“Will Success Spoil Rock Hunter”“ (1957) marked the second collaboration between Jayne and Tashlin. Before her movie career showed any signs of real progress, she had played Rita in the original Broadway production which had featured Rock Hunter not as an ad man, but as a movie producer. At the behest of 20th Century Fox, who“d secured the rights, Tashlin would not only change the setting, but come up with quirky parody about the world of television in which shows were used to pitch all kinds of products while the shows themselves offered a vastly inferior experience for viewers when compared to motion pictures since there were no real stars in them. This was exactly the kind of narrative the studios wanted push. Since TV shows were produced in New York City then, producers cast stage actors, not celebrities like the tightly manufactured contract players each movie studio had in their stable. But alas, Hollywood did feel the heat from the competition. But as it happens so very often when a new thing comes around, the old guard will try to fight the young upstart by honing in on perceived shortcomings while failing to understand that a fundamental shift was happening in society. It is no coincidence that Tashlin gives his hero and heroine a non-typical Hollywood ending. He was very much in tune with what was around the corner, namely a younger generation that would reject a blank-eyed consumerism and the rat-race that was required from you if you wanted to own all the latest products. However Mansfield“s over the top, knowing parody of Marilyn“s nameless character of “The Seventh Year“s Itch”“ fame (released two years earlier) including an eerie imitation of Marilyn“s speech pattern and pitch, had also reached the end of the line as far as general mainstream audiences were concerned, at least on the silver screen. Marilyn“s character was also a commercial actress, Mansfield“s send-up character Rita was that, but with the Va-Va-Voom and glam factor cranked up to eleven. Even though she managed another hit film in 1963, the first American movie that featured a lead actress to appear nude on screen, her career was in decline, but fast. While she still managed a few roles in low-budget productions (mostly for movies shot outside the States), she resorted to what she did best, marketing herself and her life (or a made-up version of it) for the gossip columns of tabloid style magazines about Hollywood. In that she invented what would become a staple of has-been celebrities today, or the avenue of people being famous for being famous. If at the moment of her death, Jayne could have seen her life flash forward, she might have learnt that one of those three children on the backseat of the Electra, of her five children, these were the children from her marriage to bodybuilder and aspiring actor Mickey Hargitay, her daughter Mariska would have a very successful career on television in the future. In June 1967, Jayne was well beyond any aspirations in the medium of television in which she“d had bit parts before her short movie career came to fruition. She could not have even guessed that television, this bushy-tailed upstart rival her most famous movie had made fun of, would see an influx of talent that came from Hollywood movies, not because they had not made it big or were at the end of their run, but because people in the future got cable first and then the internet. For Jayne, who had gained a lot of weight due her heavy alcohol consumption, it was now the nightclub circuit. So then perhaps the scene her mind revisited while she was violently thrown clear of the Buick, but not with the indignity of being decapitated as many of the celebrity gossip magazines falsely and with white foaming fervor reported, the same type of publications Jayne herself had sought out as a means to build her career once, was that evening in 1964 when she was rubbing shoulders with this pop band made up of four long-haired lads from Liverpool. But there was a lot of pain that was tied to that night. Not her inability to put down the drink, that was part of her charm, she“d always thought. No, it was what Paul had later told a newspaper reporter about her and he even brought up Hefner just so he could denigrate her some more. The pictorial Hefner had shot of her on the set of her last hit film in 1963 had landed him in a Chicago court for charges of obscenity. Though the publisher had prevailed, it was an open secret that the prudes among the powers that be wanted him out of the city of brotherly love. And the studios would not touch her with a pole. “Playboy is very pro Mansfield”“, Paul McCartney had told this reporter while they probably had a good love at her expense. “They think she“s a rave. But she really is an old bag.”“ That stung badly. She“d just turned thirty-one a few weeks before she met the Beatles. Only the thing was, she and Paul never met. She was out with the other three. But maybe her last thought was with her children who sat in the rear while the front of the Buick looked exactly like it was a bandoneon, one that had reserved the last Tango just for her. But then Jayne must have thought of the devil. The devil appears when you say his name. Jayne had. And there he was in puff of smoke.
