"TO SLEEP, PERCHANCE TO DREAM“ THE STRANGE DAYS OF DOCTOR STRANGE, PART 1

There is a reason why we forget most of our dreams when the first light of a new day creeps in through the tiny cracks between the blinds in front of our bedroom windows or between the long drapes in our still smoke-filled study where we“d fallen asleep on a leather sofa during the little hours, using a blanket folded under our heavy head for a make-shift cushion. Our dreams have a tendency to not only reveal us for who we are, but for who we wish we were. Dreams represent doors leading down many corridors, and to worlds yet to be travelled. Each world represents a myriad of choices either taken or wished not taken. And like in a house of mirrors, each choice opens up many dimensions unto its own. There is no rest for the wicked and the saints alike. And once we cross over, ay, there is our fellow traveler and our guide alike, Morpheus to greet us welcome. He is thin as a rail and his body bends into many shapes as it heeds his every command and as the passage or the trail demands, leading high up. We daren“t look beneath where our feet tread carefully, thither lies the abyss. But behind our kind pilot who himself is the offspring of sleep, there is the other, mounted high on his frightful black steed, its nostrils flare and its breath hangs in the air like the mist that promises an early morning. Its dark rider though, he is none other than our scornful father, the task master we fear. While he now steadies his overly eager stallion, his dark eyes are trained on us as if to mark us for what we“ve done. Not hither. In the land of the wake. In this realm however, what we have done to our fellow man, is done onto us. We“ve crossed over into the dimension Everinnye. This is the kingdom of Nightmare. And while Morpheus has a kind and pitiful smile for us, we are rend limb from limb until we wake screaming. But then, now wide awake, we forget. If there remains but a fleeting shadow that still lingers from our night terrors, we laugh it off with some uneasiness as go about our day. Only to dream again when night falls. We are all dreamers, aren“t we? We must dream. Otherwise we simply go insane. We are like Hamlet, the tragic Prince of Denmark and eternal student who utters: “To sleep! Perchance to dream: ay, there“s the rub.”“ But sometimes, we do fear the approaching night. Sometimes, a dream has stayed with us well into the next day, and by doing so, it has outlasted its welcome. This dream is not a light reverie that daylight knows how to dispel back to whence it came, for it not only to be banish to a nether realm but locked and bolted safely in a box. Like our dreams come in a multitude of shapes, in our dreams, we as dreamers take on many characters ourselves like cosplayers of a psychedelic dreamscape. Last night, I dreamt I witnessed a murder. Dare I find out if the man with the killer“s face is a stranger, a neighbor, or the face I“ll see in mirror when the new day arrives? What if it is I, who slips past the shadows to go undetected until the right moment is nigh, and I see a knife or gun in my hand? What does it mean? Do I want to find out like John Ballantyne in Alfred Hitchcock“s film “Spellbound”“, who himself is a man of several identities. He is also Dr. Anthony Edwardes, and of course, he is the actor Gregory Peck, a man wont to wear a thousand faces. Ballantyne wants to know. And he must know, as he tries to describe his dream to a kind old psychiatrist. He begins like this: “I can“t make out just what sort of place it was”¦”“ His dream world, we know, was created by Salvador Dali, a dreamer himself. But what about Vince Grayson, the clerk at your local bank? He leads an unremarkable life. A rather ordinary man, except maybe for the fact that in the movie of this tale by William Irish, he was played by an actor by the name of DeForest Kelley, who almost two decades later boldly went where no man had gone before. Mr. Grayson has a dream, too: “At first, all I could see was this face coming toward me”¦ Then I saw the room, a queer, mirrored room and somehow, I was inside it. There was danger there. I knew that I wanted to turn and run, but I couldn“t. It seemed that my brain was handcuffed, and I had to do what I“d come to do!”“ This Mr. Grayson, you see, committed a crime, but in his dream. A vivid dream, yes, but a dream, nevertheless. When he wakes, and he is sure of it, he is awake, he discovers a strange key and a button in his pocket. And there is blood on his cuff. And when he looks into the mirror, his eyes go wide as he glimpses the marks on his throat. What is Mr. Grayson now? A dreamer or a murderer or both? And what is this story his fictional life is based on? A chimera. First published under the title “And So to Death”“, then retitled as “Nightmare”“ in 1943. The movie came with a third name, “Fear in the Night”“, then remade with Kevin McCarthy in the lead role, but Mr. Vince Grayson was now Mr. Stan Grayson, who was not a bank clerk, but a big band clarinetist. And the author of this story? His name was as fictional as both Mr. Vince Grayson and Mr. Stan Grayson were. William Irish was a mask worn by Mr. Cornell Woolrich. We can change into anyone we want when we are wide awake, but in our dreams, our mind, or the master of the dream world, will choose for us. Just ask one Mr. Edward Hall, a man who believes that if he falls asleep, he“ll die. Mr. Hall is the protagonist in a tale by writer Charles Beaumont, published under the name “Perchance to Dream”“ in Playboy in 1958. Mr. Hall seeks help, not because he suffers from a severe heart condition. But his ails are that of the mind. Mr. Hall suffers from an overactive imagination. For this he sees Dr. Elliott Rathmann, a psychiatrist, an authority on riddles of the subconscious mind. But when he realizes that the expert“s receptionist Miss Thomas is a dead ringer for Maya, the carnival dancer who in his nightmares lures him into a fun house to scare him to death, he freaks out and jumps out of the window of the psychiatrist“s practice. It turns out, this episode only played out in his head, when in fact he had fallen asleep on the man“s couch. He“d let out a scream while sleeping. And then he died. Peacefully, according to Dr. Rathmann“s questionable assessment. But not only Mr. Hall was caught in a nightmare, the author of this story would be as well.

