There are certain individuals whose names have been adopted as shorthand in the fiction community. When you see their name, it usually means weird and/or wild shit is going to go down. There is no reason for a writer to throw in a reference to Nikolai Tesla, for example, unless they want to later have a death-ray or giant killer robot or just some sort of weird science in general. Similarly, if you see Aleister Crowley show up in a story, you know that there’s going to be magic involved, or possibly cults. Or maybe orgies, because that is how Crowley rolled.

I say it is well past time that another name was added to that list.

Moe Berg is the only recorded case in history of someone who was both a professional baseball player and a professional spy. He played for the White Sox and Red Sox primarily in his baseball career before World War II. While he played ball (he was a catcher), he taught himself Greek, Latin and Japanese, among other languages, and gained a reputation as the most intelligent, scholarly man in the game. But he was weird, too – Yogi Berra called him “the most peculiarest man in baseball.” When World War II started, Berg joined the OSS, specifically the part which would eventually become the Special Activities Division, and promptly parachuted into Yugoslavia where he was largely responsible for the United States deciding to support Tito. (Which, in retrospect, is the sort of decision that sucks to make, but believe me, when your choice was Tito or eventual turncoat Draza Mihajlovic, you picked Tito.) He also participated in operations to kidnap Italian rocket scientists and was once sent to assess and possibly assassinate Werner Heisenberg. (He decided Heisenberg was no threat to the United States.) After the war, he essentially retired from everything, living with and bothering his relatives. He died leaving no children and barely any family to mention.

Of course, what doesn’t get mentioned in the official history books is that he was a disciple of the Ancient One (back when the Ancient One was just kind of old, rather than ancient). He never wanted to be Sorcerer Supreme, but he mastered too many occult skills too quickly to be ignored, so when Berg made his first trip to Japan in 1932 to teach Japanese students how to play baseball, the Ancient One met him and taught him a few things, and they maintained a magical correspondence over the years. When the Ancient One needed help dealing with a matter of… import… a couple years later, Moe Berg somehow ended up on the American All-Stars team that went to Japan despite baseball stats and skills that were third-tier at most. (Funny how things can occasionally swing your way when you know a few tricks, isn’t it?)

He traveled to Europe and fought Nazi blood-sorcerers, marauding were-Cossacks and Fascist witch-hunters. He teleported all over Europe, handling the missions given to him both by the United States government and the Ancient One with equal skill. He didn’t wear a costume, preferring instead the anonymity of a rumpled suit, but nonetheless he saved Captain America’s ass on at least two occasions (one of which Bucky Barnes might well remember) and did relentless work for the forces of justice and mercy. And if once or twice a few SS commandants were found, with their bodies contorted in ways that men were not meant to bend – well, he was only human.

After the war, he wanted to keep working for the government, but J. Edgar Hoover had his claws sunk deep into every nook and cranny of American intelligence and Hoover – unlike most – knew about the hidden magical world, and believed in the necessity of American magical superiority. And Moe Berg wasn’t gonna let no anti-Semitic fat fuck like J. Edgar Hoover take over the reins of magical America. Hoover and Berg fought a thirty-year battle behind the scenes of American public life, Berg keeping up the facade of an eccentric crank as Hoover’s occult power waxed and waned. When Hoover died in 1972, it wasn’t high blood pressure – it was Moe Berg’s final master strike, prepared for years and played out just as Hoover’s ascension to the dark, forever-empty throne of America was about to commence.

Moe Berg died less than a month after Hoover – his work finally finished – but he left behind a series of extremely etoseric journals. The journals contain the keys to American magical power – the methods by which the occult fixtures surrounding and hidden within America’s public structures can be accessed, a lifetime’s work of cataloguing. Norman Osborn or Henry Peter Gyrich would kill to have them if they knew they existed. Those journals, and other things he left behind, are a letter of sorts to the Sorcerer Supremes who would follow the Ancient One, an “in case of fire break glass” kind of letter. The time for Stephen Strange to read that letter is fast approaching.

Top comment: A baseball-playing, Nazi-fighting, intellectual Jewish spywizard? At first I was thinking you took the collected works of Michael Chabon and put them in a centrifuge to separate out all the genderqueering. Then you threw in J. Edgar Hoover. — Chris Russell

There have been a lot of Sorcerer Supremes, and not all of them have been glowingly wonderful people. Some of them have been venal. Some have been downright evil. Some were crazy. You don’t have to be admirable or upstanding to protect all reality. You don’t even have to be all there. Sometimes, this has consequences.

