional. Doctor Strange might not be the most charismatic or flamboyant of Marvel characters, but his mystic adventures really allow an artist to let his imagination run wild. Judging from the fantastic visuals of these Strange Tales, Ditko’s imagination was virtually boundless. There had been plenty of other wizard heroes in comics prior to Doctor Strange, most notably DC’s Doctor Fate, but Ditko really took the mystic genre to a whole new level. With his mind-blowing depictions of parallel universes and alternate dimensions, Ditko came up with amazingly innovative graphics that set the template for decades of Doctor Strange adventures to come. The character of Eternity, who debuts in Strange Tales #138, is a work of pure genius. I always thought Ditko’s art for Spider-Man was a little awkward (although he did create some superbly original villains), but his art for Doctor Strange is really quite elegant and lyrical. Ditko’s work here combines the solid fundamental rendering skills of a classic newspaper comic artist (think Milton Caniff or Alex Toth), with the surreal and bizarre imaginings of a sci-fi/fantasy visionary.

The stories are quite exciting as well. Lee and Ditko find myriad ways to employ Doctor Strange’s power of astral projection, his cloak of levitation, and the Eye of Agamotto, so the magic never gets too repetitive. The half-issue length of each installment actually helps, since there’s no space to waste on filler or overly drawn-out plot lines. Within this run of Strange Tales, there is a continuing story that runs through the course of at least a dozen issues, which was quite unusual for the 1960s. The only drawback to that strategy is that it limits the number of featured villains, since Baron Mordo and the Dread Dormammu appear in almost every installment. Also appearing briefly in this run are Nightmare, Tiboro, Loki, Xandu, and the Demon (later called Demonicus).

Having never been a particular enthusiast of Doctor Strange nor an avid fan of Ditko, I was really pleasantly surprised by the exceptional quality of these comics. I have read quite a few of these Marvel Epic Collections, and these stories from Strange Tales hold up well amongst the best of what Marvel had to offer in the early- to mid-’60s.