“Perchance to Dream”“ was the first episode of The Twilight Zone not written by the show“s creator and host Rod Serling. It was adopted by Charles Beaumont, based on his short story. The episode first aired on November 27, 1959. Four years later, Beaumont, who was born under the name Charles Leroy Nutt, began to experience the effects of a mysterious disease of the brain. When the writer slowly began to lose the ability to speak, to formulate a cohesive thought or to remember what he had for breakfast on that day, he was thirty-four years old. As far as his writing career and livelihood was concerned, unable to find a good grasp on an electrical shaver, let alone a straight razor, Beaumont would go to meetings with producers unshaven, a no-go for any professional dealings in those days, especially when television was happening in New York City, and his pitch meetings ended more and more in disaster. Especially since Beaumont tried to conceal his illness at appointments for as long as possible, but given his erratic behavior and presumed lack of care toward the condition of his appearance, his business contacts came to the conclusion that seemed the most logical at that time, that the writer was hitting the bottle way too often and way too hard. And in all fairness, Beaumont, like so many creatives during the 1950s and in the preceding decades, was a heavy drinker. But then the symptoms of his illness, which was getting progressively worse, became even more apparent and too visible for comfort or to hide them any longer from those on whose work assignments he depended to put food on the table and to cover his medical bills. Behind the scenes, some of friends and fellow writers had been helping him with his commitments, like William F. Nolan and Jerry Sohl, who ghosted three of his teleplays for The Twilight Zone. It seemed that Beaumont was aging a year in a day. Then five years. Then came the death sentence. While Charles Beaumont would never find out what this disease was that was killing him by the hour now (and it does remain a mystery to this day), after he“d seen the medical experts on staff at the UCLA, he knew at least one thing for sure. He would die. Very soon. As his friend William F. Nolan recalls: “They said, ”˜There is absolutely no treatment for the disease. It“s permanent and it“s terminal. He will probably live from six months to three years with it. He“ll decline and to get to where he can“t stand up.“”“ Beaumont proved his doctors right. He passed away a little over a year later at the age of thirty-eight. His son Christopher described his father“s state like this: “He looked ninety-five, in fact, ninety-five by every calendar except the one on your watch.”“ His other son, Greg, who began working in television as a sound engineer, died at the age of thirty-four from colon cancer. It somehow feels very appropriate to let Hamlet speak once more. Once again from William Shakespeare“s most famous soliloquy: “For in that sleep of death what dreams may come.”“ Charles Beaumont lived a nightmare in the last years of his short life, but in a state of being wide awake, with senses as dull as if he was dreaming. And when young Prince Hamlet says “sleep”“, what he means is “death”“, followed by a “dreamless state”“. In fact, when he begins his soliloquy with the words “To be or not to be”“ in Act III, Scene I of the play that bears the Prince“s name as its title, Hamlet is contemplating suicide, since he feels this will grant him release from the sufferings of his life. But what if there was still a dream after death? What if you are trapped in this never-ending dream? It would perhaps start like what our ordinary bank clerk Mr. Vince Grayson experiences, when in the third act of “Fear in the Night”“ he meets the man who is responsible for the murder Vince had committed at the start of film, this violent death of a total stranger he recalled in his dream. And once more, he is but an unwitting pawn of a man who can take control of his free will to entice Vince to let his mind wander into a land of shadows while he is awake; this time though, not to command him to kill another stranger: “That horrible curtain closed over me again. I couldn“t fight it. I knew he was taking me somewhere. I didn“t want to go, but my brain was handcuffed, and I was walking through another nightmare.”“ Not a stranger. It“s Vince who is the intended victim this time around. Vince who must kill himself by drowning by his own hand. Vince who is a puppet on the threshold between the land of reason and the realm of dream. As with many crime stories, there is a detective, who in this case, happens to be Vince“s brother-in-law, and who saves him in the nick of time. And perhaps it is true, that while Hamlet does not survive the plan his imagination and dreams spin to reveal the intrigue at the Danish court, it is Horatio, his pal from the university in Wittenberg, who becomes the very first crime scene investigator and speaker for the dead. While Hamlet dies and Vince Grayson lives, Charles Beaumont and his creation Edward Hall both died. The latter caught in a dream, the former living a nightmare. Were you to choose one artist to illustrate the shadowy world through which Mr. Hall traversed, a province which refused any Jungian archetypes at its door like an intimidating bouncer at the most popular venue is wont to do with party people and night revelers who won“t pass muster, lest too easy an explanation could be deciphered, or the half awake, half sleeping state of mutating body horror which defined those precious final years of his originator Mr. Beaumont, you wouldn“t need to storm the castle of your imaginative faculty. Among a small army of many talented geniuses and reliable craftsmen who had graced the medium of comics with their art up to this point in the 60s, only one man could have imagined Messrs. Hall and Beaumont as protagonists of a comic book story, let alone depict this terror in a way that made us experience and see the nightmares that haunted their lives and existence, not by simply looking at a printed page sliced into a nine panel grid and with colors that were marred by ink bleed, but as if through their own fearful, panicky eyes. His name of course, is Stephen John Ditko, known to comic book readers as Steve Ditko.

Once you have seen only one panel from a story if not written, but illustrated by Steve Ditko, you“ll get an immediate understanding of his work. Especially if these stories come from the period of time during the mid-1950s, when Ditko worked on a number of horror comics for Charlton Comics and Atlas Comics, a forerunner to the company that would soon be called Marvel Comics, and the early 1960s, when Ditko became the co-creator (some will argue, the sole creator) of two of the most iconic comic characters of all time. While it may seem prudent to talk about Stan Lee as well, the man who in some shape or form, and depending to your point of view, to a larger or lesser degree, would have a hand in the creation of a whole universe of superhero characters, including those two Ditko (co-)creations, let us imagine for a moment that fate had willed the course of reality very differently. Why not, since our theme is dreams. Ditko, born in 1927, was very much part of what today is referred to as “The Greatest Generation”“, men and women who witnessed the Great Depression, The Second World War and the boom that came on the heels of the war and with the dawn of the Atomic Age, and who in later years would experience a generational gap between themselves and their children like none other in recent history. A generation shaped in equal parts by the experience of poverty, bravery, materialism and modern horror. The latter during the theater of war, and in times of peace, in a boom-cycle which brought the silent desperation of uniformity behind the thin walls of model houses of a new suburbia and blank-eyed consumerism. It was also the generation Rod Serling was born into, almost exactly three years Ditko“s senior, a man very different in temperament and career trajectory when compared to Ditko. Both men though, like many of their male contemporaries, had a close encounter with the very real terrors brought on by warfare. Since Serling was fairly short in height, he seemed ideally suited as a paratrooper. And while surely, he did excel during his training, it was during this time, that at the military base Serling was stationed at in Georgia, he discovered a hidden aspect of his nature. He was a very angry man. Luckily for him, within a male dominated, highly charged environment of troops being trained for killing and survival, he would find a controlled outlet for his aggressions. Serling threw himself into the sport of boxing with plenty of vigor and instinctive panache. Lacking refined skills, he fought like a man possessed, a crazed berserker. Though he had his nose broken twice, he“d win many of matches against his fellow soldiers in the ring. But still, with his anger dominating what little style he had, this was as far as his budding boxing career went. When he did see combat action one year later in 1944, it was in The 11th Airborne Division which landed on the Philippines