There is always a Sorcerer Supreme, and for very nearly as long as there have been Sorcerer Supremes, there have been Wongs.
“Wong” isn’t really a name per se. It’s a title that the bearer takes in place of his name (which is why it doesn’t really relate back to any actual culture – “Wong” is a poor Romanization of either “Huang” or “Wang”). The current Wong is the first in his family line to take the name – and his family have been serving Sorcerer Supremes faithfully and skillfully for ten generations, so you get an idea of how seriously the Sorcerer Supremes take the naming of Wongs. You have to be the most deeply trustworthy sort and utterly devoted to the mission of the Sorcerer Supreme to become Wong.
Nobody remembers Wong’s previous name before he was Wong. That’s part of the magic of the name. Once you become Wong, you have in a sense always been Wong, just as the previous Wong was always Wong even before he became Wong, and so on and so forth. This is all part of the duty of the Wongs – you sacrifice the idea of yourself, in a way, to continue the tradition. Wongs are a source of pride in every family line in Kamar-Taj.
Except for the seventeenth Wong. He is not spoken of. Ever.
The seventeenth Wong had the misfortune to serve a Sorcerer Supreme who was particularly malicious, cruel, arrogant and selfish. As has been said before: Sorcerer Supremes are tasked with protecting their reality. There’s no rule that they have to be nice about it, or even that they have to be particularly careful of preserving life in this universe. Some Sorcerer Supremes have been utter bastards, and this one was one of the worst. Even so, the seventeenth Wong gritted his teeth and did his duty faithfully, serving this Sorcerer Supreme to the best of his abilities –
– until that Sorcerer Supreme took notice of the seventeenth Wong’s wife.
After her funeral, the seventeenth Wong walked away from his service, cursing the Sorcerer Supreme, the Vishanti, the whole damn system. And here was the problem: they couldn’t just replace him and bring out the eighteenth Wong, because what very very few people knew was that “Wong” was in fact not a name nor a title but a sort of magical equivalent of an acronymic word of power, the capstone of a very powerful spell of imprisonment. That’s why there’s always a Wong, why the people of Kamar-Taj make sure that a new Wong is brought forth within hours of the death of his predecessor.
The ruling council of Kamar-Taj sent out thief-chasers and bounty hunters to capture the seventeenth Wong, but like all Wongs, the seventeenth Wong was a master of martial arts, fluent in dozens of languages and cultural norms, and exceptionally intelligent – exactly the worst sort of person you want to have evading your attempts at capture. Five years passed, and eventually the council appealed to the Sorcerer Supreme, who took matters into his own hands. However, the Sorcerer Supreme discovered that the seventeenth Wong had anticipated his intervention, and all his spells of seeking and searching were useless. The seventeenth Wong had prepared exactly the right magical countermeasures.
Of course, the Sorcerer Supreme was extremely smart – and not burdened by morals – and it only took about half a dozen massacres, maybe four thousand deaths all told, for the seventeenth Wong to give himself up so that the Sorcerer Supreme would stop killing innocent people. But by this point, the Sorcerer Supreme was infuriated, both at having to deal with this insect personally, and that the insect had thwarted his spells so judiciously. So instead of simply killing the seventeenth Wong, the Sorcerer Supreme created a torture bubble hanging just outside the universe, stuck the seventeenth Wong in it, and called the matter solved.
But the problem is this: the spell which is completed by the existence of a Wong would start to unravel were there ever two Wongs around at the same time. And if the seventeenth Wong ever managed to escape that bubble realm, thousands of years later, a decent and good man only very tenuously sane after millennia of horrors man was not meant to endure – he would not be inclined to care…
Top comment: Zifnab’s just over-compensating for the fact that he didn’t get to do the “Two Wongs Don’t Make a Right” thing first… and we all feel it.
Its as if MGK set up the “shave and a hair cut” and now the rest of us are forever silenced because someone already said “two bits”. Its maddening. — Zenrage
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So if a Wong ever left this plane of existence for whatever reason (accompanying his master, running over to the Courts of Chaos for a cup of entropy, what have you), a new Wong could be called forth without any problems? Because if Wong #17 is still alive, under whatever circumstances, wouldn’t that screw up Wong #18’s “coming out party?”