About seventeen thousand years ago, the Sorcerer Supreme of the time went mad with loss when an army destroyed the Edenic village where he grew up. He determined that he would recreate his home as best he could outside reality itself – creating a pocket dimension with its own small amount of mass, a pocket dimension that appeared, from the viewpoint of anyone in it, to float above the universe entire. Eventually that Sorcerer Supreme died, and that should have been the end of it.

Of course, this was not the case. The pocket dimension, a creation of magic, began to siphon magical energy out of the universe and collect it. Very slowly, of course – just a tiny drip in the side of a dam, metaphorically speaking. But it very, very slowly grew. What was originally the size of a small village common grew and grew; now, it is about the size of New York’s Central Park. (And “park” is very appropriate – the energies tend to create an environment that reflects the viewer’s preferences for an idyllic setting. It’s really quite pretty.)

And with growth in size comes an increase in growth rate – it’s getting bigger, faster, all the time. It’s not at a crisis level yet, but left unchecked it will eventually go that route. What that one Sorcerer Supreme has created is, in effect, a magical equivalent of what the positive-matter universe is doing to the Negative Zone – gradually consuming it to form a new realm. Of course, this is all long-run stuff, millions of years ahead at the very least. But it’s still a problem.

Practically nobody knows about it – until someone finally notices it. That’s when word spreads, and fast.

But that’s not the real issue. The real issue is this: magical energies, when left untended and to their own devices, have a jarring tendency to gain consciousness and sentience where previously there was none such. It takes a very long time and has to happen spontaneously, but given enough time, eventually it will happen. This is where many powerful magical entities are born. And in that sense, the Park isn’t just a refuge – it’s an egg, waiting to hatch a new cosmic/magic force. A force that could be molded by someone powerful and egocentric enough, and unfortunately the thing about magic is that there are a lot of powerful and egocentric individuals involved in its practice.

Things such as the Park are how magical wars begin. Doctor Strange cannot allow that to happen.

Top comment: I have this weird vision of you writing all of these different challenges for Strange concurrently, and by the end of your run as the writer he curses your name for making his life so outrageously difficult. — Quixim

It’s no surprise that Dracula, upon his return to the Marvel Universe, would immediately begin preparations to create a “home turf” with as many loyal vampire minions as humanly possible. This is because of one thing Dracula will never, ever admit:

Dracula is fucking stone-cold terrified of Stephen Strange.

Blade? Blade is a pussy. Blade’s never really killed Dracula, except one time when Dracula was still under the influence of the Montesi Formula and somebody brought him back to distract Blade for a few minutes. That hardly counts. In a one-on-one straight up fight, Blade has never beaten Dracula and likely never will, because Dracula is really quite deadly, and if Blade hasn’t managed to at least come up close to Dracula’s level in the decades they’ve been fighting each other it’s not going to happen any time soon. (Also. Dracula: Christopher Lee, Jack Palance, Bela Lugosi, Gary Oldman. Blade: Wesley Snipes. Advantage: Dracula.)

But Doctor Strange… oh, dear. Strange and Dracula have battled exactly twice. The first time, Dracula used every trick he had and even vampirized Strange, and what happened? Strange reversed it and called upon the holy power of God himself to destroy Dracula. The second time they fought, that apparently wasn’t enough any more, and Strange destroyed all vampires everywhere, even though by that point Dracula had increased his mystical powers to unheard-of levels (specifically, although he would never admit this, because he wanted to be absolutely sure he could survive fighting Strange again).

Dracula’s fear of Strange is entirely natural and reasonable: Strange is the guy Dracula knows he can’t beat. Even when Dracula pulls out all the stops and goes to eleven on Strange, the good Doctor just brushes some lint off his shoulders and stares the Lord of All Vampires down and doesn’t so much as flinch. (Yes, of course as omniscient readers we know that Dracula was indeed one of Strange’s toughest challenges, but Dracula is not an omniscient reader, lucky for everybody else in the MU.)

