Readers may be aware that I am a big fan of Doctor Strange, and since people are aware of this I frequently am asked of what I thought of Mark Waid’s Strange mini (okay, but just serves to underscore stupidity of the Brother Voodoo thing) or Rick Remender’s Doctor Voodoo series (joyless slog that seemed almost to want to kill the idea before even giving it a chance, not that this bothered me) or the recent Spider-Man: Fever mini that featured the Doc (unfortunate lack of Howard Hesseman).
So, to save people the trouble this time: The Mystic Hands of Dr. Strange, the latest in Marvel’s oversized black-and-white 70s-themed comics, is probably the best so far (and I thought Indomitable Iron Man was pretty great). Kieron Gillen and Fraser Irving’s main story is pretty much “How I Think Doctor Strange Should Be Written,” mostly, and the backups (a nifty Peter Milligan/Frank Brunner homage to Gene Colan-era Strange, and an experimental piece by Ted McKeever which underscores that Strange could, if someone so wished, be Marvel’s answer to Sandman in terms of more experimental approaches to traditional comics fiction) are just great stuff. The prose short story by Mike Carey is mostly a nice try, but then all of the prose stories in these B&W specials are nice tries, so no loss there.
Pick it up. (And get Indomitable Iron Man while you’re at it; it’s very good too, and I’d like to see Marvel continue experimenting in this format.)
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I’m fairly certain that the Shang-Chi B&W Wacky Races story was the best thing Marvel’s done in years, and I’ve read almost every single thing they’ve done in years that doesn’t have “Max” at the end.
I’m sure you probably covered this a long time ago, but what did you think of “The Oath” by Brian K. Vaughn and Marcos Martin? The central cast of Strange, Wong and Night Nurse I thought was a pretty inspired one, with Night Nurse representing who Stephen Strange once was, and Wong representing who he is today.
Greg: IIRC, he liked it, but thought the magic rules were stupid.
Man, I’ve looked in like six comic shops for that Dr. Strange one-shot and can’t find it anywhere.
I just got this by the power of eBay, and I largely liked it although it did emphasise the crazy-powerful side of Strange more than I prefer myself.