“Was the sex goddess Satan“s slave?”“, one of the headlines in the tabloids read shortly after Jayne had died at thirty-four. It was of course general knowledge that she had met the devil. She had made sure that everybody knew. Like in her early days in Hollywood when she“d hired a publicist, Jayne had milked their by chance meeting during the 1966 San Francisco Film Festival for as many photo-ops as she could find takers, and there were plenty. This was the right kind of story that sold, and she kicked it up notch when he performed a Satanic ritual in her presence, perfectly staged for the cameras, all the while she told everyone in her breathy voice who wanted to hear it that she was a devoted Catholic. That made it even more interesting. And the garbage media ate it all up. And so did the public, who was repulsed in a way that told her that every Joe out there just loved that kind of stuff. And even though you cannot date the devil, in this incarnation, he was only three years older than she, but he looked old, and wise, which was only due to his shaven head and his pitch-black chin beard. Of course, it was all pretend play. Once again, Jayne Mansfield was in on the joke. Howard Stanton Levey had worked as a photographer for the San Francisco Police Department. And having seen his share of horror the world is ready to hit you with over the head at any moment, he“d realized what fun it would be to become a superhero. And why not? Those came in all shapes and sizes. But you needed a superpower and a cool-looking costume. Being the highly gifted organist that he was, and since this was a time for all kinds of new religions that were a mix of the mystic with a healthy dose of miracle healers of the revival circuit with the right blend of new age, any guy with the chops of a carny performer could jump on that bandwagon. But it needed to be fun. A bit smoke and mirrors and Friedrich Nietzsche, Ayn Rand and H.L. Mencken and old Aleister Crowley thrown into a blender. It couldn“t be a Jesus gig, since recently the olive-skinned, raven-haired, sunglasses wearing Reverend Jim Jones had moved his Peoples Temple right into his neighborhood. A guy could be this good, but Jones had started putting on his show when he was like six years old. No, if you wanted to stand out, you“d better be in the camp of the other guy. Black was beautiful after all. So, Howard Stanton Levey painted his house black and he started to call himself Anton Szandor LaVey. And about that costume? Plastic horns and a long cape would do just nicely. And so, it was not Howard, but Anton who founded The Church of Satan in 1966, one year after Jones had come to California after he had uprooted his followers from Indiana. And 1966 was the year he met Jayne. Like Mansfield, the first thing he had done was to hire a publicist, not to get a role in a movie, but to promote his new religion. Not everybody got the joke, like not everybody had got it with her, but Jayne and he knew how powerful an illusion is once you let your spectators in on it. Your false bottom only needed to slip ever so slightly to one side. And while everybody marvels at how careless you were in letting them see what supposedly was to remain hidden and only shared between you and some trusted stagehands, you have their full attention, and while they try to figured out your other tricks, this distraction is exactly what you wanted. It seems ironic that Norma Jean desperately tried to be Marilyn until the cracks started to show. Jayne let you know right away that she was all made up. This was how you did it. Howard Stanton Levey was just another nerd who was good at playing the organ and who loved comics books, horror films and The Munsters. But once he put on his black costume that came with a clerical collar and a silver pentagram medallion, he was transformed. Just like Mansfield, he had performed his greatest trick. Jayne was no phony, not like that guy she was with. Sam Brody who didn“t get the joke and who made Jayne resort to some trickery to cover up the bruises from him beating her black and blue. It is not surprise that Sam hated LaVey from a day one. Always the consummated showman, the founder of The Church of Satan very publicly told the sweating divorce lawyer that within a year he would be dead. He had put a curse on him. Just a few months later, while visiting the theme park Jungleland USA in Thousand Oaks, Jayne“s son Zoltan, who would survive the car crash seven months later, was savagely attacked by a lion. Brody of course sued the park. And while LaVey never took his curse seriously, and he certainly could not have foreseen that putting a spell on Jayne Mansfield“s punchy boyfriend would led to Jayne“s demise, maybe he wasn“t so sure after the news of Jayne“s death and pictures of the badly destroyed silver Buick made the rounds, pics that would forever by immortalized by director and enfant terrible Kenneth Anger who featured them prominently in his book “Hollywood Babylon.”“ And in 1969 Anger cast LaVey in his movie “Invocation to my Demon Brother.”“ Anger was into the occult, the forbidden, so that came naturally. By that time, LaVey was famous enough, but even he could not have imagined that generations hence, every goth kid and singers with obvious names like Marilyn Manson would imitate him. But none would get the joke. And lo, even if unwittingly, The Beatles got into the act, too. When Fab Four from Liverpool released their White Album two years and a day after Sammy the lion had mauled young Zoltan, it was Charles Manson who told his “family”“ that the Beatles were sending him secret messages, and to this day, people will play some of the tracks backwards to see what those communications were all about. Exactly one year after Jayne“s death, director Roman Polanski showed audiences across the world that the devil was real, or at least that his followers were real. And if you joined up, like Guy Woodhouse did in “Rosemary“s Baby”“, portrayed by a devilishly handsome John Cassavetes, you got a special welcome present, like an actor who was originally cast for a role you wanted, suddenly, inexplicably going blind. An experience in terror that would have been fine as story for a horror comic from Charlton or Atlas for Steve Ditko to draw long before the expression “body horror”“ had even been invented. But in those old books, the devil was as much alive as he was in Polanski“s movie. And when his pregnant wife and some of their friends were murdered by the Manson Family, many of those gossip magazines and even papers which considered themselves above such matters, wildly speculated that there had to be some satanic connections with all those weird rituals going down at 10050 Cielo Drive, and words written all in blood. This was the zeitgeist Roy Thomas and his art team of Gene Colan and Tom Palmer tapped into when they started a new storyline for The Master of the Mystic Arts in Doctor Strange No. 175 at the end of 1968. For the start of this dark tale only an ominous title would do: “Unto Us”¦ The Sons of Satannish!”“