Even now, as Dracula attacks all of England with vampire-rocket-warriors and plots alliance with Latveria, there is that tiny voice inside his head that he wishes he didn’t hear, pretends he doesn’t hear, but can’t help but acknowledge. It’s the tiny voice that says “the moment Stephen Strange decides you’re too much of a bother, he is going to end you.” Dracula has nightmares about Strange, who has powers vast and uncountable that Dracula can’t begin to imagine, alliances with otherworldly beings Dracula can’t even name. How do you beat somebody like that?

Dracula doesn’t really know how to beat Strange – but he doesn’t need to know how to beat Strange to hurt him, or hurt his friends and loved ones, or distract Strange’s attention at a crucial moment. All it takes is Dracula getting scared enough that Strange’s retribution is at hand, and suddenly he’ll do what any good tactician does: he’ll go on the offensive with an all-out vampire blitz attack on the Sanctum Sanctorum (or wherever he can attack that will hurt Strange the most). And Dracula might not be able to beat Strange one-on-one (or even twenty-on-one), but in a war of attrition, he can hurt him very badly. And at the worst possible time, that might be all he needs to do.

Top comment: Dracula is unique amongst Marvel villains for his universality. No other Marvel villain can be so readily plugged into any book for instant awesome. There is not a single title in Marvel’s line that would benefit from an appearance by Dracula, and I’m including Kick-Ass, all those Soleil reprints and the Stephen King line.

I’ll be very disappointed if he doesn’t show up in the next Power Pack miniseries. — Patrick C.

Dr. Strange, as previously noted, is the guardian of this entire universe from other dimensions and realities that would do it harm. Traditionally this ends up being things like Dormammu or somebody, because other dimensions are traditionally the source of most hostility towards Universe-616.

Of course, there are also parallel realities, and it’s rather silly that, when forces in the Marvel Universe are aware of, say, the Marvel Zombies universe trying to launch a hostile incursion (as they did in Marvel Zombies 3), that they wouldn’t at least consult with Strange, or that he would not be aware of it himself for that matter. (As for Zombie Strange – that is upcoming, somewhat.) The simple truth is that, although parallel universes aren’t often going to attack your universe, when they do that is pretty much slam dunk in the Sorcerer Supreme job description.

For example…

Earth-2793 differs dramatically from many Earths thanks to a series of Tunguska-level meteorite strikes which leveled England, France, Germany and most of northern Europe. As a result, the dominance of the Mediterranean cultures that began in the early Renaissance never ended; the Protestant revolutions never happened because Martin Luther’s grandparents died in a hail of otherworldly rock.

In this world, Pope Alexander VI successfully managed to transfer the Papacy to his son, Cesare Borgia, thanks to the increased economic and political influence of the regions that supported the Borgia clan’s desire for power.1 Pope Caesar I, like all of his foul kin a demonic sorcerer of darkest regard, began a reign of terror and corruption that cemented the Borgia in power to this very day, transforming the office of Pope into a hereditary title and killing or converting most of their enemies to their cause. Colonization programs began in the late 1500s and soon their power spread across the world.

However, certain areas held out successfully against the Borgia. Most notably, the city-states of Piedmont, Milan and Venice banded together. The Sforza dynasty was never driven from Milan in this universe (seeing as how Charles II of France never conquered it, what with not having existed and all), and thus Leonardo da Vinci worked for his entire remaining life in Milan instead of having to hunt and plead for patrons across Italy. The Vinci Academy arose as the great bastion of Western enlightenment, and soon new martial orders arose, such as the Sforzan Guard and the Participazians of Venice. Combined with the Jesuits (who met not in Paris in this reality, but in secret in the catacombs beneath Florence), who served as the forces of good’s spies and secret agents, the Borgia’s demonic reign was at least held somewhat in check if not ended.

For ending it was not within their power; demonic sorcery kept the Borgia in power, and the unchallenged might of Catholicism meant that the people wholly believed the Borgia Popes to be God’s chosen. Not even the Northern Union (as the Italian city-states plus Switzerland eventually became to be known) could openly challenge the Pope. Thus, a shadow war was fought for centuries; the Participazians and Sforzans studied Kabbalistic magic and technomancy to keep on even footing with the dire rituals of the Borgia, made alliances with K’un L’un and Atlantis, and waited. For they knew full well that the Borgia’s reign was predicated on relentless expansion, and once the feudal system that kept the Papacy in power could not expand, it would crumble.

