There are Sorcerers Supreme in every parallel universe. Sooner or later, one of them would eventually decide that contacting other universes for advice or information would prove useful. That’s what the Supremenet is for.
Of course, calling it the “Supremenet” conjures up the expectations that come with all things internetty, which is why most Sorcerers Supreme – including the 616 version of Doctor Strange – will strongly try to discourage anybody from calling it that. This isn’t email or instant-messaging or a chatroom. Magic doesn’t quite work that way, especially when it’s trying to bridge dimensional barriers. The closest analogue is the “party line” back in the early days of the telephone, when all the ladies in town would share a single phone line and gossip, but sometimes your connection to that line would be shaky or staticky and sometimes you’d get connected somewhere else. Combine that with difficulties of magical communication that are Olympian in scale and – well, it’s not Google.
The Supremenet rituals were created by a Stephen Strange – not ours, but the Stephen Strange of universe-82432, the universe that was utterly destroyed by that reality’s Korvac. That Stephen Strange, along with his reality’s Silver Surfer and Jean Grey, were exiled from it by Korvac before he condemned everything else in that universe to oblivion, and that Strange determined that this could not be allowed to happen again. He maintains the Supremenet with the assistance of Jean’s telepathic abilities (her connection to the Phoenix Force lost forever with the death of her reality) and the Surfer’s Power Cosmic. That it works at all is testament to their skill.
Unfortunately, he can’t monitor how the various Sorcerers Supreme use it. This is problematic, because as noted previously, not all Sorcerers Supreme are good guys. Some are bastards. Some are dimensional pirates. Some fancy themselves multiversal conquerors. And of course there’s the problem of the Marvel Zombies zombie virus, which isn’t transmissible through the Supremenet, but you never know if the Sorcerer Supreme on the other end is one of the handful of Sorcerers Supreme who have been infected. (Thankfully, most outbreaks of the Zombie virus tend to be resolved quickly, if brutally. Earth-2149 is one of the rare exceptions where the perfect storm of unlikely, horrible events took place. And undead Sorcerers Supreme really aren’t Supreme any more – but they can still be wily.)
But even when the other party isn’t maliciously plotting your downfall, there’s always the question of whether or not they’ll give the right advice and whether the listener can accept it. It’s hard enough to take advice from Croctor Strange (of Earth-8311, aka “Earth-Spider-Ham”), but consider Stephen Strange trying to not read into the suggestions of Karl Mordo of Earth-9091 or Cyrus Black of Earth-22238. Issues such as these, combined with all the others, are why Supremenet is primarily useful for warning Sorcerers Supreme about interdimensional incursions (such as the expansion of the Devil Papacy of Earth-2793) – and as a desperate last attempt when every other source of a potential solution has come up dry.
Of course, Sorcerers Supreme get desperate more often than you would think.
Top comment: It sounds exactly like trying to get community support for Linux. — NCallahan
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It sounds exactly like trying to get community support for Linux.
OK…hats off to the obscure “what if?” reference there.
Well done, though.
This sounds like the only duff idea you’ve shown us so far.
So, basically, there’s an inter dimensional spell that allows Strange to ask a question on how to defeat some magical force and get an answer? Seems to tempting to be rather deus ex machina, or chekovs gun-like.
“The Wrecking Crew have gotten hold of some of the Power Cosmic-”
“Oh, yeah, that happened in my universe too. I just did A, B and C and it pretty much sorted itself out in the end.”
“Oh, er… thanks. Erm, A++, will ask again!”
Or, variably, it would give some looks into the variety of the multiverse, and spawn a new type of porn when you eventually show Dr. Steven Strange talking to Dr. Stephanie Strange from Earth-63.
Or it will allow the team up of the Devil Papacy with Vampire-Strange against the team up of Earth-616 Strange with the Dormammu of Earth-667 where he’s a good guy and likes puppies. I mean, he thinks they’re cute, not the way that Earth-616 Dormammu likes puppies, which is because he likes how they taste.
Then again, I really have no real idea into how you’re going to execute this idea until Marvel gets off their ass and starts throwing money at you to make their comics suck less.
Within this Supremenet there are emoticons that can devour your soul.
Remember even if the advice given is honest and helpful, the nature of parallel realities is such that the solution to the Wrecking Crew having the Power Cosmic is entirely dependent on Harold Turner of Boston having ordered a plate of corned beef and hash rather than his usual sandwich and soup combo on January 3rd, 1999.
If it wasn’t for that then you can see how the plan would backfire in a rather spectacular fashion
LOLMindlessOnes. Yep.
I love these more every time you use the phrase ‘Devil Papacy’.
Similarly, it souns like it takes some time and mojo to access the ‘net – not the sort of thing you’d get around to doing before you were sure you’d exhausted your possible solutions in your home universe.
So there are parallel earths and alternate realities? Is that a fair definition for the difference between, like, Evil Magic Italy and Dormammu’s turf? I’m kind of a DC reader.
The ‘net strikes me as the sort of thing that’d be hard to introduce to a running comic, all things considered (sort of like the Wong ritual) – it’s the sort of thing a reader would have expected to hear about previously, and if it just pops up it’s got that unpleasant “new thing acting like an old thing” flavor.
Unless Strange discovers it over the course of your ‘run’, I guess.
Hey, it’s not like interdimensional teleconferencing is unknown in 616.
Heck, Richards and Kang (or guys who kill Kang) did the same thing. Only with Science! instead of magic.
Not to mention the terrifying LOLCat Supreme of Earth-1337….