I mean, everyone knows that two Wongs don’t make a right.
I mean, everyone knows that two Wongs don’t make a right.
Dammit. I was hoping to get here first with that one.
Oh bubble realities. Is there anything you can’t fuck up?
So is there a Sorcerer Supreme version of Aunt Harriet, or is Steven Strange so damn manly that no one ever bothered to have a gay panic moment around his live-in manservent?
Maybe it’s the mustache. No one ever makes “Matches Malone is gay” jokes.
“Maybe it’s the mustache.”
Your damn right it’s the mustache.
“The current Wong is the first in his family line to take the name – and his family have been serving Sorcerer Supremes faithfully and skillfully for ten generations, so you get an idea of how seriously the Sorcerer Supremes take the naming of Wongs.”
Tell me I’m not the only one immature enough to rephrase that as “you get an idea of how seriously the Sorcerer Supremes take the naming of Wangs”.
The more you write, the more I actually care about Stephen Strange, which I never did before. Damn you, MGK.
Is the prison slowly expanding like the Park? Is this the Orson Randall of Wongs? Or more like Buffy after season one when Kendra and later Faith became the official Slayer? Why would Wong have a wife if he knows he’ll eventually forget his non-Wong life; or alternately if he’s already Wong and therefore too busy helping the Sorceror Supreme to get his commitment on?
And most importantly, will we wind up seeing Patrick Swayze, Wesley Snipes, and John Leguizamo in drag?
It doesn’t work like that.
It definitely doesn’t work like that.
Goddamn. Why can’t I live in the alternate universe where MGK actually writes Dr. Strange? The awesomeness of these story ideas almost makes up for the dearth of comics remixes lately.
the seventeenth Wong was a master of martial arts, fluent in dozens of languages and cultural norms, and exceptionally intelligent
… So they deleted his memory and dumped him in the Mediterranean, where he was found by a passing trawler?
The most enjoyable aspect of these and your LSH ideas are how they draw on established stuff in reasonable ways. Too many writers have pulled the equivalent of Star Trek V’s “Of course Spock has a brother. Always has. We’ve just never mentioned it before.” Stuff from out of the blue.
But Strange has always had Wong. Of course he has, we’ve seen his faithfully serving for ages. And it makes sense, now that someone points it out, that he’s got some notable skills/powers/traits himself. (And Triplicate Girl has something funny going on. And…)
Far more “Swamp Thing can’t return to being Alec Holland because he never was Alec Holland.” than Star Trek V.
Yeah, of course. I should have realized that. (Except, of course, I never would.)
The least enjoyable aspect has been that you aren’t actually writing these books. Do, as someone suggested in another recent thread, and post an actual full story or script sometime. Throw us a bone.
If you kill a Wong and then raise him from the dead, does he become a Wong Wight? If he’s on a schedule, does that mean shows up at the Wong Time? If a Wong gets divorced, does his wife change her name to Sue Wong? Who would get custody of the kids? Can you ever follow a Wong? Cause it seems like you’d always be going in the Wong direction.
:-p
@Zifnab – you just gave me Danger Mouse flashbacks with those lines…
So basically, the Wongs would be the Marvel Equivalent of the Ubus or the Igors? 🙂
“It doesn’t work like that.”
So it’s just the name that’s forgotten then? Like how all the Peter & MJ stories still happened, they just didn’t have a marriage license?
It’s more elemental than simply memory. When you become a Wong, you have always been a Wong, retroactively speaking.
It’s complex. Magic doesn’t always make sense.
That leaves me to wonder if a Wong is even able to abandon their name. I mean, the 17nth Wong had a reason not to, but could the current Wong basically stop being Wong, not simply in function but in existence, to save the basis of the title while Strange dealt with the renegade?
This also brings up the question, is it common (or even possible, though I can’t see why it couldn’t be) for a Wong to become the next Sorcerer Supreme? After all, they’re being exposed to all sorts of crazy magic and threats, and in that sense, you could see being Wong as on-the-job training to be the next Sorcerer Supreme.
Which then brings up the question of whether or not Stephen Strange ended up breaking an unofficial but important position when he was chosen by the Ancient One, and how some people might not be happy about that fact….