While it is unknown if Roy Thomas knew this story that Gene Colan had illustrated so many years earlier, it is interesting that he chose a very similar approach where the devil was concerned. While the writer had introduced the demon Supreme Satannish in the previous issue when Doctor Strange had battled Lord Nekron who had entered into a bargain with the demon for mystic powers, Thomas was very much in tune with the zeitgeist. Whereas Ditko“s stories were about Dormammu, who granted a man like Lord Nekron magical abilities well beyond his purview, Baron Mordo in this case, the demon with the flaming head had skin in the game. Strange and The Ancient One were foes he wanted to see vanquished. The Ancient One stood in his way of dominance over our world. But when he owed Doctor Strange a favor, and the mage had made Dormammu vow to refrain from any further attempts to invade our world, he used Mordo as his surrogate to destroy Strange for him. By contrast, Thomas“s story arc about the devil, with Satannish as a stand-in for the horned-one, was not literally about the devil, neither in the biblical sense nor as a character from a comic book. With the summer of love coming to a close, a new darkness had fallen across the country, one that had been around for a while, but one which became much more pronounced as the days ended sooner and there was less light all around. 1968 was the year in which Dr. Martin Luther King and Robert F. Kennedy were assassinated by mere men with guns. To tell a tale about the devil who looked like he came from an old horror comic or a storybook from Sunday School would have been laughable even when talking about the world a character like Doctor Strange occupied among other fictional creations who had gained superpowers through their exposure to radiation. But the main reason for not focusing a story about the devil on a demon called Satannish most likely had to do with the emergence of men like Marsh Heath, small men who willingly invite Satan into their hearts. Cowardly, little men who craved power and whose heads were full of contempt. Men, who had turned bitter since they felt disenfranchised from a society that was all about peace and love. Men who dwelled in basement lodgings among the shadows. Men who became dangerous once they had found a leader with charisma to spare and the willingness to go further. Or such a leader had found them. And though it would have worked perfectly in the confines of fiction, these leaders looked nothing like Anton LaVey. They did not paint their houses in a color that matched their cosplay, like Jayne had painted her house in pink and LaVey his in black. They did not invent a cool-sounding name for themselves as their secret identity, nor did they hire a publicist. In fact, these new leaders looked as ordinary as most men do. And yet, they were evil incarnated. This was smoke and mirrors all over again, but this time, there would be no false bottom. Their act was as real as it was deadly. While LaVey founded the Church of Satan, only a few miles down the road, the Reverend Jim Jones had set up a new community center. The same Jim Jones who had recruited young lawyers within the District Attorney“s office to his Peoples Temple, men who went on to falsify the birth certificates of their own children so they could bestow the paternity to their leader whom they considered their spiritual father. When director Roman Polanski made the devil appear to sire a child with Rosemary Woodhouse in the same year Roy Thomas had Doctor Strange and his love Clea encounter The Sons of Satannish, neither Polanski nor Thomas could have imagined that just a few months later a little man with long hair and a beard would show up at the Polanski residence looking for an acquaintance of his. A man who got a little upset when Sharon Tate Polanski couldn“t or wouldn“t tell him to what new address record producer Terry Melcher had moved before the Polanskis had rented the house on Cielo Drive in February 1969 and Melcher and his girlfriend Candice Bergen moved in with Melcher“s famous mother Doris Day. And little did The Beatles know that this man, who looked like many hippies during those days, would send some trusted members of his commune to this house and a second residence to commit slaughter with theories about an apocalyptic race war in their heads which circled around a song that came from a Beatles album. This was the buzz from a supposed clean acid trip promised to a gathering of 30,000 young people in Golden Gate Park by Timothy Leary, who had encouraged them to “turn on, tune in, drop out.”“ And many did just that, all the while flipping through the pages of a Doctor Strange comic by Steve Ditko during the moment, they left their physical bodies behind to visit the astral plane. No, the devil didn“t need plastic horns, a clerical collar or a cape.
It is very fitting that Doctor Strange No. 175 is a story about contrast and contradictions. When Thomas and his artists Gene Colan and Tom Palmer opened the tale, readers were invited to a take a closer look at those who were normally overlooked, those men who had no place in this new world until recently. Men who had sold their soul and who now blindly followed their leader while finally they dared to crawl up from the sewer of their bitter lives of alienation and hardship: “You are cordially invited to journey below the busy, bustling streets of Manhattan, thru the dank, sunless corridors which exist beneath our very feet”¦ and into a twilight world whose very existence few mortals suspect”¦”“ These were the first words that greeted readers. But there was more. The art by Colan and Palmer was very unusual to say the least. Seemingly disjointed, slightly tilted panels were suspended in mid-air on the page. Each panel contained a close-up of elements you might see once you entered into the sewer system of a metropolis such as New York City. There were metal bars which allowed for a glance upward to the buildings with fire escapes that seemed close but blocked off. A ladder, also made from metal, which allowed you to go deeper underground, a concrete wall which also guided your eyes to the next page. There was water and there was fire. And in the midst of it all there were several