to wrest the island nation from the invading grip of The Japanese Empire. His volatile behavior and belligerent tendencies had landed him on the radar of his commanding officers in a less favorable way, though, and soon he got transferred to the 511th“s regiment, a platoon nicknamed “The Death Squad”“ for its high casualty rate among its troops. Ironically enough, Serling lacked the one skill needed most in a fighting man: the will to kill another human being. Instead, he would wander off by himself, against orders, either exploring the alien terrain or simply being lost in his own thoughts. It was during the Battle of Leyte and the invasion of Manila, that he witnessed the business of dying on a daily basis. Going forward, this savage experience, the unpredictability of death, would deeply impact his writing, especially when he allowed his imagination free reign, once he had freed himself from under the confines of “serious writing”“, and he moved into genre television to create The Twilight Zone. Thus, ultimately, what could be more serious than what his character Lieutenant William Fitzgerald sees in a combat zone in the episode “The Purple Testament”“? Stationed in the Philippines, like Serling had been during most of his enlistment, the lieutenant has a most unwelcomed gift: whenever he sees a strange light in the face of one of his comrades, he knows that this man will die very soon. But when the writer begins his opening voice-over narration, Serling tells us, in war, every soldier has his ability: “For this is the province of combat, and these are the faces of war.”“ In violent conflict, every soldier is the next to die. Again let“s imagine, if fate had willed it so, that what was presented in July 1963 in a Marvel Comic, in series called Strange Tales, originally an anthology for short, one-off science fiction and horror tales, that had begun to feature the adventures of one member of the then recently created superhero team The Fantastic Four, was instead written for the television screen by Rod Serling. It might start like this: “Submitted for your approval, the portrait of a man”¦ a man who has everything he“d ever wanted. And what he wanted was money, and the prestige it buys. A man about to discover something about himself he might not want to know. And this lesson is free of charge. But like with all things that come without a bill attached, it might turn out that you are asked to pay forever, once you have entered into a contract with the world beyond the waking state and you“ve crossed into a special province, both uncharted and unmapped, a country of both shadow and substance, the Dream Dimension of Nightmare.”“ By that time in 1960s however, Serling himself was the representation of success. He still remained not only the last angry man of television, he surely was the most dangerous man in America in how he used the trappings of genre storytelling to push subversive narratives and a particular kind of social agenda. For example, his most famous teleplay “The Monsters Are Due on Maple Street”“, which made up the twenty-second episode of the first season of The Twilight Zone, demonstrated how easily paranoia, suspicions and fear can turn the residents of a quiet neighborhood into a well-intentioned mob, spurred on by intolerance, prejudices and hatred. Serling deftly deconstructs the myth of the ideal of a small town. But still, Serling, who now also appeared as a narrator on screen, was well-tanned, his left wrist was adorned by triangle-shaped Ventura watch, and he had a Viceroy cigarette between the fingers of his right hand. The brand was one of the sponsors of the show, of course. Serling had already won several primetime Emmys. In other words, Serling was a success story, and he presented himself as such. He had made the big time.

But fate willed it so, that it was Steve Ditko who introduced readers to a new character in this new age of superheroes that more and more was taking shape at Marvel Comics, a company that only two years earlier had been chasing every new trend like a dog running after a car. And now, after editor Stan Lee had stumbled upon what seemed to be a magic formula, for the first time in nearly two decades, there was something in their grasp that resembled financial security. But while this was true for the publisher, the artists with whom Lee worked, those that had hung around from the Atlas days, still subsided on a page rate without royalties paid or any ownership in the fruit of their labor retained or retransferred to those creatives, which in all fairness was also the case with Lee. But while he outfitted them with a brief synopsis of how the story should go and who they villain was the heroes should fight in a given month, the artists were mostly left to their own devices and imagination where the actual worldbuilding was concerned. While it is certainly true that the mind, especially one that gives in to daydreams and flights of fancy, can think up anything, more often than not, inspiration will come from dreams and memories. And in this generation of men, and even so many years later, those came from a time of war. And maybe it was indeed fate or destiny who had a hand in how Ditko had experience those years. Being a junior to Serling by three years, in 1945 he had just graduated from high school. When Steve Ditko enlisted in the Armed Forces in the same year, all the battles had ended. His regiment was sent to Germany where he encountered a country in its Zero Hour. Though Serling had seen war torn cities, Manila for example, he would transfer this image quite literally, perhaps too literally, onto TV screens as a warning of what an apocalyptic landscape after a nuclear war might look like. But still, despite his sometimes cynical and rather negative opinion in regard to the nature of man, he was also a romanticist, and thus, even when he showed a world in ruins, Serling couldn“t stop himself from interjecting at least some levity into such a grim scenario like he did in “Time Enough at Last”“, or even romance like in the episode “Two”“. Ditko“s worldview was fundamentally changed by the experience. Maybe it was for the fact that there were no acts of war committed any longer, but of despair. Of hope too, since Germany had hit rock bottom, and herein lay the chance to build a better world. But still, seeing the haunted, disoriented faces of women, and children in want of sustenance, among the shattered signifiers of a civilization which had believed itself atop the food chain and an apex predator among nations, and which now traded a kingdom for a simple slice of bread, and every bombed out building was but a villa as long as it offered shelter from a downpour, this now was the populace of a nightmare dimension, the dark realm of a reich of a thousand years fallen into an abyss. This mixture of history, folklore and destroyed myths would first inform many of his horror stories, especially once he became the main creative force behind Charlton“s pre-code title The Thing in 1954; and then, starting with Marvel“s Strange Tales No. 110 (1963), the worlds into which his new character Doctor Strange would travel. And with the way the artist himself had entered into a terrain so foreign and so utterly broken, a young infantry man without a guide or orientation, it is fitting then, that Ditko did not begin this introductory tale with an origin story, almost customary for the first outing of a new superhero. But Doctor Strange was not to be another superhero. And unlike with Ditko“s other creation, Spider-Man, introduced almost a year earlier in a different anthology title, there was no splash panel of the alter ego of the future hero before an unwanted incursion was to invade his regular existence, the inciting incident that would transform him into more than a man. In lieu of this, still Ditko had to fulfill the conventions of comics, the first panel, which was larger and broke with the controlled page layout used otherwise throughout the story, did offer a first look of the protagonist in full regalia, sans his cloak which would be added later. But when we meet the character in context, we quickly find out that he isn“t a novice at his trade. Not only is he already an advanced practitioner in the art of magic and wise in experience in the use of this craft, but we soon find out that this curious, strange man is a well-versed traveler, with stamps from a multiverse of spheres, dark dimensions and sinistrous nether realms in his passport. But instead of getting to the hero of this tale right away, after the first glance of him awarded to us by Ditko as if to whet our appetite, most definitely by design, we are introduced to a man without further bearing on the tapestry that soon shall make up the legend of the one called The Sorcerer Supreme, a man as ordinary as they come. A man, who is not even given a name. A man who refuses to sleep, perchance he dreams. Because when he sleeps, his mind is wont to slip into one hellish scape of nightmarish properties, perhaps one created by his overactive, imaginative brain like that with which Mr. Hall had been so severely inflicted, or by an outside force. And he is not alone in this dream.