Unofficial but important tradition, sorry.
@Matt Morrison: Zifnab’s just over-compensating for the fact that he didn’t get to do the “Two Wongs Don’t Make a Right” thing first… and we all feel it.
Its as if MGK set up the “shave and a hair cut” and now the rest of us are forever silenced because someone already said “two bits”. Its maddening.
“Magic doesn’t always make sense.” Oh, I disagree. It may relate more to mythic or mystical premises than to the known laws of physics, but I think it does make sense — although since all of your stuff so far makes sense to me (which is one of the things I love about this series of story ideas!) then I don’t think we really disagree here. 🙂
It’s like Straczynski’s frustration with what they turned the end of his Spider-Man run into. Part of that was because he felt, and I agree, that magical stuff needs to consistently follow its own rules, rather than being used as a vague catch-all McGuffin. Again, though, since you’re specifically laying down ground rules I don’t think we really disagree here…
I mean, it could be somewhat Highlander style, where you inherit memories or skills or dispositions from your predecessors.
Or it could be that you have one persistent entity “Wong” who is invested in individuals over time and who vests his host with certain knowledge / skills / abilities.
Or it could be purely ceremonial magic, just a magical seal of approval marking you as a “Wong” for this reality, perhaps with some perks.
The third seems the most likely, to me at least, because a) all that highlander shit gets kinda crazy by the umpteenth iteration just from a writers continuity perspective (How was I supposed to remember that Wong 21 hung out with this guy eighty three issues ago for, like, two hours in a bar one time?!) and b) when you jettisoned Wong 17 from this reality that should break the entire Wong lineage since you’ve kinda tossed the baby out with the bathwater.
ChastMastr: I don’t think he was saying that Magic doesn’t have to follow rules. He was saying that the rules of magic don’t necessarily make sense. It’s like why people keep bringing up CRICKET in these threads. Because something that unwieldily complex has to transcend sanity and be magical.
Just because the rules are too complex for a sane person to fully understand, doesn’t mean there aren’t rules. It just means you don’t know what justifies the rules. Like Gravity, to go with a scientific analogue; We know what gravity does, how to measure it, calculate it, defy it, etc… but the best explanation as to WHY it works so far is that there are like, 7 imperceptible dimensions whose vibrations cause gravity to happen.
Kelberon: That leaves me to wonder if a Wong is even able to abandon their name. I mean, the 17nth Wong had a reason not to, but could the current Wong basically stop being Wong, not simply in function but in existence, to save the basis of the title while Strange dealt with the renegade?
Even assuming he could, what happens when the 17th Wong is dealt with? He just steps back up like nothing happened? There’s no suspense if it’s that easy. I’d bet stepping down is either impossible or the sort of thing that can’t be undone. Probably the later so that we can have scenes where Wong tries to convince Strange that it’s for the best, and Strange won’t allow it because he doesn’t want a different Wong. And then, just when he has no other choice, at the very last possible second, the solution is revealed.
Many faces same Wong.
Has anyone ever thought that Wong is there to keep the Sorcerer Supreme humble and human.
I mean being the steward of an entire reality, possessing the power to abuse it horribly without violating the rights of all beings who inhabit it gotta carry some serious stress inducing maladies.
Does the good doctor have a psychiatrist on call, or will one of his magical alter egos suffice?
Therefore it helps when some Wong reminds Herr Supreme whenever the inclination to rearrange the
chemical processes of every internal combustion engine in existence retroactively strikes, traffic jams will still occur. And no you cannot summon Domino’s from a pocket dimension of 2245AD just to satisfy your midnight cravings. Well he could, but he shouldn’t.
Incidentally, does the Doctor Strange do pro bono medical work, if only as community service and stress relief?
If the worst should occur, and the Sorcerer Supreme should abandon his humanity, then who better to retire the sorcerer aka Dr Venture to ensure the well being of the universe.
No matter how powerful you are, anyone who can tell personal stories of social mishaps of domestic nature (Did I neglect to inform you of the Laundry incident and the phase shifting baboons?)is someone to be feared.
Now that’s real leverage.