crimson-garbed men who wore monk“s cowls and hoods to cover their faces and their identities. And while these men looked the same, there was one among them whose frock was ornamented and whose posture designated him as their leader. His name was Asmodeus, and while his cohorts referred to him with the title “Excellency”“, he received word that via a mystical thing they called the “satan-sphere”“ they had been able to locate their intended targets who were Doctor Strange and the girl who“d followed him from another realm to our dimension. And what about The Master of the Mystic Arts? While Asmodeus and his obedient followers looked on from their base of operations buried in the bowels of the city, up and above ground a different picture came into view. There was sunshine and lush vegetation to behold as readers now saw the hero of this series who was leisurely strolling through Central Park with a lovely woman at his side. Now, after Clea had entered our realm and his life, a change had come over Strange. He was not wearing his blue regalia and his Cloak of Levitation, which at first glance was understandable. He“d grown more concerned with others learning of his dual identity. The thing was, though, in most of the earlier tales, Strange had only been seen in his sorcerer persona, without him going to the trouble of putting on any civilian clothes. He lived with his servant Wong in his Sanctum Sanctorum, which was his home address, his refuge and his place for work and study. Doctor Strange was always The Master of the Mystic Arts. Up to his point, he“d no life separate from his mystic persona. Strange had no friends and he never did anything for fun or recreation. It was all business, and all the business trips he took came with destinations outside from our plan of existence. Now however, he was wearing a fashionable suit with a straight, narrow cut and a dark turtleneck. And he wore a conspicuous golden amulet on a heavy golden chain that hung around his neck. His hair, which was mostly jet-black except for the striking white temples, was longer now. He had one arm around Clea who looked like she was in the early twenties at best. By contrast, the woman with the silver hair was wearing what she had been wearing the whole time: a tight purple top which came with long sleeves and funky collar, and pink pants that were even tighter and which extended to her feet. Though Colan had done away with her high heels, the way she moved and positioned her feet, created the impression that her stiletto heels were still there but that they had been rendered invisible. And her two pieces of garment were adorned with crazy patterns that might make any man dizzy from just looking at her for too long which was surely liable to happen with the way Colan and inker Palmer depicted her nubile female form. Colan had come a long way since he had drawn that nurse and poor, ill-fated Yolande. The difference between the silver-tressed woman and Stephen Strange could not have been any bigger. She was all about youth and playfulness, as evidenced when she simple started to fly, nearly giving him a heart attack in the process, since he was all about keeping up appearances, and that very much meant that he wanted to put a tight leash on how and when she used her powers. Strange, by contrast, looked like a successful, respected man in his early forties who had woken up one day only to find his life boring and uneventful. He“d gotten a divorce and was wearing some of the signifiers that told you that he was hip now. Just by looking at this couple in Central Park you could have been forgiven if he struck you as a college professor who was dating one of his students. This was the late 1960s, and this was a comic book done by men. But as with these times themselves, Thomas told readers that you had to look at the edges. Beyond the gleam of sunshine and love there was a darkness approaching fast and all-consuming. Even with Clea at his side, Strange“s thoughts are occupied with his brief encounter with the demon Satannish which readers saw in the issue before. Satannish had boasted to him about the men who worshipped him, men who had invited him into their hearts while they petitioned him for a miracle, one which would free them from their outsiders“ lot and gave them what they“d been craving all along. Not a connection with their fellow men, but power. His thoughts turned to Clea, who was not from his world of structure and routine. Had he not invited chaos into his life the same way other men did when they hooked up with a much younger woman, though with Clea multiplied by one hundred? Not to lose sight of his own priorities and to remain in control, he now told her that he needed to return to his studies, and luckily for him, he had already set her up with her own apartment. This was a couple very ordinary for this time, still the idea of free love prevailed, but barely. There was the cover for one. If you wanted a better depiction for the ominous presence of change that was about to happen to this late 60s Garden of Eden, you surely were in need of an image that hit you over the head. As crafted by Colan, Marie Severin and Tom Palmer, there was no room for subtleties or nuance in this dichotomy of wish fulfillment romance and dread. Strange and Clea were seen in the back of taxi. The young woman had fallen asleep with resting her head against his shoulder. Strange however, who with one hand ever so tightly grabbed her shoulder lest she slipped away from him, had a look on his faced that was alert, anxious and full of fear at the same time, and for good reason. Above his head there was his other self, his astral projection, but caught in a most perilous predicament. His tethered ethereal form was about to be crushed by yellow rings of dark magic that were winding ever more tightly around him. And from the look on his face readers immediately understood that should his astral form perish; his mortal body would surely die as well. And above it all, looking at this macabre tableau of a haunting visitation which so rudely intruded into what could have been a perfect romance between a man and a woman, there was the silhouetted visage of the hooded Asmodeus and his hand, which reached for Strange and Clea. This was the same terror Rosemary and Guy Woodhouse experienced. And like with the Polanski movie, it didn“t come from the devil. It came from the little men with their anger and their raw ambition, those, who would pledge their sacred immortal souls to an entity with a promise of seeing their dreams come true, exactly like Satannish had told Doctor Strange. This was the price you needed to be willing to pay.