The tale in which readers met Doctor Stephen Strange for the first time, begins with a brief caption that provided all that was needed for context. If it was written by Lee or by Ditko (the latter came up with the character and the plot), is nigh impossible to define. If the words are by Lee, the writing is certainly terser and much more concise than the flamboyant, overly wordy style the former often applied, which stopped short of feeling overwrought: “Somewhere in the city, between darkness and dawn, a tortured man tosses fitfully in his bed, vainly seeking peace that will not come”¦”“ Steve Ditko used a three-panel grid on the first page of the story, right beneath the medium shot that showed readers what this hero, Doctor Strange, looked like. The artist used those three panels to set up the mood and to introduce the character this tale was about. Initially, Ditko uses some of the tropes of a film noir. There is a downpour going on, with the heavy rain running along the panels of a tall, segmented window which in itself also mirrored the panel grid he was using. The camera is outside at first, looking in. Then, Ditko cuts to two shots with the camera, and the readers“ point of view is now inside the bedroom of the character. First in a medium shot, then the camera is even closer, and much more intimate. The man, who we first saw as he was tossing and turning in his bed, is now right in our eyeline as he nervously lights up a cigarette. The man Ditko presents, is clearly an everyman, and, to quote Hamlet, “there“s the rub”“. The room he is in, is lavishly decorated with pieces of art, sculptures as well as paintings. From his surroundings, the artist conveys that this is a man of wealth who likes to put his possessions on display. He had clearly made something out of his life. However, there is the question of how he had accumulated his financial means. The artist believed in the ideas of Aristotle on identity. To become self-actualized, a person had to make a decision between good and evil. Either way, one had to fully commit to one or the other. It“s easy to see how this line of thinking was appealing to Ditko, who otherwise was not only a devotee, but a rabid proponent of the principles as postulated by writer and philosopher Ayn Rand, especially where economics and justice where concerned, like in this story and with this nameless character. Rand, who had experienced the revolution in Russia in 1917 when she was twelve years of age, proposed a system of economics which was free from any government involvement. However, she wasn“t ok with one man taking away any value from another man. Thus, government was to serve as a deterrent first, and then as a force of retaliation if somebody crossed that specific line. Right away, just by showing readers that this man was having the same nightmare over and over, his choice became apparent. Regarding justice, like Aristotle, Rand believed that to achieve a greater good, there could be no compromise, no areas of gray. You were either good or if you betrayed this principle ever so slightly, you simply weren“t. No one got the unearned. The innocent was not penalized, the guilty was not rewarded. So, if this wealthy man had a recurring dream, that he dared not sleep, he clearly had left the path of the good. He“d corrupted himself with his actions. When he subsequently seeks help, like Mr. Hall did when he saw a psychiatrist, readers needn“t be a Randian disciple to understand that this was not a matter of an over-imaginative mind, and that you could not trust this guy. Luckily for him, he has heard certain rumors: “I“ve heard a name”¦ spoken in whispers”¦.”“ To his surprise though, Strange already expects him. It“s in his house that readers got the full story: “It“s always the same. A haunting figure, bound in chains appears. It stares at me! It never stops! Never!”“ However, the means by which the sorcerer intended to solve this riddle had to be quite shocking. To this man it was at least. Doctor Strange would enter his dream during the night. Once the man leaves, Strange goes into a state of meditation to achieve a trance, which has a startling result: “Like a fleeting ghost, his metaphysical spirit leaves his motionless body and drifts away.”“ In this form, Strange can seemingly let his conscious mind travel wherever it pleases him. It“s his mentor whom he visits in this form, an ancient man, bald and with a long white beard, an Asian who resides in a temple located on the top of a mountain. And even though the old guy comes across as humble, he sits on the floor in this big place, he also seems to have a passive-aggressive game going on. Like the founder of an enterprise, he tells his second in command that one day soon he is going to retire, and that junior should be wary of the dangers his seemingly apparent succession brings, as already dark forces are conspiring. And the Doctor falls for his spiel, assuring him that “I shall try to prove worthy of your trust”“. The ancient guy reminds him, that be that as it may, if there is a crisis, he“d better rely on his magic amulet and not on what he has learned, or his abilities. And before Doctor Strange can let this sink in, he plays the old people card: “I am weary!”“ So, Doctor Strange, go away! Anyway, it is time now that Strange keeps his end of the bargain, and thus Ditko cuts to him and the man in his apartment. Once the man is under, it does not take long for Strange to once again release his astral form. As promised, as a spirit, he enters into the man“s dream. And indeed, he quickly comes across the haunting figure. He seems to be rather faceless, and clad in a long frock with a hood, he is restricted by heavy chains which are strung around his slender frame. Strange, in his ghost-like state, is unafraid as he uses a technique unusual for a hero in this era: he has a conversation with the entity. It is then that he learns the true nature of this wraith: “I am a symbol of evil! The evil he has done! That is why I am chained so! If you do not believe”¦ ask Mr. Crang!”“ This is when Ditko retches up the action considerably. First a dark rider on a black horse appears in this foreboding dimension. He and Strange obviously have a history and some unfinished business. It is with unbridled glee that this rider, whom the sorcerer calls Nightmare, reminds him that “those who enter a hostile dimension must be prepared to pay for it”¦ with their lives!”“ At the same time, the man who came to Strange for help, wakes up from his nightmare with the knowledge that Strange probably has heard the name Mr. Crang mentioned, even though in his physical form he is still sitting on the floor of his bedroom. Now in an erratic state and with an expression of evil on his visage that is still contorted from his dream in the other dimension, in which every tree is leafless and seems dead, he decides that Strange cannot leave his apartment with the information he has gained in the nightmarish realm. Thus, he takes a handgun from a drawer, knowing full well that Strange“s body cannot defend itself without his spirit. As the mage“s astral form and his bizarre nemesis observe all this from the dark dimension, from which the sorcerer cannot flee, the terrifying demon called Nightmare gloats furthermore. Finally, his triumph is in the grasp of his hand! Even his black stallion prances in ecstatic excitement as the beast rises up against their common foe. But still there is one who will answer Dr. Strange“s summon. The old man senses his student“s predicament and from far away he does something to the golden amulet that hangs from a heavy chain around Strange“s neck in the physical world. The charm begins to glow brightly “”¦until it slowly opens, revealing a fantastic metal eye within, an eye such as no mortal has ever beheld, such as no mortal ever want to behold again!”“ And what it does, is to freeze the man where he stands. And now, the astral form of the Doctor manages a brazen escape. After he has reunited with his mortal body, and once he has relieved the man from the magic spell and his gun, he commands him to tell him the truth, and in true Randian fashion, what ails him, what has haunted him the whole time, is his crime to have compromised the laws of economics: “I didn“t suspect my dreams were caused by the men I“d ruined in business. Crang was the last of them! I robbed him, but he couldn“t prove it! Now I“ll confess”¦”“