This is reminding me of the first few books of Immortal Iron Fist. Pushing in on the character a bit and looking at all the ripples of background that rise up around them.
Very neat stuff.
Holy shit justin, I was just about to scroll down and say that. All the throwbacks to old sorcerer supremes/wong…I really like it. Although I don’t like Immortal Iron Fist as much as I know I should.
Kelberon: That leaves me to wonder if a Wong is even able to abandon their name. I mean, the 17nth Wong had a reason not to, but could the current Wong basically stop being Wong, not simply in function but in existence, to save the basis of the title while Strange dealt with the renegade?
If stepping down, whether temporarily or permanently, isn’t an option, he *could* volunteer to go into the torture bubble until the problem is solved. That wouldn’t be pleasant, of course, but it worked before, and could work again.
Of course, it’s possible somebody else who knows about the problem would be desperate enough to make that decision *for* him.
And then there’s the question… if the spell has “started to unravel”, can we really be sure that just getting rid of one Wong will *stop* it?
DF: Surely we could have a bubble without the torture, or just bundle the current Wong off to the Villiage outside of Time from the pervious post for a little R&R.
I’d be more worried that Wong-17 isn’t Strange’s Wong. If every Sorcerer Supreme needs his or her own Wong, what happens if the current Wong is (forgive me) the wrong Wong?
If two Wongs don’t make a right, do five lines and a circle still make a pentagram? Note I’m speaking in only one universe/dimension/reality. I know that Strange has ways to do so with less but let’s not get to complicated, yet.
“And then there’s the question… if the spell has “started to unravel”, can we really be sure that just getting rid of one Wong will *stop* it?”
There can be only Wong!
*applause*
That, sir, is one of your best ideas to date. Awesome.
Mr. Williams, I assume that line precedes the Quickening?
I’m really really enjoying this series, the Moe Berg and Wong installations especially.
But…
(and please forgive me for being a pedant)
Shouldn’t it be “SorcererS Supreme”? Like “Attorneys General”?
Hummm…you know, something had to change for Wong(17) to escape. Maybe it had something to do with someone with the resources and research ability to discover the continued existence of Wong(17), the occult chops to (at least help) disrupt the torture bubble, and the ego and motivation to put reality at risk just to distract/personally hurt Strange.
I bet this guy is a pretty dangerous customer, one who’s had conflicts with Strange previously. The sort of fellow who lives in a dark and foreboding castle and, in a happy coincidence, is in possession of a time machine and enough specific information regarding Wong(17)’s story to allow Strange to go back in time and retrieve the only thing that might convince Wong(17) to care about existence again.
Hm. Does that apply to parallel worlds, too? Cause then we have a simple way to stop Earth-2793: throw Wong-616 in there.
Well, I’d assume there would be a serious consequence to a Wong actually stepping away from the position-it could make Wong 17 even more dangerous in this specific situation. Or someone who steps down from the position, no matter how well intentioned they are, cannot become a Wong again. But it was more of a “could it be done” question than how it could be done-after all, if you essentially become Wong for as long as you’ve been alive, stepping down from that would seem like stepping down from being yourself-flat out impossible, at least to our perception.
why don’t you make a own character and make a comic for it? is going to be a lot better than this.
Bah, this is an easy fix:
Make him the Sorcerer Supreme for The Park Outside Eternity.
“Mr. Williams, I assume that line precedes the Quickening?”
Indeed, but only from the first movie. 🙂
Well, obviously.
@Zenrage: I am jealous of the time in which a shave and hair-cut cost seventy-five cents. I have yet to get a professional shave, due to equal parts frugality and paranoia. The latter is mostly due to “The Color Purple,” but it’s not as if I’ve raped any barbers. After all, if someone is going to have a straight-razor by my jugular, it should be a professional.
Wong had a wife in his non-Wong life
but he won the Wong, so he cut like a knife
But then the wizard tasted
Wifey got wasted
So Wong wound up in a world of strife
…eh, it didn’t start life as a limerick, but oh well.
So on the Wong and prior life…He’s always been Wong…but is there knowledge of there having been previous Wongs? Does current Wong’s parents now know their son as Wong..or do they no longer know they have a son?