April is a busy month for me – final exams and all – so I decided to get most of it done in advance. And you know what that meant, right?
One day, you wake up, and blue is gone.
I don’t mean blue things. The things are still there: bluebells, the sky and sea, various types of whales, the road uniforms for the Toronto Blue Jays, the Thing’s underwear. They just – aren’t blue any more. It’s not that the blue spectrum of light is missing, either. Things that are cyan or magenta are still cyan or magenta; the disappearance of blue hasn’t affected those colours of which blue is a root component. And that’s your first hint that this isn’t a problem science can solve.
Here’s another: most people aren’t even noticing blue is gone. You point at the sky and ask them what colour it is, they’ll shrug. They won’t say it’s blue – on some level they understand it isn’t blue any more – but they don’t notice the difference. Psychics notice. Sensitives notice. Those with the bad luck to have had run-ins with demons or angels or gods notice. But even most of these people won’t understand what’s going on. Most of them will just think something’s gone wrong with their eyes. (Just because you have a heightened attunement to things supernatural doesn’t mean you don’t visit the optometrist.)
And why would anybody take blue away? What’s the point? Put aside the rank impossibility of it for a moment – the question of how exactly something like this happens – and consider that this is a fundamentally absurd act; removing blue without removing its physically affecting properties is in many ways an entirely symbolic act.
Or at least it is to anybody from this dimension. In other dimensions, where the laws of physics are written by a wholly different hand, blue might not be a colour. It might be a power source. It might be a currency. Maybe it’s food. We’re going to a new definition of the word “alien,” so new that our existing understanding of alien-ness becomes insufficient to explain what the thieves of blue want, or if they’re even capable of desiring anything in the first place.
Normally, in the Marvel Universe, this is where you call in Reed Richards. But this isn’t something the Fantastic Four can handle. As smart as Reed Richards is, he still needs to start reasoning from the common ground of natural science he’s occupied his entire life, even if only to distinguish a new Other from our world by the differences. But in a case like this, the difference between the Other and us is the difference between a high C-sharp note and a feeling of remorse.
To fix this – and you know, instinctively, looking at the sky, that the lack of blue is a problem, and one more pressing than just a source of aesthetic displeasure – you need someone who can explain scientifically unquantifiable differences in lay terms that, while entirely inaccurate in any proper sense, still serve to give the listener an accurate idea of the larger issues at hand without driving them insane. It’s a very, very rare skill. Most people who dabble in magic can’t begin to handle it.
But the Sorcerer Supreme can. The Sorcerer Supreme isn’t just a fancy title, but a job description. The Sorcerer Supreme isn’t just a mystic superhero, he is the guardian of this entire reality. It’s his (or her, when that’s the case) job to be able to dive into the deep end of what any human would consider pure insanity and say “the water’s fine, and I’ll be out in a few minutes after I get your wallet,” where the “wallet” is in fact the continuing stability of this entire plane of existence.
And that’s why this is a job for Dr. Strange.
Top comment: My last relevant thought was “You know, if DOOM was the Sorcerer Supreme, he wouldn’t just get blue back, he’d give us colors we never had before.” He’d call them Doom, Light Doom, Doomish Yellow, and RICHARDS!! The Hated Color. – HitTheTargets
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i have to say that this falls into the category of “could be plausible” – you could very easily have the desire to write dr. strange. if it’s an april fool’s joke, it’s very subtle.
Needs more cowbell.
I mean, it’s an interesting premise, but… I don’t know… it needs more. I mean, I guess that’s why they should give you the gig. I just get the feeling that “blue’s gone, aliens done it, fundamental balance of the universe blah blah blah” requires a bit more weightiness too it, if only because you need to make people care.
Like, how would this impact day to day life? How would be suffer / exploit the situation? Watching the entire human population begin to suffer a bizarre degenerative disorder due to a lack of blue blood, or a series of airplane collisions in a confusing gray sky, or a sudden rise in counterfeiting – as things like currency and passports become vulnerable to fraud – that few seem to understand or recognize the cause of might sell the urgency of the situation rather than leaving it as a silly little novelty for the non-hyper-intellectually inclined.
Indeed. And if true, I’m curious to see what comes next.
(Of course, when I did thirty things I’d do with Doctor Strange I started with sword fights with monsters. Our readings of the book are a bit different.)
This seems more like Doom Patrol territory than Dr. Strange, actually.
You should actually do “Thirty Books I Should Write” and do one great idea for each of thirty teams or characters.
Oooh. Yeah, I’d read that. The theft of blueness isn’t like any setup to adventure I’ve ever heard of.
The follow-up question after the theft is resolved, of course, is: “What’s been previously stolen that NO ONE noticed?”
“What do you mean, no one’s got any slood?”
And of course the phenomenon of a color disappearing, but nobody noticing it (because, I guess, the *idea* of the color is disappearing too) just forces the question: Has this happened before? How many *other* colors have we been robbed of while we did not, and now cannot, notice?
