One of the problems with Dr. Strange comics over the past few years decades is that his villains suck. They shouldn’t suck, but what inevitably happens is that they get into a magic duel with Dr. Strange and, because he is the protagonist, he kicks their ass.
Well, to this I say no more.
Shuma-Gorath is definitely in this category, not least because most people are familiar with him thanks to Capcom’s “Marvel Super Heroes” videogame, wherein he got the strangely-cutesy animations and funny tentacle attacks. Fighting-game fans remarked often that he looked like a purple mop. And so, one of the deadliest forces in the entire goddamn Marvel Universe got shoved to the plushy-toy level.
Because Shuma-Gorath is ridiculously deadly, essentially the Marvel Universe’s equivalent of Cthulhu, a dread conquerering alien intelligence trapped in another dimension with hordes of worshippers, with a tendency to corrupt his enemies with his own self-ness. When they first clashed, the only way the Ancient One and Strange were able to defeat it was by the Ancient One’s trickery of allowing Shuma-Gorath to possess him and then relying on Stephen to figure out that now he had to kill the Ancient One. (And the time Dr. Strange pursued Shuma-Gorath into his home dimension and killed it, he started becoming Shuma-Gorath, and had to commit suicide to end the process, later being resurrected, in a sense, by Kaluu the Sorcerer and Enithermon the Weaver – and of course Shuma-Gorath eventually regenerated the damage anyway.)
If he actually showed up in the Marvel Universe, it would be catastrophic on so many levels as to defy description; any chance Strange would have of victory would lie in magical battle so cataclysmic entire star systems would collapse, and Strange himself would not have the slightest chance of surviving anyway. That’s why Strange (and just about every other sorcerer in the Marvel Universe worth a damn) makes sure to pay attention to anything that might result in Shuma-Gorath manifesting in this dimension.
Which brings me to cultists.
Cultists are to guardian sorcerers as peer-to-peer filesharers are to enforcers of copyright; they’re, in some senses, an open-source solution to the problem of “how do we get our evil god to appear before us and conquer humanity without this stupid Sorcerer Supreme ruining things?” Cultists are like ants – individually powerless and easily squashed, but there’s always more of them than you can ever eradicate and you usually don’t know what they’re doing.
You might, with a lot of work, cast a searching spell that would alert you whenever anybody collected multiple components of the Spell of Arrival, but there’s simply no way to magically track Betty when she buys the three pounds of cubic zirconia, Carl when he collects the shards of ancient Greek pottery or Felix when he drains the blood of an entire cow. There’s no way to prevent Steve from evangelizing to his fellow marginalized about the glories of the Great Eye, whose benevolent vision sees all and whose great purple tentacles touch the lives of all believers for the better. And when Henry buys a gun because somebody has to take out the Sorcerer Supreme – well, maybe you’ve got something prepared in advance for the bullets, but the sense of paranoia that it’ll create? There isn’t anything for that.
They’re like ants. But army ants, ceaselessly working towards one goal – your eventual destruction as an inhabitant of Earth. And you can’t ever stop them; you can just slow them down.
Top comment: This isn’t scary. You know who else has millions of followers?
Paris Hilton.
If Shuma-Gorath shows up, all we need to do is give him a reality tv show (”Eye on Gorath”?) and a never-ending stream of paparazzi and we’ll be fine. — Bass
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Cultists are to guardian sorcerers as peer-to-peer filesharers are to enforcers of copyright; they’re, in some senses, an open-source solution to the problem of “how do we get our evil god to appear before us and conquer humanity without this stupid Sorcerer Supreme ruining things?”
This sentence is genius.
My friends who played Marvel Super Heroes with me often regarded Shuma Gorath with horror and dread, actually, because when I used him I kicked serious ass.
Was Shuma Gorath purple in the comics sometimes as well?
“one of the deadliest forces in the entire goddamn Marvel Universe got shoved to the plushy-toy level”
Let’s see Dr. Strange do something like that.
There was a Gorathian in Wolverine: First Class #12. It almost managed to get Kitty and Cyclops to let it out of its prison…
By any chance would blue’s disapperence have anything at all with Ol’ Plushy Toy’s return. I’m thinking quite possibly.
Totally off the point, I hope you cover the origin of the Mindless Ones. “They are extra-dimensional creatures summoned via magic to do the bidding of others.” (Wiki) Note that it says SUMMONED, not CREATED!
If SHIELD wasn’t completely broken right now, this would seem like a good place for a team up between Dr. Strange and SHIELD. SHIELD has the ability to notice that a bunch of people are gathering in some weird pattern, or that something is weird about Steve when he gets arrested for stealing ancient pottery, and has the man power to actually try to do something, while Strange has the expertise to suggest what they should be looking for and to realize what the weird pattern might mean.
I really like the “job description” angle of Sorcerer Supreme. It gives the plot an actual drive
The best way to deal with an all-seeing eye is to give it a cataract.
Do you think all-seeing eyes have that floating eye gunk that kinda floats around in your field of vision?
This isn’t scary. You know who else has millions of followers?
Paris Hilton.
If Shuma-Gorath shows up, all we need to do is give him a reality tv show (“Eye on Gorath”?) and a never-ending stream of paparazzi and we’ll be fine.