All this transpired in an issue that featured the Human Torch and a science fiction story by Lee“s brother. And while Larry Lieber“s yarn and the first appearance of The Sorcerer Supreme both ran for five pages; it is utterly amazing how much Ditko manages to achieve in such a limited space and with tight panels. Steve Ditko concluded this tale with Doctor Strange confirming what the nameless man now knew. He had to confess. Maybe then his punishment would subside eventually. “It will be the only way you can ever sleep again.”“ In Doctor Strange“s world, as created by Steve Ditko, the guilty was not rewarded. In the real world, perhaps, Ditko“s reward lay in his convictions, and those he“d never compromise. Unlike Serling, Ditko was not somebody who we“d consider a winner. He did not win awards for his work, nor did he ever get invited to fancy cocktail parties. Ditko had no sponsors and he didn“t live in a nice beach condo in Southern California. Today, just by looking at some of the attributes that defined him on a very surface level, we actually have a word for a man like him in current year. White, be-spectacled, a loner, idiosyncratic, politically leaning towards the right, guided by the questionable philosophy of objectivism of Ayn Rand. Maybe today, Ditko would take to Twitter or Facebook to air his grievances with the world, and to speak about his beliefs. And some would call him an incel for it. Then again, like his later creation Mr. A, Steve Ditko was convinced that there was black and then there was white. And there was nothing in-between. Hence, either you valued your art and were entitled to a day“s pay for your honest work or you cut corners in order to maximize your personal gains. He would never stand for it. But he also would not stand for others taking value from him. But naturally, value did not mean money. He received what was his per the contract he“d entered into as a freelancer when he worked for comic book publishers. He stood by his beliefs, even when much later in his life, he was offered an additional bonus payment after his character Spider-Man had become a billion-dollar franchise. Nevertheless, Ditko would argue what the actual contribution of Stan Lee in the creation of his characters was. With Doctor Strange, for reasons that are lost to time, Lee never much claimed that he co-created the character. And the editor even told everybody about how this character had come about, like in a surprisingly forthcoming letter he sent to a fan named Jerry in January 1963: “Well, we have a new character in the works for Strange Tales”¦ Steve Ditko is gonna draw him”¦ ”˜twas Steve“s idea.”“ It isn“t very likely, that Ditko read this letter to a fan, but it is very telling how Lee would muse rather disparagingly about the artist“s work “just a 5-page filler named Dr. Strange”¦ The first story is nothing great, but perhaps we can make something of him”¦”“ By contrast, Lee would write to Jerry glowingly about The Fantastic Four: “FF is easily our favorite book here at the Marvel bullpen.”“ And for this title, Lee took all the credit he could give himself “It“s my baby and I love it.”“ Again, Ditko might not have known about how Lee took value from other people“s work at that time (he left Marvel Comics in 1966), but the overall attitude of the editor could not have escaped his attention even with him working from home. His creative partner was like a P.T. Barnum of Comics. An impresario and a ringmaster, a carnival barker who might as well could have worked for the sideshow that employed Maya, the Cat Girl who Mr. Hall saw in his dream. To somebody as controlled and uptight as Steve Ditko, going by the few interviews he ever gave, and his work, a guy like Lee must have come across as the greatest showman, with charisma to spare while acting callously on more than one occasion towards others. And if you were to describe who Dr. Stephen Strange was when Ditko and Lee presented his origin in Strange Tales No. 115 (1963), and the creative duo revealed what his former life had been like before he“d met his mentor and he eventually became The Master of the Mystic Arts, there are more than a few similarities to the man who called himself “the man”“. And it seems entirely not out of the question that while Ditko did this on purpose, Lee was too self-absorbed to simply get it.

Considering Ditko“s overall predilection for characters who are perpetually trapped right at the moment before they suffer a nervous breakdown and Lee“s fondness for hyperbole and melodrama, it comes as no surprise that when readers first encountered Dr. Strange in his origin story, that he is a broken man, a burned out husk which is but a cruel reminder of his former glory. It“s as a wild-eyed, half crazed hobo that Strange more stumbles than walks towards The Ancient One for whom he had been searching. We are in India of all places, because you know, the “land of mystic enchantment.”“ Strange is a seeker now who is hoping to be made whole again, to be restored to his former self by the old man he“s heard many rumors about. But the truth is, when he meets his future mentor, he had never been whole before. He was once a medical doctor, a surgeon, and maybe the best in the country at that. But, as the old one is about to reveal to him, with words that push for the utmost dramatic flair: “You were proud, haughty, successful! But, you cared little for your fellow man.”“ Like the dreamer in the story which had featured his introduction, all he cared for was not a common good, but wealth. Even though Strange is very good at what he does, he is less interested in his craft, than “money”¦ that was all that interested you, all you cared about.”“ It is very clear what co-plotter Ditko“s message is: according to Ayn Rand“s belief system, he“d made his decision. This was who he was. Colleagues who were seeking out his talents for a medical research project to benefit mankind were laughable to him if they could not pay his services. But as the innocent wouldn“t get penalized, the guilty would not find reward. At least not for a long time or on the path they were on. And thus, on this slippery road, this lonely road, Doctor Strange lost control, first of his vehicle and then of his life. He made it out alive, but according to the news a doctor brought to him, he might as well could have been dead. Though his hands had retained all their motor skills, the nerves had been damaged beyond the point of repair in the brutal crash. Still, he hadn“t left the road he was on. Strange laughed at the mere suggestion that he could work as a medical consultant or an assistant. But now his former sneering mockery sounded less contemptuously but was laced with bitter self-pity. Rendered into a drifter for his pride, since he“d forsaken the medical profession, pointless to a guy such as Strange who had to be top dog in whatever area he applied himself to, he now more than once heard the name The Ancient One whispered among fellow travelers. A man who could heal any wound as the legends would claim. It was this man who revealed Strange for who he was. The old man also told him, that even though he had led a wasted life, there was yet another side to him. A capacity for good, long dormant, a flicker at best. Beyond that, grampa offered not much, but the opportunity to study. Strange wanted nothing like that. But the weather forestalled a hasty departure, forcing Strange to stay for the time being. And this was when he got introduced to the old man“s student Mordo. When he witnessed an attack on the old man, he experienced the powers of dark magic. It was in this moment of weakness, especially with him having just bested his invisible attacker, The Ancient One confided in him, that soon his time would reach its natural end point, and the best he could hope for now was to find a successor for himself during the little time he had left. It was then, that Strange learned that not only was Mordo a traitor, but that he had pledged his services to a being called Dormammu. While Strange had no way of knowing who his secret master was, Mordo by himself was more than he had bargained for. The star pupil toyed with him effortlessly and kept him around for sport, but he made damn certain that Strange was unable to breath a word of what was going down to the old man who of course still trusted Mordo, or so it seemed. While Strange was unable to raise the alarm, he now was properly motivated to take The Ancient One up on his previous offer. He was willing to learn all there was to learn about the mystic arts, and then some. Strange reckoned, that once he had achieved an equal footing with his enemy, he would be able battle him for the life of grampa. Much to Strange“s surprise, old guy already knew about Mordo. But he preferred to keep him around to have an eye on him. Now that he“d found his successor, it fell on Doctor Strange to answer the challenge from the evil Mordo soon, in a duel from which there could only be one survivor. With this origin, Doctor Strange was properly introduced. He almost felt like a real superhero now. But if this was the impressions readers had gotten, things were about to change. But going back, things had already altered over the course of just a handful of appearances of Doctor Strange. For starters, while The Ancient One now apparently resided in India, in the second tale in which he had made an appearance, in Strange Tales No. 111 (1963), his temple was said to be located in Tibet. This issue had also introduced readers to Mordo, Baron Mordo in fact, who at that point was no longer a student of the old man but lived in a hidden castle in the heart of Europe. And in this tale, it was the man called Strange who returned the favor and saved The Ancient One like he had done so for his pupil in the introductory story. In the next two issues however, The Master of the Mystic Arts was nowhere to be