Like the devil in “Appointment in Hades”“, who was but an observer, Satannish, The Supreme stood “far above mere antipodes of good and evil.”“ This was not a simple tale about God and the devil, but a tale of men. Even when Asmodeus begs the demon for more power like Mordo had with Dormammu, and he and his cohorts are down on their knees to give testimony to their servitude even with their bodies and their posture, he is all too human in his ambitions and his inherent treachery. Even while the men next to him on the ground say what is expected from them and what has been fed to them by the one they call “Excellency”“, the manner in which to worship a powerful, “all-wise”“ being, Asmodeus“ mind is full of schemes for his own advancement: “No, not all-wise or he would not grant our wishes for greater, ever greater might! Might that may one day be turned against him”¦!”“ Since Asmodeus knows all about deception, and duplicity is his game, once their first attempt against The Master of the Mystic Arts fails, which happened exactly like it was shown on the cover, this was how he and his cohort proceeded with a new plan of attack. His plan was all about subterfuge. Only this time, in order to control the way their deadly game played out, they went for Clea. While some readers surely wondered why Asmodeus had this much hate for the mage, other than for obvious reasons, Thomas and team took us to Clea“s new apartment, and without stating this explicitly, the way she was presented definitely gave the impression that she was a kept woman, and Clea was aware of this. Her mind was full of dark thoughts as well. She was certainly more in tune with what was going on around her than her youth let on. Even though Clea had seen her fair share of macabre things when she resided in the Dark Dimension and, once banished for her protection by The Ancient One, in the Realm Unknown, our world had made Clea morose rather quickly: “And again, the darkness! Darkness not only of the sky”¦ but of the heart of Clea! So long as the one I love is with me”¦ the shadows stand at bay!”“ At the same time, Strange was consulting The Book of The Vishanti to find out more about his enemies, which was proof how seriously he took this threat. It is then that he learns about the price that every man had to pay who sought powers from Satannish. And frankly, even he is shocked and a bit disturbed that there were those who were willing to strike a bargain such as this one: “And such is the cupidity”¦ the sheer greed of men that many would pay such blasphemous cost for the heady taste of power!”“ It is then that he realizes that the driver of the cab he and Clea rode in to her apartment now knows where she lives. As Doctor Strange now heads out of the door to rectify this negligence which might turn out rather pricey down the road, it is his servant Wong who makes it to Clea“s apartment first. The faithful Asian informs her about the danger ahead, and they flee together only to be accosted by some thugs. As Clea and Wong try to fight off the hoodlums in vain, there is Asmodeus who extends a helping hand to her and who leads her to a back alley and to safety. But when she asks the masked one who he is, the scarlet-clad disciple of Satannish reveals many of his true colors: “The accursed, spiteful humans who crawl the Earth call me by many names, my lady! They know me as mistrust, as witless fear, as blind, unthinking hatred of all that which they don“t understand! But, you shall know me as”¦ friend!”“ This was powerful stuff, but Thomas and company were just getting started. The next issue came with an appropriate dark cover by Colan and Palmer. There was the young woman Clea as she was being pulled by a hand into an open grave that belonged to none else than her lover Stephan Strange, while at the same time there was the man himself, very much alive and hurling a bolt of mystic energy towards her to take possession of her other arm and to tear her into the opposite direction. The issue opened with a distraught Doctor Strange, beautifully rendered, but small in size if compared to the huge letters that spelled out the title of the story like Will Eisner was wont to do with the name of his hero The Spirit in the old newspaper strips. But there were not just these foreboding words, “O Grave Where Is Thy Victory?”“, there were heavy sheets of rain and the crawling shadows the huge letters cast onto the ground. This was the moment when Colan and Palmer turned the series into a horror comic, some years before they would break new ground with their work on Tomb of Dracula. After a brief flashback sequence that recapped all the earlier events, equally if not better rendered than in the preceding issue, Strange does some detective work, mystical detective work that is. Now sporting a third eye, this one nested on his forehead thanks to his powerful charm The Eye of Agamotto, he finds the hoodlums who had attacked Clea and Wong earlier. Cowering in the darkness and the shadows of some buildings, shunning the light that his all-seeing eye emitted which would cast an eerie yellow light on his own face, they stand with their backs against the wall. Quickly the disguise is stripped from them by the eye“s mystical might. They are members of The Sons of Satannish. And immediately they cry out and beg their leader Asmodeus for help. But their leader had trained them well, and they now stand to fight. And they even manage to trap Strange while they beat a retreat to their subterranean lair. Strange manages to free himself, only to be remotely imprisoned again by a sneering Asmodeus. This time, the stakes are higher, because there is the risk of hurting some innocent bystanders. Asmodeus has no care, but Strange does. Yet he manages to avoid catastrophe in the very last second. The action then switches back to Clea who is with The Sons of Satannish and their leader of whom she does not suspect that he had played her. Not only were the thugs who had attacked her earlier his men in disguise, but another follower had posed as Wong to lure her out into the open. And just as easily as he had deceived the girl from another domain before, he now tricked her once more. She fell under his spell while at the same time Strange was back at his Sanctum Sanctorum conducting further studies in hopes of finding clues to her whereabouts. Right then, almost as if she“d materialized out of thin air, there was the woman in his study. Clearly Thomas and his two artists had watched their fair share of horror films from Hammer Film Productions which were still massively popular during this time. Clea seemed very much like one of the many gorgeous ingenues like Veronica Carlson who had been in contact with the beast and who then had come under his control as they walked back into the drawing room of Dr. Van Helsing to bring some harm to the unsuspecting older gentleman. Only the thing was, that Doctor Strange, as rendered by Colan and Palmer, looked more like their version of Dracula than anything else. It is at this moment, that Strange receives a phone call from Dr. Charles Benton. Readers had seen the young medical doctor for the first time in Doctor Strange No. 169 (1968) during an extensive flashback sequence with which Thomas had re-told the origin of The Master of the Mystical Arts. As in the original origin as told by Lee and Ditko in Strange Tales No. 115 (1963), some colleagues of his had asked the famous surgeon if he wanted to help them with their research project, but Strange had laughed them out of the room. While in the original origin, Steve