written by Mark Waid
drawn by Kev Walker
colored by Java Tartaglia
A few years ago, I bought a reprint of the seminal 2006 Doctor Strange story "The Oath" which is so well-regarded that a character introduced in that series actually had a fairly prominent role in the 2016 feature film adaptation. Because it was an old and quite popular story, I decided against reviewing it.
It did however, inspire me to pick up a few more volumes of Doctor Strange stories, including his team-up with Doctor Doom from the 1990s by comics legends Roger Stern and Mike Mignola, and compilations of much more recent runs by Jason Aaron and Chris Bachalo...and most recently Mark Waid and Jesus Saiz. I'm a little embarrassed to say that, for all of the hundreds of reviews I've posted on this blog, I haven't reviewed any of those volumes, even though most of them were very good reads.
Well, I intend to remedy that now.
In "Surgeon Supreme," Stephen Strange works part time as a surgeon at McCarthy Medical Institute, having regained the use of his hands. He is only called in for the most complicated of cases, which only he can handle with his surgeon's skills. His administrator, Doctor Hagen, respects his other duties as Sorceror Supreme, but also requires that Strange keep magic out of the operating theater, an arrangement with which he has no problem. A serious problem does arise, however, when mysterious attacks start taking place in New York with villains wielding powerful magical weapons which appear eerily familiar to Strange. To get to the bottom of this mystery, Strange may need the help of another of his colleagues at the hospital, Dr. Anthony Ludgate, aka Doctor Druid.
As someone who grew up reading mostly Spider-Man, Hulk and Daredevil comics, I confess I never really encountered Doctor Strange unless he showed up in any of those books. He featured quite prominently in J. Michael Straczynski's run on The Amazing Spider-Man, including, most infamously, the hated "One More Day" storyline, and had, before that, appeared in Kevin Smith's well-regarded "Guardian Devil" storyline in the pages of Daredevil. In both cases, Doctor Strange was less of a character and more of a plot device, a means for the lead character to access magic that he would need to advance the story. About the only Dr. Strange-centric story that I read before finally picking up "The Oath" was the Strange miniseries by Straczynski, Samm Barnes and Brandon Peterson, intended as a soft-reboot of his origin, which read like a TV pilot or a bad Matrix knockoff. Whatever the flaws of the 2016 film, at least it avoided the pitfalls of this miniseries, which is best forgotten.
When Mark Waid took over writing the main Doctor Strange title a few years back I found his take on the character instantly engaging. He struck a fine balance between the supreme self-confidence (often bordering on arrogance) for which Strange is known as well as his extensive experience as one of the Marvel Universe's most enduring characters. It's easy to see the similarities between this Doctor Strange, and Benedict Cumberbatch's widely-known version from the Marvel Cinematic Universe. I quite enjoyed the first two volumes by Waid, in which he is joined by supremely talented artists like Jesus Saiz and Javier Pina.
In this new volume, I really enjoyed this new milieu for Strange. He's no longer the arrogant surgeon he was before his life-changing accident, but he still has all of the skills his patients desperately need. This is a very nice status quo for the character, though one that's already been upended as of writing with the whole "death of Doctor Strange" storyline.
In veteran artist Kev Walker, Waid has an extremely capable collaborator quite notably different in art style from Jesus Saiz, but whose art looks astonishing just the same. His work both manages to both evoke the work of past artists like Kevin Nowlan and Chris Bachalo, even as it stands out on its own merits. It is pure joy to behold, especially since Walker illustrates all six issues. This is in contrast to his brief stint as one of the rotating artists of The Amazing Spider-Man, for which he could never draw more than a few pages for any given issue. I'd love to see more of this guy's art.
I don't necessarily buy into the motives of the big baddie who's revealed near the end of the story, but the script seems credible enough and really kept me engaged all the way to the last issue.
I'll definitely check out and review "The Death of Doctor Strange" once the arc has been completed and collected, but for now, I am extremely satisfied with what Mark Waid and Kev Walker have done.
9/10
No comments:
Post a Comment