seen, though both issues featured stories by Ditko, his latest creation was decidedly absent. When Strange returned in Strange Tales No. 114, once again after a Human Torch story that ran twice as long, a blurb on the first page told readers what was going on. Too unsure was the editor (Lee) of this brand-new character, in whose inception, according to his own account, he“d nary had a hand in, that to him it had seemed prudent to first wait for the mail from fans to come it. With the feedback as encouraging as it was or as Lee made it out to be, Ditko was now allowed to continue. And once again Strange fought Mordo who thus clearly became somewhat of arch-nemesis for Strange. Interestingly though, by going back to the origin of both Strange and Mordo in the next issue, Ditko humanized these men who in the previous issues must have felt omnipotent to any reader, with how loosely their powers were defined. Steve Ditko granted readers a look at a time when Strange was first an arrogant prick and then a loser, drowning in self-pity, while Mordo was a petty, scheming thug who was easily outwitted by his teacher, whereas in his first appearance it was he who“d successfully tricked The Ancient One. It was this infusion of human frailty, of soul if you will, that made these two characters viable going forward. Unlike as with other superheroes, Doctor Strange“s powers, and by extension those of his mortal enemy Mordo, were limitless it seemed. However, there wouldn“t be a green rock or a color to ever stop them from reaching their full potential at all times. Their weakness lay rooted in their humanity. And in that, they were not far removed from many other characters of Ditko“s, wide-eyed and panicky when confronted with weird occurrences. With this going on, Ditko focused his artistic attention on the worldbuilding, which he took to a level so innovative and otherworldly, that his creation was soon adopted by stoners and potheads.

The contrast between the already very good first couple of issues that featured stories about the mage to what came right with the next issue is so jarring that it almost feels as if a different artist had worked on those earlier tales. What Ditko offered in “Return to the Nightmare World”“, with less input from Lee it seems, is such a startling and idiosyncratic achievement in visual storytelling that it shatters any belief of what could or could not be done in comic book art and the medium itself, while simultaneously any form of conventional storytelling is rendered almost obsolete. When some citizens cannot be awakened from their slumber, this time it is the police who seeks Strange“s assistance. After examining the victims with his amulet, now dubbed The Eye of Agamotto, and the sorcerer has consulted The Book of Vishanti, he goes straight to the source, which means he furthermore had to he slip into the realm of Nightmare, though it seemed that the he had redecorated his realm top to bottom since the mage“s first visitation. Now there are narrow ways which lead through a floating open mouth with long fangs, there are webs and tentacles, equally suspended in midair. And even presumably down on safer ground, each step can spell doom with a chasm liable to upon with but a second“s notification and so much of a warning. Now behind every door there was another door, while small islands were suspended in utter nothingness or in a void that only here and there was divided by seemingly unmotivated geometrical shapes at random. This now was a place that spawned the kind of monsters only the sleep of reason can dream up. As if in keeping with his brand-new digs, Nightmare had adopted a pet that was but night terrors given form: “This is the Spinybeast, whose touch means death! He seems to want to meet you, Strange!”“ And while Nightmare, high on his dark horse, prodded the spikey, lethal creature towards him, in his metaphysical form, Strange was perilously driven closer to the edge of a cliff, with another, much bigger terror beast, one that came with long tentacles, waiting for him down in the abyss. Though Ditko could not maintain this peak of craziness, the very next issue brought a rather conventional story of Strange battling Mordo yet again, the alien-looking, utterly bizarre dimensions he would create over the next three years might represent the highpoint of his long career, and his work still remains unmatched, even though over the years, the title character attracted many highly talented writers and artists. Though, once Ditko had left the building on 655 Madison Avenue, it would seem that Doctor Strange was left in limbo. Or precisely, in the hand of a writer who had no idea what to do with him. There were some notable exceptions still, like Lee“s creation The Living Tribunal (with Marie Severin and Herb Trimpe), but most of Strange“s tales, not only written by Lee, became magical fetch quests. The disinterest Lee had awarded the character in his earliest stages became more pronounced once without any input from Ditko. While Marie Severin tried her utmost to maintain a level of visual consistency, until Dan Adkins took over, Lee often yielded his writing commitments to writers who were available. But even with talent like Denny O“Neil and Roy Thomas working on the book at that time, the latter who created Umar, Dormammu“s sister, this made for a widely uneven reading experience. There was a sameness to the proceedings with writers such as Jim Lawrence or Raymond Marais been given a shot, who either regurgitated old plotlines or displayed a vast lack of understanding for these characters. That writers were rotated out in the middle of ongoing storylines didn“t help matters either. With a central creative voice missing, unlike in the early days, both artists struggled to deliver artwork that rose above being just fine or serviceable. In 1968 however, due to a revision of a constraining distribution agreement, and the subsequent sale of Marvel and its parent company, Stan Lee was finally given the opportunity to put out as many titles as he saw fit. This meant that he now could give those characters their own book who had been sharing a title. In case of Strange Tales this led to a solo book for both Doctor Strange and Nick Fury. The latter had replaced The Human Torch, and was spun off into a brand-new series, while Doctor Strange kept the title and the numbering, albeit under his own name. While the editor retained Adkins“ services (which would change quickly) he now assigned the writing duties to wunderkind Roy Thomas, his own heir apparent. While at first glance this would seem rather unlikely, but a case can be made that if comic books ever had a writer who came close to what Rod Serling was for television, he had to have been this long-haired, be-spectacled hippie. Sixteen years younger than the manly, ruggedly handsome award-winning writer, Thomas was cut from a different cloth entirely. Whereas Lee, like Serling was a showman with an uncanny sense for business, even more so than Serling, had begun working in comics because a relative of his was the publisher, it is not a stretch to call Thomas a fanboy and a nerd. While Lee saw writing for comics as a placeholder career, he wanted to be the next most important American novelist, less so for the value of the craft itself, but since it seemed a neat thing to be and it came with fame and fortune attached, Roy Thomas jumped at the chance to be involved with comic books in any capacity. Lee loved nothing more than to be rubbing shoulders with famous movie directors and other celebrities from the artistic world, Thomas put out a comic fanzine and went to comic book conventions. Serling had found the perfect channel for his artistic expression in television, Thomas for his in comics. Both men used genre tales to tell complex stories about the human condition, both men were very much in tune with the zeitgeist during the high points of their careers, both of them had a propensity for using literary quotes for story titles, both men were unafraid and angry, and they both had a lot to say about the world in their writing. It is appropriate then, that Thomas would use the opportunity to have another stab at this character, who defacto had his own book now, with Doctor Strange No. 169 (1968), for a relaunch, while integrating the protagonist into the world he saw outside of his window, especially once nightfall had settled in between the towers of the Manhattan skyline. Ultimately, Roy Thomas“ unique contribution to the book was to be the way in which he used Strange to turn the all-too real horrors to the light, those that lived in the small cracks of society at the end of the Summer of Love, effectively showing readers that you did not need to open a portal or had to project your astral form to The Dark Dimension to experience the alien and the weird, that it in effect existed right here in our world in-between the mundane of our everyday existence. But first, in keeping with a fresh start, he and Adkins re-told the origin of Doctor Strange five years after the character had first appeared. With the benefit of hindsight, Thomas made a few changes along the way.