Ditko had depicted these distinguished physicians as older practitioners, in the modern version (comparatively speaking) Thomas and artist Dan Adkins had altered the scene when it was Strange himself who recalled these events before the car crash had changed the course of his life entirely. Now it was only one doctor who came to him, a young fellow named Benton. Even though the result was identical with Strange rejecting his request, recently Dr. Benton had reemerged. The doctor was now hounding Strange constantly since he wanted to hire him as medical consultant. And he wasn“t prepared to take no for an answer. In Doctor Strange No. 173 (1968) he had even managed to forcefully gain entrance to the mage“s Sanctum Sanctorum, pushing bruskly past his trusted servant. Though Dr. Benton was definitely surprised to find not one, but two beautiful young women in the house (Clea and the hopelessly smitten Victoria Bentley), this possibly only added to his frustrations in regard to Strange. Perhaps this was why he laid it on thick when he wanted to bring the point across that in his assessment Strange was wasting his life with pretend play. With the way he described Strange to the women, he or Thomas had to be aware of Anton LaVey: “That was when he was a real doctor, a brilliant surgeon, not the gaudily-dressed charlatan that he has since become! I know he pretends some knowledge of occult arts”¦ of so-called black magic! His whole life seems to be one gigantic put-on.”“ And he would not stop there, but like LaVey had painted his house black, Doctor Strange“s own lodgings, in Dr. Benton“s mind, certainly weren“t exempt from any reproach: “It“s very walls seem to reek of stagnation which has beset Strange since he gave up the medical profession.”“ And this man was now on the phone with him at this rather inconvenient moment. And of course, as any Hammer film fan could have told him, with Strange unduly distracted, a long, thin shadow began to creep up on one side of his face. That of a long dagger.
There she was, the entranced Clea, ready to murder her lover. But thinking on his feet, Strange not only dispelled the weapon into thin air, but made it so that Clea remained in her stasis. He needed to learn what was going on and for that, he wanted Clea to reveal what mental command had inconvenienced her free will thusly. Always a detective, either in the field of medicine or the mystic, Strange probed the mind of the young woman like it was an x-ray chart. The plan of his enemy stood now revealed: “Kill Dr. Strange”¦ and bring us The Book of The Vishanti!”“ Oblivious to the fact that not only was Strange alive, but that he was following her, the young woman suspended the ancient tome with her mind and floated out of the house. Again, what could have been more appropriate than Clea walking to a cemetery, the air heavy and moist from the soil from fresh graves as she passed them like a sleepwalker. She strolled to a mausoleum and then, with the same ease a young woman would step under the roof of a bus stop lest the rain ruined her hairdo, Clea simply phased through the structure“s walls. When Doctor Strange discovers a headstone with his name on, he decides to investigate further, yet in his ethereal form. It is then that he is confronted by Asmodeus and those who are his disciples as much as they worshipped Satannish. Brandishing a new weapon, they have just created, The Crystal of Conquest, Asmodeus puts Doctor Strange through his paces, even in his astral from. Then, once he has linked up his physical form, the fight is on. If Stan Lee still had a hand in this series, it seems a safe bet that he would have written a caption like “Lo, there shall be an ending”“ or “The bitter taste of defeat”“, but this being a Roy Thomas Joint, there were no words needed. The mage was on the ropes. Asmodeus had taken his amulet from him, and his Cloak of Levitation, and he was now in the possession of the book which he used to banish not only the mage, but Clea as well, “to a savage world and an ignoble death!”“ Now, that was a way to close an issue! And the cover for Doctor Strange No. 177 (1969) told readers right away, that a massive change had come to the character who seemed in a world of trouble when the issue opened. Helplessly hurled into a maelstrom of unknown properties of the dimension his enemy had exiled him and his love to, they were immediately attacked by weird creatures once they seemed on safer ground. But when he and Clea were separated, there came a surprise. Dr. Benton had been correct in his harsh assessment of Doctor Strange in a way he could not have suspected. Like with any magician, Strange was also about smoke and mirrors. And like LaVey, Strange knew that once in a while a false bottom would do the trick. Though, Asmodeus had stolen his golden amulet, he had never suspected that its source of power did not come from the round metal object, but from the mystic eye that resided within the protective cover. Though the amulet was called The Eye of Agamotto, it was a misnomer. The eye itself rested within the magic charm which was out in the open for everyone to see. What his foe had taken from him was this shell which was quite empty since the eye was with Strange in his realm of exile. But there was another trick the mage had pulled. The Book of The Vishanti through which Asmodeus now greedily leafed while he rebuked his cohorts who also wanted to lay claim on the ancient tome, crumbled into fine dust right in his fingers. The book wasn“t lost, unlike the amulet and the cloak which had disappeared as well. As he had willed it so, with a spell cast earlier, the book reappeared in the hands of his old mentor. But his foe possessed the cunning of a sly magician as well. With the help of the devil-sphere, Asmodeus spied the location of the book. Then he rallied his troops who seemed reluctant to go up against the powerful mystic. Asmodeus reminded them what prize awaited those who were willing to take such an awesome gamble: “To be rulers of a cosmos”¦ to wield power without equal”¦ is worth any risk! And that is what we shall possess”¦ when we have learned the spell of fire and ice!”“ Verily, Asmodeus planned on nothing short of releasing “Ymir, the last of the Frost Giants and Surtur, the fearsome flaming fire demon.”“ Both of which had been imprisoned by Odin, the ruler of Asgard. And then, under false pretenses, he urged his cohorts to “recite the trance of transferal”“ which drained all the magic energies they had been given by Satannish from the men and placed it within their leader. Then came a dread realization as it is the case with any false prophet. “We did not think”¦ it would be like this!”“, one of the men exclaimed who found himself in a perilously weakened state like his comrades did as well. But it was too late now. They had never suspected that their leader would use them and then betray them. As Asmodeus now exiled them to a realm of unending oblivion, he acted like the raven-haired preacher would ten years later as he ordered his many followers to take the Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test. No, this was not a story about the devil by the name of Satannish, this was a tale about all those leaders who preyed on the weaknesses and power fantasies of their fellow men. But there was one more trick for this huckster to perform. He now took on the face of Doctor Strange himself as a guise, to deceive the old man and to rob him blind. Of the book and his life, as he commented when he opened a portal while wearing the face of Strange.