Unfortunately, they did not account for the wiliness of the Borgia. Pope Caesar XVI, advised by the undying and soulless Cesare Borgia, commenced Crusades against parallel Earths. Earth-9107 (a peaceful, pastoral planet), Earth-21504 (conquered by the Aztecs and collapsed into disease and chaos soon after) and Earth-10773 (civilization of intelligent frog-people) fell in quick order. The Devil Papacy expanded into Earth after Earth, their demonic Condotierri matched only by the Union’s magically-enhanced technology.

Back to 616. A fine day in New York: Strange is enjoying his morning cuppa when a magical sending reaches his mind. Antonio Starcacci, greatest technomancer of the Participazians, has sent Strange a warning: 616 is next on the Borgian Empire’s hit-list. And what’s worse, the Borgia have on their side the Sorcerer Supreme of their dimension – the dark magician known only as Stefanostromo…

Top comment: Crisis is love! Kick-splode across the multiverse! — Kyle W.

1. Fun fact: you know the standard picture of Jesus Christ you see today? The one where he’s white? It was almost certainly modeled after Cesare Borgia. [↩]

Magic in the Marvel Universe tends to be Earth-centric. This isn’t just a bias towards storytelling convenience, either; the Nexus of All Realities’ waypoint into this universe is located on Earth, as is the Bridge To The World of Waking Dream (more on that later). Earth is just a more magical part of the universe than average, and that tends to reinforce itself because when magical realms like K’un L’un connect themselves to Earth you get the sort of effect when people outside a bar see that it’s lively inside and then they want to go in. And all of this means Earth has a lot of magic-users running about.

Of course, that doesn’t mean Earth is the only place in the universe you get sorcerers…

Ch’Reek’Iiliimeenii (or “Creaky,” as he is known to his friends) is a Chr’Ylite, of the same race as Sikorsky of the Starjammers. Chr’Ylites are rather unique among the Marvel universe’s alien races for being an intelligent insectoid alien race that don’t have a hive culture. Most alien insect civilizations rise from hive-races – the hivemind principles make societal advancement faster where the base level of intelligence is high enough. Chr’Ylites, on the other hand, evolved from a race of hunter/predator pack insects and as such have a species personality much more conducive to interstellar exploration and co-operation with other races; they’re independent-minded but recognize the need for familial associations. It also helps that they’re generally very friendly.

The species has a mild degree of innate empathic telepathy, which is why their healers (like Sikorsky, one of their best) are so renowned; telepathic investigation of the body as you’re healing it makes for far more knowledgeable doctors. What the Chr’Ylites generally keep quiet is the fact that their abilities aren’t just telepathic, but indeed an empathic connection to the very world around them – a sensory perception that skews much wider than average. (And why wouldn’t they keep it on the down-low? They’re subject to the Shi’ar, and the Shi’ar are, as some have noted, not the most stable or gentle interstellar empire around.)

This perception, married to the keen analytical minds of the Chr’Ylites, gave the species an additional ace in the hole: a tendency to produce wizards. Chr’Ylite mathemagic is the arcane calculus that affects the universe; Chr’Ylite patron-magic accesses a range of magical deities of which most Earth wizards are barely aware. D’nonni’Klaa, the otherworldly Master of Unreal Algebra; Fidostinaliae, The Great Seer Of Strange Probabilities; and of course 32[(xe)^2ab] + KLYZ, He Who Is Not Named But Only Calculated.

Creaky, a young and talented Chr’Ylite wizard, came to Earth both because he was sent by the Irrationality Council (a staple belief of the Chr’Ylites is that irrational numbers hold the magical secrets of the universe) and because he volunteered. When people ask him about this, he steadfastly maintains that both these instances occurred simultaneously. Do not ask him to explain how this is possible. He will try to do it, and you will inevitably get a headache when he begins discussing the magical digressions of quadrubic roots. However it happened, though, he arrived, and Stephen Strange – not the sort to be scared off by a giant talking dragonfly spellcaster – promptly snapped him up as the second of his “interns.”

Creaky is, even for a magician who traveled billions of miles to explore, curious about everything to a degree that is almost terrifying. He wants to know everything, and given that he barely sleeps (Chr’Ylites only need to sleep nineteen minutes out of every 24-hour Earth day) he is the biggest information junkie you have ever met. He doesn’t confine himself to magical research either; Chr’Ylite magic has as a founding principle that magic can be found in everything, so one night he will watch a dozen episodes of The Wire and the next he is reading Joan Collins novels and the next he is replaying the same Dizzee Rascal song over and over again (muttering something about syncopation) and the next he’s studying the history of Constantinople.