This reminds me of something out of “John Dies at the End” (www.johndiesattheend.com). The fundamental base of reality has shifted in ways that seem inconsequential to the occupants of that reality, or aren’t even noticed at all, but the entities enacting that change are advancing a plot so nefarious and diabolical that it can’t even accurately be described in human words.
Cool concept, does remind me of the war in the 5th dimension that Morrison had in his JLA run.
Fuck yeah. If for no other reason then Marvel has gone to long without a Doctor Strange ongoing and this is the perfect idea to start a new one. It would give you a change to see how Strange exists in the Marvel U, both in comparison to the everyman and to other heroes. To see why the Sorcerer Supreme needs to exist. And this doesn’t seem so complicated that in the first three issues you’ve got to explain what Shuma Gorath is. Something is stealing blue. Who? Why? And how do we get it back? And the implication that this is just the first thing we’ve noticed that’s gone? It’s either the beginning of an awesome quest or an interesting coda to the story. And I don’t give a shit what Bendis thinks, the Sorcerer Supreme will always be Stephen Strange.
Also, even if this is some kind of April Fool’s Day gag: don’t stop. I need a Dr. Strange fix and this is the only way I’m going to get it.
Aw, and I was so looking forward to ‘Reason #1 why Flapjacks should write the Legion’.
Reason One: Fetish Poetry About The Girls Of Neptune
Reason Seven: The Legion Would Be Totally Metal, Guys
Reason Twelve: New Kinds Of Juice You Have Never Considered!
Reason Nineteen: Cannibal Biker Accountants From Beyond The Stars
Reason Twenty-Four: That One Guy From That Old Silver Age Comic, You Know The One, Let’s Revamp Him And Make Him Relevant For The Current Day Or Something
Reason Thirty: I’m Not Sure What An “Intelliphant” Would Be But I Think We Need One In This Comic I Don’t Care About
Whether this is an April Fool’s Day joke or not, I enjoy the UHF reference of the title.
Maybe it’s the start of some plot against the Lantern Corps? Take the blue out, and they’re not green anymore, they’re yellow, right?
Is all the blue REALLY gone, or is it just that nobody can perceive it anymore? There is such a thing as yellow/blue colorblindness, after all.
I did see a PowerPuff Girls ep once where an evil clown stole ALL the colors so everything was B&W. But somehow it’s harder to imagine how just blue could be taken away.
You know, it’s hard to be subtle today. But kudos for the effectiveness.
What’s really sad is that I would actually love to see this as a Dr. Strange story.
My first thought upon reading the title was “That damn Happy Happy Cult is at it again!”
My last relevant thought was “You know, if DOOM was the Sorceror Supreme, he wouldn’t just get blue back, he’d give us colors we never had before.” He’d call them Doom, Light Doom, Doomish Yellow, and RICHARDS!! The Hated Color.
Scratch that, it’d be Yellowish Doom.
When I first read this, I thought it was “Why I should write Dr. Who” rather than “Why I should write Dr. Strange”.
Oh my god! It’s all so clear! That’s what happened to San Francisco! DR. STRANGE, COME QUICKLY.
squishydish, he states earlier in the bit about how mixed colors still exist -
“It’s not that the blue spectrum of light is missing, either. Things that are cyan or magenta are still cyan or magenta; the disappearance of blue hasn’t affected those colours of which blue is a root component. And that’s your first hint that this isn’t a problem science can solve.”
So it wouldn’t bother the Green Lantern Corps much at all. Unless, of course, you could argue that removing blue from the color spectrum shifts the balance of power such that Green and Yellow aren’t naturally opposed. In which case, perhaps the Green Lantern Corps suddenly finds itself vulnerable to Red or Orange or Brown.
I mean, it could be a direct cause/effect, or it could be the symptom of a bigger problem. Maybe reality is fraying around the edges and blue just happens to be the first thing to go. Or maybe parallel universes are colliding and the impact blurred or rattled a few fundamental universal components. Or maybe the great cosmic entity that dreams of all creation shifted a bit in its sleep, and this is the result. :-p
April Fool’s or not, I’ve got a question. A hypothetical one. This comes after the recent revelation that the person who drew these guys made enough of an impression on Gail Simone for this to happen.
Let’s say you keep on making posts like this. One of these days (and don’t tell me the odds, Threepio), somebody at one of the big two or at Dark Horse or wherever might say “You know what? This guy could do good work. Let’s give him a shot and see how it goes.”
If that happened, do you think it’d be possible to practice law and write fast enough to make a monthly deadline, or do you think you’d have to choose between the two? I know that when Bill Mantlo decided to be a public defender he had to leave comics altogether, so I’m guessing that you wouldn’t be able to do both either, but still decided to ask.
I already know two things:
1.) I write fast.