Meanwhile, even in exile, the mage was reunited with his amulet and his Cloak of Levitation. And there was another false bottom to behold by the lovely Clea. Fully expecting a sneak attack when he“d entered into the lair of Asmodeus, he had bestowed a vast portion of his magic essence onto the cloak and now reunited with the enchanted garment, he was ready to pick up the fight. But there was a small problem. One that extended even into our world. As mind-bending excellent as this latest incarnation of the mage had become, now that he had his own series and a creative team that came very close to what creator Steve Ditko had achieved, it seemed almost too late. Perhaps those final very lackluster stories back in Strange Tales had turned readers off or there were simply too many Marvel books now that distribution had changed, Doctor Strange was simply not selling enough copies. Thus, editor Stan Lee, not huge fan of the character to begin with, demanded some changes. And since this edict came before there was a change in the Comics Code as well that brought about an avalanche of horror-themed comics, some of which became huge hits (especially the previously mentioned Tomb of Dracula with Colan and Palmer on art), the new direction meant that Doctor Strange had to become more of a proper superhero. One who wore a mask, had a cool costume and a secret identity. In the reality of the story, this literally kept Strange form returning to his world. He needed to change his look completely, because somebody else was wearing his face and his form. It goes to Thomas“ credit how smoothly he incorporated the mandate into the flow of his storyline while planting little seeds all along (like Strange“s concern about the world finding out who he was whereas that had never been an issue before). And while only short-lived in the overall scheme of things and mostly forgotten, the new character design by Colan and Palmer is utterly fantastic. Though Strange with his full face mask and a more stylized chest logo on his skin-tight costume does look indeed more like a superhero, the way the artists had him emote by just using the slits for his eyes and his mouth in the mask and the outline of his features, is nothing short of astonishing. And they made him hellishly creepy at the same time, like he was some kind of devil himself. Thus, they returned to their world. With Clea sent out of harms way (despite her having proven herself many times), Strange took the battle to the evil man who wore his face. But Asmodeus quickly discovered where the Achilles heel of this new Doctor Strange was located. Like with any superhero, the mage refused to take the life of his sworn enemy. Sensing a weakness others might consider a strength, he pressed the attack, forcing Strange to increase his onslaught of mystic energy as well. But like in a boxing match with one opponent powering out the other, Asmodeus heart could not take the strain any longer. He couldn“t keep up the charade anymore as he lost command of Strange“s appearance. However, with his last dying breath the man who wanted power because he was after all a small man, unleashed the two forces from the exile Odin had willed them to. With the final mask coming off and Asmodeus revealed as Dr. Benton, Strange and The Ancient One braced themselves for what was to come with these two creatures on the loose.