And every so often? He finds something.

Top comment: I can’t help but think of “Creaky” as the wacky one in the Dr. Strange sitcom household. Right after Stephen drags himself home from a long day at work, Creaky bursts in with his latest findings.

“Dr. Strange! Dr. Strange! I’ve figured out how to make Jello shots throw lightning bolts! Wanna see?” — Kelberon

The ultimate ancestor of Fin Fang Foom! The First Giant Monster To Stride ‘Pon The Earth! Each of his knucklebones is the size of a Buick! His rearmost left canine fang could be turned into a house, assuming you dislodged it from him, hollowed it out and didn’t mind walls made of dragon-enamel!

He died one hundred thousand years ago, but promised his killers that he would live again – and punish the world for their insult! He is very sensitive! He hates it when people insult him! It is probably a result of his relationship with his father! Whom he killed, thus forever robbing him of the chance to find true, lasting closure! So he will find closure in conquest and annihilation!

Forget all that crap about closure! Fin Fang Fear needs no closure! He is closure! Closure incarnate!

His breath is hatred! His soul is poison! His eyes stare into one billion souls at once, and find every last one wanting! He has come to wreak havoc from beyond the grave! Fear him! FEAR HIM!

I just want to write a story where Dr. Strange fights a giant skeleton monster with magical zappy bolts and maybe team up with Fin Fang Foom and if that is wrong then I DO NOT WANT TO BE RIGHT.

Top comment: I want this to be a Max series so that someone gets to say “Fin Fang Fuck You.”

Yes, I am a child. — Magic Love Hose

Dormammu is a joke.

Seriously. He’s a joke. His existence at this point is to be really powerful so that Dr. Strange can kick his ass to show how powerful Dr. Strange is. And given that Dr. Strange’s existence at this point is essentially justified only to get his ass kicked so that other heroes can look good, that makes Dormammu the Duras to Strange’s Lt. Worf. How sad is that? One of the most massively powerful evil entities in comics is a punchline.

NO MORE!

Here’s the the most important thing about Dormammu that people need to remember: he is much, much more powerful than Dr. Strange. He is much older, much more practiced, has greater magical reserves to draw on, is just simply tougher than the Doc is. Dr. Strange’s reaction to seeing Dormammu should never be “oh, bother, it’s Dormammu again.” It should be “ohshitohshitohshit Dormammu.”

The reason Dr. Strange can beat Dormammu at all is simple: Dormammu’s very powerful and very learned, but he’s arrogant and not that quick-witted. Not dumb, mind you – you don’t get to be ruler of the Dark Dimension by being stupid. But Dormammu tends to think directly and simply and emotionally.1 Dormammu wants to beat Dr. Strange and prove that Strange is his inferior, which is why he always loses; Strange doesn’t care about proving a goddamn thing, he just wants to win. Preferably without getting killed. All of this adds up to Strange usually being able to outwit Dormammu, because Dormammu will give Strange time to lick his wounds or make a plan or do something to save the day. You can’t defeat somebody without humiliating him.

But what if Dormammu finally lost his temper once and for all? What if instead of wanting to beat Strange, he finally snapped and just started wanting to kill him? No subtle invasions, no deals with lesser mages, none of that bullshit Dormammu always tries to pull. Dormammu’s going to realize something: he didn’t trick and stunt his way to the top of the Dark Dimension, he conquered the fucking place. He killed everybody who opposed him and a whole lot of other people besides then brutalized the corpses to instill a neverending reign of fear. And if he wants Earth, he has to kill the Sorcerer Supreme first. It’s just that simple.

Imagine that Dormammu coming after Strange. He’d attack when Strange was absolutely exhausted, right after the Sorcerer Supreme had defeated some massive evil bent on destroying this entire universe. Just think about that, you’re Doctor Strange, you’ve just beaten back Chthon, you’ve used up half a dozen favours owed to the Outer Gods and you need a steak and a shower and then a week of solid sleep. You teleport back to the Sanctum, and there’s Dormammu waiting for you and he doesn’t say a goddamn thing, he just launches a massive power-blast at you that you barely deflect, and then it is on.