Whereas Ditko was given just eight pages to tell the origin of Doctor Strange, a job he did to perfection, Thomas and Adkins now had a much broader canvas of twenty pages in total to work with. Both stories open with a splash page that offers a full body shot of The Master of the Mystic Arts. Ditko“s version of the character conveys a mysterious, a slightly sinister vibe, and Strange does look Asian. On Adkins“ first page, Strange is broad shouldered. His body is healthy. He“s gained a lot of muscle mass when compared to the gangly man we see on the Ditko page. With his larger, bulked up physique and his clearly defined sinews, he had become attractive. Dan Adkins“ Doctor Strange has the face of a matinÃ©e idol from the 1940s, but with a more contemporary glamor. The way Adkins“ portrays the character, it is immediately clear that this Doctor Strange will always have one foot firmly grounded in reality. Steve Ditko“s Strange is aloof and ethereal, yet he is a problem-solver and he has confidence in his abilities. Thomas however let readers know that though the man had charisma to spare, he harbored many self-doubts. And while he reflects on the dark paths he has chosen and he muses “”¦ as it is I who must walk them alone!”“, his thoughts travel to the two beautiful women in his life right when he slips out of his shirt. And Adkins is not afraid to show readers how ripped with muscles the man is; and this Stephen Strange sleeps with his shirt off. The difference between Ditko“s depiction and the one realized by Adkins and Roy Thomas does also betray how much society had changed in those five years in-between. And how this here now is a different generation of creators. Technically neither the artist nor the writer are baby boomers, but since they are both much younger than Ditko and especially Lee, they are in tune with the zeitgeist of the late 1960s, with an outlook far removed from the hopeful, optimistic world view that existed at the start of the decade. A time that talked about the new frontier and spoke to the greatest generation and their young children. This here now was the Age of Aquarius, but it was also fast approaching the nadir of a time when these children still believed that the world could be changed with love and peace. When Doctor Strange in the Thomas and Adkins story goes to sleep, he dreams of the terrors that lay ahead, and even in this state, between the waking world and his nightmares, there are his self-doubts. And as if to mirror the scene from the very first Strange story, it is now he who gets out of bed and lights up a cigarette. But while the nameless man in the Ditko tale looked shaken and nervous while doing so, this Doctor Strange looks sexy in a dreamy way and very romantic. And whereas the origin in the Ditko take was told from the perspective of an omniscient narrator, this time around it is Strange who tells his own origin tale. But considering how Thomas had started the issue, it comes as no surprise that it is not the broken and down on his luck Stephen Strange we see at first, the unshaven drifter who had fallen right in front of The Ancient One“s feet in his temple in India (which now was most definitely the Himalayas), but as Doctor Strange takes an almost wistful look back, we encounter him during his peak time as the greatest surgeon in the world. Ironically, the very first information we get about the guy comes in form of the thoughts a young nurse, since this is clearly how he views himself. A star: “His hand never falters! They say he“s the greatest neuro-surgeon in the world!”“ And Strange“s first words are all about money: “The patient will live”¦ which simplifies the matter to whom I send my bill!”“ And as Strange goes about his day, once again we see how he“s all about his financial gain and his ego. This is how he self-actualizes. But now we also get a comment track via the older Strange: “These memories are painful, full of stinging venom!”“ And then, again, the accident happens. But while Ditko shows us the wrecked car with Strange inside, but hidden from our prying eyes, and two State Troopers who now rush to the scene, in the new version, the artistic duo builds up to this climax. We are right in the car with Strange as he rushes off to attend a party one of wealthiest women in the state has going on at her lavish estate, a woman who he has pegged as his future patient knowing full well this will get him many rich clients. “And then, in one searing, unforgettable instant it was all over!”“ Now we are outside the red sports car to better see how it goes over the cliff like so, with Strange fully aware what is going on. This is the first time he sinks into a weird dimension. Briefly he comes to. It is he who asks for help, who begs for it now. Then he floats back into this nothingness. When awakens, Strange is akin to Perry Nelson, the hero of Robert Heinlein“s novel “For Us, The Living”“, a man who finds himself transported by a car accident from his time far into the future. For what Strange beholds at first is an eye with a blinding light, an eye like the one he would use on the nameless man in his first adventure as Doctor Strange, The Master of the Mystic Arts. But it is not The Eye of Agamotto he sees, for this is not his future, yet, but the life he is still destined to lead. And Roy Thomas provides an interesting twist. While Ditko, in true Randian fashion goes out of his way to drive home the idea that Strange“s hands have become useless for a surgeon“s tasks since “the nerves have been severely damaged!”“, heavily implying that Strange has received a just punishment, Thomas suggests a different reason why he better put his career on hold. In the newer version Strange uses all his money to pay for restorative surgery, but to no avail. It is then that Strange realizes that the problem might be a psychological one. Maybe his mind is holding him back. For the remainder of the pages, Roy Thomas heavily dials back Ditko“s use of mysticism in favor of an adventure tale with a tableau of many snow-capped mountains and a surprisingly rugged Strange first confronting The Ancient One. Then after some humbling and the spiel with Mordo, he is accepted as his student. And of course, once his reverie of the past has run its course, there is some commotion, as in true modern style, there is a cliffhanger.