After this much excitement, the next issue started a bit anti-climactic. While Strange and his mentor sat around to come up with a game plan, Thomas and team needed to recap three issues to catch readers up to speed who might have missed out. It was then that Thomas mentioned that there was still a little time left before the prison gates opened, and more importantly, that there was an out. Even though it was a bit reminiscent of those endless fetch quests Stan Lee had doomed Strange to during his tenure on the book sans Ditko, the idea was still pretty cool. Only those men who Asmodeus had banned knew how to reverse the spell which released Ymir and Surtur in scant sixty minutes from now. How fitting then, that these men were caught in the world ruled by Tiboro, a character who had originated all the way back in Strange Tales No. 129 (1965), a story which does not list Stan Lee in any other capacity than as editor, but Don Rico as scripter. But for Strange to enter this world again, he needed another mystic to safeguard his return. And with his mentor and Clea in need of a good rest, why not give Lady Victoria Bentley another spin, since she was always ready to drop everything when he called? And this time was no exception even though she was in the midst of hosting a masque ball at her castle in England. As it turned out, there was a fellow on the guest list who already came with a costume anyway. Immediately, Victoria is drawn to him, and Strange as well, since his sword possessed magic properties. He was Dane Whitman, the new Black Knight who had a horse that could fly and who had assisted even The Avengers. And this proved the perfect opportunity for Thomas to take care of a dangling story thread. Though she still thinks she is in love with Strange, Victoria as taken aback by what she takes for his horrid face, while at the same time she digs Whitman“s winged stallion, and as it turns out, the man is her new neighbor. Once the men entered into the dimension of Tiboro to free The Sons of Satannish in hopes of finding a means of how to reverse the spell uttered by their erstwhile leader with one hand on The Book of The Vishanti, this otherwise unimpressive tale gave Colan and Palmer ample latitude to show off their very impressive skills. The scene in which they cross into this world is nothing short of breathtaking and here Palmer“s use of colors comes heavily into play while his inks are even moodier than usually. This wasn“t a psychedelic mindscape or a head trip like in the old Ditko days from only a few years earlier. But what it was, was a rich tableau of horror and weirdness that suited both characters and the tale well. Though Tiboro is a disappointing villain-of-the-month after the fiendishly wicked Asmodeus who had provided a real challenge, the issue is saved by the art that is better than it has any right to be with a throw-away tale like this. Especially the final panel, when after they have proven victorious, Doctor Strange and The Black Knight behold their prize and they look at the members of The Sons of Satannish, who are floating in midair, there is something highly forlorn about these four men that is expertly conveyed. Men, who had dreamt of power so vast were like leaves in the wind or like old newspapers blowing down a gutter. In a surprisingly modern twist, the story didn“t continue in the next issue, but in The Avengers 61 (1969). Strange needed to enlist The Earth Mightiest Heroes since his original scheme had gone awry. The Black Knight had been severely wounded once they had returned with a member of The Sons of Satannish to their graveyard headquarters, and they had carelessly awarded him the opportunity to gain access to a weapon, The Crystal of Conquest. Though Strange had subdued him and had secured the weapon, there was no way this fiend would reverse the spell. Ymir and Surtur were roaming the Earth. This gave John Buscema and inker George Klein plenty of opportunity to draw some awesome fights as The Avengers now pitted their strengths and wits against the two gigantic elementals in widescreen format. The key to their destruction or at least renewed banishment lay in the crystal, but before Doctor Strange could take care of business, while the colorful super-team bought him precious time until he“d gained control over the mystical object, there was the matter of the fallen hero. Though the medical equipment of The Avengers and his magic had alleviated some of the severe pain Whitman was in, only surgery would do. But The Avengers knew that he“d been a surgeon. They prompted him by almost putting a scalpel into the very same hands many doctors had told him he would never be able to operate with again. Though his hands indeed shook pretty badly at the outset, he regained mastery over them and completed the operation successfully. Then Strange saved the whole planet by using the crystal to have the two beings appear in the same place at the same time, ultimately canceling each other out. Unfortunately, this was neither a great Doctor Strange story nor a good Avengers tale, but a disappointing conclusion to a story that had started with a lot of promise, one that was pretty great until the death of the main villain. Roy Thomas had indeed crafted a storyline that had a lot to say about the zeitgeist, but then offered a very simply solution that was equal parts magic and superhero yarn. The next issue of Doctor Strange offered a reprint of an old Spider-Man and Doctor Strange team-up by Steve Ditko, which was great, but didn“t fit in with the direction in which Thomas and team had taken the series and the character. Thomas and his collaborators still had another amazing storyline in the works. In Doctor Strange No. 180-182 (1969), they presented a tale about the supernatural that was a horror story at its core. Nightmare was back, and never had the demon from the Dream Dimension been more horrifying as he was now with Colan and Palmer at the helm. Even though not quite as strong, the next issue also was hallmark in horror on the brink of the horror revival that would soon follow with books like Dracula, despite Thomas“ best or somewhat reluctant efforts to integrate super-heroics into the series, like Strange now gaining another name for his civilian identity thanks to the entity that was Eternity. His Stephen Sanders persona was a short-lived one, since the book got cancelled. It seems fitting though that it was Thomas (and artist Ross Andru) who brought Doctor Strange back in Marvel Feature No. 1 (1971) as part of the new super-team The Defenders. This time, the art was more in line with Ditko“s original vision, and artist Barry Windsor-Smith would take it from here when another attempt was made to give the character another solo title with the publication of Marvel Premiere No. 3 (1972). After a very good start, the book meandered for a while with some lackluster stories by old stalwarts like Gardner Fox until with issue No. 9 a new team took over who would bring back some of that old magic from the Ditko days but under the psychedelic strobe light of the head culture of the earlier 1970s that came with lava lamps and prog rock albums. It was this team of Steve Englehart and Frank Brunner that first made Strange The Sorcerer Supreme by letting The Ancient One become one with the Universe itself, and then successfully leading him into a new long-running solo book in 1974. Their first story arc in Doctor Strange No. 1-5 (1974) would be one for the ages, and issue No. 6 saw the return of master artist Gene Colan to the character to great effect. And in the mid-1970s, in an age that was open to alternative medicine, recreational marijuana and self-help books, an age in which tarot cards and ouija boards had become mainstream and party games, the mage and his silver-tressed love had found a new lease on life. And verily, so it would stay, till eternity.
Author Profile
Chris Buse (RIP)
A comic book reader since 1972. When he is not reading or writing about the books he loves or is listening to The Twilight Sad, you can find Chris at his consulting company in Germany... drinking damn good coffee. Also a proud member of the ICC (International Comics Collective) Podcast with Al Mega and Dave Elliott.