He doesn’t stop coming at you. He just follows you and keeps applying more and more mystical force at you, and bats away your attacks like they’re nothing because to him that’s pretty much what they are. He’s willing to drain the lives of most of the population of his dimension to kill you. But you’re Doctor Strange, and you’re a good man, and you won’t do that. And that’s why you can’t win this time.

You teleport away trying to buy time and he just comes right after you, tracking your magical trail; twenty seconds later he’s attacking you on the isolated Pacific isle you popped yourself to, and at least now you’ve put enough space between yourself and the rest of humanity that you can open up, but even attacking back at full power it’s only a matter of time, because Dormammu finally figured out that if he just keeps hitting you and never gives you a chance to try something, you’re a dead man.

And that is why it was a very good idea for Stephen Strange to find himself a group of apprentices. While Strange and Dormammu have a knock-down drag-out magical brawl to make Jim Starlin cry tears of sheer joy, his apprentices can desperately search for a way to outwit Dormammu. Because Strange is too busy trying to not die to beat him.

1. An evil version of Mustrum Ridcully, if you like. [↩]

I figured the swarm of “Dr. Strange can do anything and that’s why he sucks” comments would be reaching critical mass about now, but instead it happened, oh, three or four days ago. But doing these things mostly in advance means just that, so if you got impatient about having a chance to really discuss this, well, tough, but here it is now.

Brian K. Vaughan’s excellent Strange story, The Oath, posited that magic can’t duplicate what science has already done. This is elegant, simple, and unfortunately doesn’t work worth a damn if you think about it for more than five seconds. Dr. Strange can’t produce light or fly? No, sorry, doesn’t work. So let’s come up with something that does.

(A sidenote: Brad Reed emailed me his ideas for how magic works in the Marvel Universe and his were remarkably similar to what I had come up with on my own, so occasionally I have borrowed a phrase or two from him for this post, as his explanations were often elegant, although of course not ENTIRELY right. Thanks, Brad.)

Okay. This is how magic works in the Marvel Universe. Pay attention. There will be a quiz on this later!

First rule: all magic has a cost. Yes, I know they do it that way in the DCU already, but so what? It fundamentally makes sense, and not just because it ties into our conceptualization of physics, but also because logically it makes sense. Any dimension where magic doesn’t have a cost would eventually be ignited by surplus energy left over from all the excessive magic use; any dimension where it didn’t would eventually become a lifeless void. That’s why conservation of energy is fundamentally something universes need to survive, both on a scientific and magical praxis.

Second rule: magical energy in the Marvel Universe is generated constantly. (There’s an old issue of Dr. Strange where they said it was generated by the stars – I prefer the totality of the universe, but, really, that’s just semantics in a lot of ways unless you’re writing a story where stars start going out, and if stars are going out then people will have bigger worries than “hey where’s the magic going.”) It’s there to be used, but you have to know how to use it. (Most people cannot do this, because it turns out that using magical energy is really very difficult if you are not the Scarlet Witch or somebody.) If you don’t know how to use it, boy are you in trouble if you want to cast a spell.

The easiest way to do magic is to transform the energy within your own body and use a bit of that (then rejuvenate it later by eating a large meal). This is good for small things that mostly affect the mind (because most of your body’s bioelectricity is stored within the brain). Astral travel, for example, is really energy-low to do; ditto telepathy, Jedi mind tricks, et cetera. Most mental magic works off your own personal energy, just because that is simplest.1 This is why basic mind magic is some of the most common around.

Affecting anything else is, frankly, really goddamned hard to do. The cheat codes of the universe are always there, always accessible for your own personal use, but if you don’t know the universe’s version of the Konami Code then you don’t get squat. How difficult are these cheat codes? A little on that in a bit.

Since most people don’t have the time or patience to learn how to do magic directly, then you go to the second easy way to do magic: favour trading. Guys like the Vishanti, for example, or Watoomb, or Ikonn – all of them will cheerfully let you ask them for a spell. (Asking for a spell is just a long-distance telepathic communication, so you’re effectively using the easy mind magic that anybody can do to get access to the tough stuff.) They grant you what effectively acts as a license to use the tricky stuff, and they’re all specialized: Watoom, for example, is great for weather magic or transforming the very air itself, whereas Ikonn is the master of illusion magic, and so on.