Naturally, with Thomas visiting the past like Strange himself had in the previous issue, his second story featured the magician“s enemy from his very first appearance in Strange Tale No. 110 as the antagonist. Nightmare was back with a vengeance, the difference being, that unlike when the foes had meet in the first Ditko story, readers were only told that they“d had a history. During the intermediary years, several battles between The Master of the Mystic Arts and The Ruler of the Dream Dimension had taken place in front of the readers“ eyes, however. So, while those first confrontations only played out in the minds of readers and second set of battles actually took place on the printed page, the question that remained was a very simple one. Would Thomas and Dan Adkins (who, during his tenure on the series, had already shown a bewildering propensity for heavy-handedly swiping other artists“ work, especially Ditko“s) have anything new to add? Right with story title for Doctor Strange No. 170 (1968) Roy Thomas threw down the gauntlet as a signal that he was more than ready for the challenge. Unlike Doctor Strange he wasn“t one for self-doubt. The title “To Dream”¦ Perchance to Die!”“ was of course a clever play on the Hamlet quote, Charles Beaumont had used for his story, the title he would retain when he adapted the tale for Rod Serling“s fantastical TV show The Twilight Zone. Though “sleep”“ in the original quote meant death, Thomas not so much turned the quote on its ear, but he told readers what was at stake here. And what hung in the balance was the live of The Ancient One, who Strange now could not wake from his slumber. But comic books are foremost a visual medium and the difference to the first Nightmare story by Ditko is at its most striking on this level. Maybe at Thomas“ behest or simply this suited his sensibilities better, Adkins heavily leaned into layouts that were the complete opposite of Ditko“s highly controlled, famous nine-panel grid. While Ditko masterfully conveyed an unsettling mood of claustrophobia which further underlined the sense of entrapment his characters found themselves in, Adkins style can best be called by a name that was only much later applied to comic book art: widescreen action. His panels are often huge, taking up half a page or a complete page, with clarity in favor of details. Even though Strange is lured into a trap by Nightmare, namely, to slip into the mind of his mentor in his ectoplasmic form, this feels less like a mystical, existential journey, but more like he had become a gunslinger riding through a desert landscape. And this is how the battle between the mage and the ruler of the Dream Dimension plays out. While initially breaking into the physical world, wherein Nightmare had disguised himself as the old man“s servant, he and Strange confront each other in the man“s mind like in a Mexican Standoff. Instead of bullets, they trade magical spells and dark enchantments. And whereas Nightmare hurls bolts of ectoplasm, Strange fires back with rays emitting from The Eye of Agamotto. And like in a proper duel, Strange drives his enemy back with keeping him under a constant barrage of blinding magical light. But whereas in the first Nightmare story it was the man seeking Strange“s help who in the real world wanted to do harm to his unprotected body while the mage was caught in the Dream Dimension, it is the demon now who returns to our world with Doctor Strange still trapped in the mind of his mentor. This time, he cannot expect any help from The Ancient One, since it is he, whom the demon threatens, to kill both of his sworn enemies in one fell swoop: “Now I must quickly end this charade with a simple dagger! When his sleeping mentor dies, Dr. Strange will be likewise destroyed!”“ As it turns out, his mentor has taught him well. The embattled and presently trapped mage uses a magical incantation to remotely command his Cloak of Levitation to do the handiwork for him. It surely does exactly that as the heavy cloth wraps itself around the physical body of the erstwhile wraith-like demon. Thus, completely ensnared, with no other avenue open to him, Nightmare quickly changes back to his astral form to beat a hasty retreat. It is then that Strange returns to his body, and right as if this was a fairy tale, this is the moment when his teacher rises from his unwelcomed slumber. And right on time he delivers the kicker. The Ancient One now lets it slip that he“d allowed Nightmare to enter our world via his mind. Doctor Strange is not only surprised, but like any other sane person he does wonder why his mentor would chance such a risk: “Of late, my son, you have been plagued by numbing doubts! Only a victory over a powerful foe could fully restore your confidence! Thus, I risked both our lives”¦ in the most fateful gambit of all! The Vishanti be praised”¦ you proved equal to the test!”“ Surely, Strange“s heart swells with pride upon learning this, as he remarks when Roy Thomas closes the issue: “I entered this chamber a man”¦ among many men! But I depart once more”¦ The Master of the Mystic Arts!”“ Still, given some time to reflect, what a dick move! The confidence booster notwithstanding, The ancient One simply had to tell him what a clever scheme he had woven. To use Hamlet“s words once more: “My God, do you think I“m easier to manipulate than a pipe?”“ But surely, Roy Thomas was playing to a full house of converted followers: every young reader at that time could identify with Strange“s plight. Everyone who had an overbearing parent who, simply by withholding information, managed to outsmart their offspring at every turn. These were the days of a young generation breaking away from being under the thumb of the parent generation. A comic fan turned pro, the writer knew his audience inside out, perhaps better than his own mentor, particularly with this audience, from this generation to which Lee“s exuberant, winking spiel increasingly sounded like the pretend play of a man in his middle years who wore a hairpiece and who wanted to impress the idea on readers still, that he was with it. Thomas knew better. And he also knew that while he had been able to right the ship with his first two issues, it was still not smooth sailing from here on out. While he and his artist had created two memorable one-off stories for Doctor Strange, and Dan Adkins, as if to mark the occasion that The Master of the Mystic Arts was no longer confined to a title in which he had to share half the page count with the clandestine adventures of Nick Fury, Agent of Shield, had delivered some of his best artwork, Thomas knew this was not enough. The irony being that one only had to look at the issue that came right before the split. The Doctor Strange story in Strange Tales No. 168 was by Denny O“Neil and Adkins, who had also served as co-plotter. The Nick Fury strip, the writing, the pencils and the colors, and sometimes the inking, were handled, ironically, by Adkins“ friend and neighbor Jim Steranko, the new rockstar of comics. Steranko was incredibly innovative and he was a masterful artist as well as a gifted storyteller. With the way he had re-designed and re-defined Fury, Steranko was right in the zeitgeist. Thomas wanted to tell stories that were equally of their time, but with a much darker vibe. There was a whole subculture to examine that was all about exploring the esoteric and the occult. To achieve this, he needed an artist whose style was about perfect. And his name was not Dan Adkins.

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.