Okay. More seroius – Shuma-Gorath as Cthulhu is all well and good, but here’s my problem:
How do you make magic battles EXCITING and not just a series of rock-paper-scissors where each side pulls out a new weapon from their ass that trumps the previous weapon until, eventually, 22-pages are hit and the fight is ‘over’.
It seems the climactic set-piece of a Dr Strange story is a magical battle, and they’re so inherently nonsensical and made out of pure bullshitinite he may as well as solve all his problems by aligning the graviton array with the warp flux intermix ratio of the dilithium ARGH I HATE IT.
Magical battles and technobabble wars are so convoluted, half of it is indecipherable rubbish and the other half is poorly explaining that rubbish. Because that’s what you want in an action climax: Incoherence and exposition.
Any chance you’ll be covering this?
I humbly concede your point, with both hands down. This is one idea which I would most DEFINITELY only want to see in Dr. Strange.
Er, Bryce? See Ellis’ NEXTwave and the recent “Hell Comes To Birmingham” arc of Capt. Britain & MI:13. The former proposes that they are the work of Dormammu’s scrawny nerd cousin, Rorkannu; the latter, that they are the creation of his colleague, Dr. Plotka.
Nextwave never said Rorkannu invented them. Just that he had access to them.
Also, Nextwave is awesome. The Mindless one skateboarding alone is worth more than some small countries.
maybe you’ve got something prepared in advance for the bullets, but the sense of paranoia that it’ll create? There isn’t anything for that.
Xanax?
Hah! I knew you were reading my blog! This is proof!
(How many other people know that the Shuma image came from Vs. System and was only published in high res within my weekly column???)
By the way, speaking of cultists, Christopher Bird is mentioned in the first-ever podcast of the truth from the bowels of Upper Deck Entertainment. The inside poop on the effects of chdb occurs at the 51:35 mark. Link at the end of this:
http://fullbodytransplant.wordpress.com/2009/04/04/save-it-saturday-pro-circuit-glory-with-podcast/
Very good times.
You hide every book or tome with his name then wipe everyone’s memory of him.
This is the first one of these that really grabbed me and made me think “I’d read that.” It’s the first one that gave an immediate sense of danger and dread. (Magic should be SCARY!!! See: Gaiman, Neil; Moore, Alan; Constantine, any-given-writer-of-John, etc.)
Plus it feels like bigger stakes. Always a plus, when dealing with the Sorcerer Supreme.
I think my main problem with Strange is that he is, oddly, both OVER-powered and UNDER-powered. What I mean to say is that, sometimes he has trouble doing things that should be really easy for him, like stopping a plane crash, or fighting the Hulk. (Seriously… Sorcerer SUPREME! I don’t care how pissed the Hulk is.)
Of course, other times, he’s a walking Deus Ex Machina.
I know, I know, plot conveniences and different writers… But I don’t know that I could ever really get into the character until this gets balanced out.
The problem with Dr. Strange is that magic is not defined in comics. If you read fantasy, say Robert Jordan, you get an idea of how magic works, what it can and can’t do. I never see that at Marvel or DC. If they had clearly defined magic and limitations,Dr Strange would be more exciting to read, and fanboys could have discussions about “Dr. Strange vs. Spiderman” and stuff like that.
Dr. Strange vs. Cthulu? I’d buy it.
Keep these coming. I love them.
MGK:
Cultists are to guardian sorcerers as peer-to-peer filesharers are to enforcers of copyright…
Bass:
How do you make magic battles EXCITING and not just a series of rock-paper-scissors…
Now, Mr. GK, I don’t know whether you aspire* to be a “Heavy Meta Machine” author in the vein of Messrs. Bendis or Morrison, or more of a “Magicks Is Awesome!” author in the vein of Moore or, um, Morrison; however, the reason I love your pitch for this particular Reason is that it seems to me like an ostensible example of “Magicks!” writing that’s actually a very clever and sly entry in the “Meta” vein.
As a gent who knows his business and isn’t afraid to expound on the State of the Union re: filesharing and copyright and so on as they apply to comics, this pitch strikes me as an ostensible “huge magical battle” storyline that’s actually a clever commentary on the changing nature of comics as information and how shit-scared the industry is of that. Where Shuma-Gorath = The Uncontainable Dionysian Free-Reign Of Information, Entropising All Our Livelihoods Into So Much Dust, but also = A Big Monster What Can Eat You.
So write that please.
*As one of my favourite bloggers, I apologise for the implication that you’re “aspiring” to be any sort of writer, as opposed to BEING that writer; I mean it in the sense that your highly entertaining “Reasons” series are pitches for writers you could potentially be if someone would only see sense and pay you to be them.
Woo! Top comment. Thank you!
Interesting..magical terrorists. And what if you find out that they’re infiltrating HYDRA? “Cut off a limb and two more take its place?” Then magical terrorist commandos!
> There’s no way to prevent Steve from evangelizing to his fellow marginalized about the glories of the Great Eye, whose benevolent vision sees all and whose great purple tentacles touch the lives of all believers for the better.
I like my Lovecraftian cultists best when they’re so disenfranchised as to understand that the monster means the abyss, and then to want it anyway. The world isn’t worth it, let’s get rid of the entire thing. And we’ll be eaten first!