2.) I have no interest, at the moment, in becoming a Full-Time-Comic-Book-Writer ™. I’d like to write maybe one ongoing series at a time. That is the sort of thing I can handle while doing other work.
(Also: at some point, people are going to figure out that when I talk about stories I actually want to write in comics shared universes – the Legion, Dr. Strange, etc. – all of those stories are linked by the common fact that they take place on said shared universe’s margins. The appeal of these books is that they involve dramatically less worrying about the status of the universe’s continuity as a whole.)
Wow. Fascinating idea. As an astronomer specializing in spectroscopy, I immediately want to know what happens when you take a spectrum that should normally have some blue feature. Is the wavelength still there to science, just not *blue*? Is there a gap? If you held a prism up to the window and looked at the rainbow, would there be a dark spot in place of blue, or a section where there’s light but not color as we recognize it, or would it go straight from purple to green without a gap? The answer, I suppose, is the difference between Reed Richards seeing the problem and not being able to solve it, and him not seeing a problem at all.
A year ago, inspired by MGK’s “Why I Should Write the Legion” series, I knocked out fifteen “Reasons Why I Should Write Doctor Strange.” They included The Cult of Strangeites and the Mystic Knuckleball, the New Ancient One, Wong Loves Tacos, and He Didn’t Ask to Be This Sexy. Plus a logical streamlining of Marvel Magic. Hey, I had time on my hands.
The Doctor is, like the LSH, one of the great underused properties of comics.
No blue sky, huh? It’d be kind of like living in England.
But… what would happen to Blue Devil?
Would he just become… Devil?
Can Doc trade the Blue Jays for blue? Can he trade magenta and eggshell white and burnt umber for things we can actually use?
Maybe he’s just be a Sad Devil.
Someone’s been reading too much Phil Foglio.
Wait, what am I saying? There’s no such thing as too much Phil Foglio.
Blue Devil would join Team Thirteen!
so is this the beginning of “I should write Dr. Strange”?? or the beginning of “I Should Write _____”? b/c the latter would be really fun.
or is this an april fools?
I’m not sure the GLC would really be affected at all.
What with them existing in DC, and Dr. Strange being a Marvel property
If Marvel could let Ashley Woods draw 13 issues of Ghost Rider 2099 (or any comic book, ever), there should be no problem letting MGK (or anyone that could at least scribble anything letter-like on a page) write an issue or two of Doctor Strange.
Ashley Woods lowered the bar for us all.
The *shrug* Man Group
I once met a guy who claimed that, after a bad acid trip, he never saw the color green again. He could still remember what green looked like, but he saw every green thing as a new color he couldn’t describe properly. Never could decide if I believed him or not.
mweiss: How many *other* colors have we been robbed of while we did not, and now cannot, notice?
Well, there’s octarine, of course.
They can keep it, as far as I’m concerned.
All it did was summon unholy things man was not meant to know, and blorange did that already.
This should be the premise for a Doctor Strange movie. Also, what else is missing along with blue. Personally I think it would be a plot by DOCTOR DOOM to make the hated Richards looker dumber than he really is.
Doom would never risk not being able to see his My Little Pony collection in their full color. Not even Richard is worth that risk.
this seems like a Grant Morrison style idea
this is my highest compliment
i want Dr Strange
more Dr Strange
See – this is the problem RIGHT HERE!
I *know* this is an April Fools joke. And yet it’s actually MUCH BETTER idea then anything Marvel has done with the Good Doctor in SUCH a long time that it makes me sad!
Actually With the exception of some recent Avengers appearences, Marvel has done a few of good things in the past few years. Due probably due to the fact that it has done SO FEW things with Strange, but it’s still very good nonetheless
For an example of what Probe’s talking about, BKV did the whole “would a panacea be a bad thing” story, “The Oath.”
Zenrage: Ouch.
I don’t get it. If Dr. Strange was out doing his job, who would be there to teleport the Avengers around and zap muggers?
Cloak and Dagger
But what happens to the super-intelligent shades of the color blue from “Hitchhiker’s Guide”?
Now you’re talking… murder!
If all the blue is disappearing, the what the HELL would happen to Doctor Manhattan?Would he just cease being or what? I mean really what would happen? This will puzzle me for as long as it takes to get an answer. And yes I know that Dr. Manhattan is DC and Dr. Strange is Marvel, but still what would happen to him.
This is so wonderful. The “Reasons” are the primary reason I come to his blog. Thanks for more of these. I love reading them.
[...] I-CHING! Mightygodking’s Chris Bird is at it again, this time sharing his ideas for a hypothetical Doctor Strange run. The first one is here. [...]
If bringing blue back would also bring back the Smurfs, it may not be worth it. Great conundrums of Crytorrak!
Solid Snake – if the color blue was stolen, Dr Manhattan would nod (“right on schedule”) and then continue observing particle emission from the accretion disk around a black hole. Except now he’d be green.
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