I CAN HAZ ASTRAL RAYZ?
Not bad. I remember Adam Warren doing something similar with Mr. Fantastic in one of his issues of Fantastic Four.
“The ‘net strikes me as the sort of thing that’d be hard to introduce to a running comic, all things considered (sort of like the Wong ritual) – it’s the sort of thing a reader would have expected to hear about previously, and if it just pops up it’s got that unpleasant “new thing acting like an old thing” flavor.”
I’ve got no problem with that. Especially with mage characters – i assume for every spell you see there are 2 you don’t know about
have you considered spells + PVP networks? its something i was thinking about back when i discovered Mage and Napster
also, read the Unknown Armies RPG for ideas. a cabel of low level mages working at McDonalds? not sure if you could steal it, but its an idea
Wasn’t all that enthusiastic about all of the Strange-stuff mainly based on having hardly any exposure to the character and being busy, but this one’s bloody brilliant.
I like this. I like it a lot. Others have pointed out the Nigh-Infinite Council of Reed Richards’, but I like the major difference: this isn’t nearly as effective. That works because of the magic/science difference (it’s logical that one is better at something than another) but also plotwise. Reed’s awesome, but he isn’t the main guardian of his piece of reality. That’s the Sorcerer Supreme’s job, and we can’t have it be too easy.
The way I see it, it’s sort of a complicated bulletin board. You can post on to the board and lots of people can see it. You can trace where the origin of that post came from and then try to contact it with your own complicated magical rituals. But it’s not set up for a large number of communication. It’s nice when you want to have a big notice that says “There’s this new virus roaming around that turns zombies into werewolves, might wanna watch out for that” but if you have a specific question, your only hope is to put it out on Supremenet and maybe someone takes the time and effort to contact you with advice.
The problem with destroyed universe Strange, Grey, and Surfer is that they basically use the Supremenet as the ultimate anchor of communication. But they can’t control it because that would essentially unravel the entire thing. Supremenet functions like a magical net in that each universe connects to other universes and thus communication sort of hops from universe to universe in an attempt to get to the center. Trying to A.)pinpoint Zombie Strange’s universe and then B.) route everything around it would be so mindbogglingly complicated that they can’t possibly work on it while still maintaining a functional Supremenet. Especially since the the net metaphor also makes it possible to essentially communicate a lot of universes at once without having to use up a lot of magical power and possibly use up the last coins of Uryhalt binding (which you just can’t buy at the local grocery store…or even the mystical grocery store).
Can you crank call other Sorcerer Supremes with it? That is the only important question.
I’m almost afraid to ask, but is Earth-22238 the Harry Potter dimension, or is it an alternate version of the Harry Potter Dimension in which Cyrus Black isn’t thrown through the portal from book 5? Or did you just throw that in there because you’ve secretly negotiating licensing rights from J.K.Rowling and we can expect to see “Why I Should Write Harry Potter the Animated TV Show” sometime in the future?
Not that Cyrus Black. THIS Cyrus Black.
The first time I saw “Karl Mordo”, I thought it said “Karl Marx”. Though, to be honest, a bunch of communist sorcerers following “Mordoism” would probably fit right into your run on Strange.
Don’t concepts like this run the risk of turning Doctor Strange into the Captain Britain Corps or DC’s Monitors? I grant that his station demands that he defend all of reality, and that necessarily involves the parts that interconnect with alternate realities. But he’s first and foremost a sorcerer, not the tour guide of the multiverse.
When I picture Doc dealing with incursions from beyond our plane of existence, I usually picture crazy abstract Steve Ditko dimensions, not frigging Spider-Ham.
Every day you don’t actually have a job at a comic company my cancer gets worse.
How. Dare. You.
Write comics, cure cancer, simple isn’t it?
I am now picturing Spider-Ham swinging through a Ditko-verse. Awesome.
Also, Harry Potter’s godfather was Sirius, at least in the American editions. (They changed the name of the philosophers’ stone, though, so I wouldn’t put it past them to change a character’s spelling.) The More You Know [star] (Yes I know that wasn’t who MGK was talking about, I can read, I’m just correcting a mistake because Someone Is Wrong On the Internet.)
Croctor Strange, Croctor Strange, does whatever a spider-ham does. Can he swing from a web? No he can’t, Croctor Strange. Watch out! Here comes the Croctor Straaaange.
Backtracking from the next post up:
Why is it that I can totally see Indrani’s default solution to any problem be “Call up Supremenet.”?
Devil Papacy invading? Call up Supremenet!
Devil Papacy engaged in negotiations with Dracula? Call up Supremenet!
Magical vampires armed with deviltech dive-bombing San Francisco? For the love of god, call up f’n Supremenet!
Dracula killing the Devil Pope and taking command of the invading armies as he prepares to suck all of Italy straight into an alternate reality? Dear f’n god will you just call up Supremenet, already?
Eventually, the time comes when she doesn’t give that response, and it’s not until later when Strange is battling the vampire devil pope atop the Eiffel Spire that he realizes that might’ve been a warning sign.
Hopefully he can get back to Indrani before her attempt to contact Supremenet herself results in nothing more serious then an awkward conversation with Earth-9091.
The weird thing is that you never can seem to pick up the Sorcerer Supreme from Earth-404.
It’s like Global Frequency….but with magick!
Man Warren’s gotta be pissed he didn’t think of it (aside from his ‘Nate Grey is the shaman of Earth 616’ stuff…)
Do you read my comic, by any chance? Because I came up with something A LOT like this some time ago.