EXAMPLE: Joe The Mage wants to cast the Shield of the Seraphim. He chants the special chant to invoke the Shield, but that chant is A) an interdimensional telepathic communication asking the Seraphim for help and B) an invocation to actually cast the Shield once the Seraphim grant it to him. And it is both of these things simultaneously. The Seraphim, who are a large collectively of insanely powerful magical beings specializing in defensive spells, can handle tons of such requests all at once – so it’s no problem for them to grant the request instantaneously. And Joe gets his Shield.

Now, there’s always a cost – and in this case, the cost to Joe is that he now owes the Seraphim a favour. These favours can be stored up by the allotting power (which, as Dr. Strange himself can inform you, is much like maxing out your credit card in order to increase the maximum balance so you can withdraw more money), or alternately in order to get the power permanently they might ask for a special one-time favour in advance.

Of course, you might be asking “well, why doesn’t Joe just learn to cast the Shield of the Seraphim by himself so he doesn’t need to bother them or owe them shit?” And the answer is “well, because Joe probably doesn’t have four hundred years to learn how to do it.” Like we said – doing magic is goddamned hard and takes a near-endless amount of study. Just learning how to do enough personal mind-magic in order to contact the major magical powers and begin favour-trading can take years or even decades – imagine how long it takes to learn how to cure cancer?2

Now let’s go back to Stephen Strange, who is a lot more powerful than most sorcerers. This is partially because he’s the Sorcerer Supreme, partially because he’s a bit more gifted than average, partially because he’s better at cheating the rules, and partially because he’s had a lot of time.

Strange started out with personal magic and favour-trading, just like everybody else does. Then, when the Vishanti demanded his assistance in a magical war, he emancipated himself from all favours owed to every power – which offended quite a lot of them, because it’s the magic equivalent of walking away from your foreclosed house except less polite. This sent his personal magical power level plummeting, which he addressed by carefully tricking the planet Earth into allowing him to access the entire bio-aura of his world to power his spells.

That in turn led to the Vishanti coming back and this time bargaining with Strange for his assistance in the war, and this time he accepted. He came back having completely exhausted his Gaian-magical powers (the Earth has limits), but, thanks to thousands of years of combat and study (which, as we reckon time, lasted only four months – and aged Strange less than a year), he now knew a lot more magic of the universe, most of it learned from the Vishanti.3 He still tends to invoke the Vishanti when he uses their magic, but that’s mostly because he’s polite enough to say “thank you” – and because it fools enemies into thinking he’s still reliant on their assistance.

So, what can Strange do without asking for help? Well, the three provinces of the Vishanti are illumination (Agamotto), space (Oshtur) and time (Hoggoth).4 Here’s the short list:

– telepathy/hypnosis (not on the level of a Charles Xavier, to be sure, but no slouch)
– astral travel/dreamwalking
– teleportation (himself, others, other things, warp gates, banishing demons, et cetera)
– telekinesis (flight, moving other things, et cetera)
– slowing and hastening of time
– time travel
– creation and dispelling of illusions
– and the manipulation of raw magical energy, mostly to create magical zappy bolts or magical energy shields

Now, that’s pretty goddamned powerful, there’s no question about that. With that powerset Doc can go just about anywhere he wants to, learn a lot about things, and be a very very tough opponent in a fight.

But here’s a list of things he can’t do:

– cure disease
– transmute matter or energy
– create things out of thin air
– affect emotions
– control sound
– directly control the elements (either scientific or magical)
– cure insanity
– stop someone from being evil
– control magical energy in very fine, adept ways
– overcome death5

For anything off that list, and plenty more besides? He needs to owe someone powerful a favour, or go on a quest to get whatever he needs (knowledge, a Magical Thingy, et cetera) to let him do it. What happens in The Oath is a great example: Doc wants to cure Wong’s cancer, but he can’t do that himself, so he researches something that might do it, and finds out he has to travel to a different dimension (which he can do) and zap the shit out of something (which he can do).

This is, I think, a pretty good set of rules for magic use in the Marvel universe – it’s flexible enough that it doesn’t impede storytelling or wussify Strange (he’s still ridiculously powerful as superheroes go), but it sets pretty serious limits in a number of ways and generates stories rather than deus ex machinae. But your mileage may vary.

Top comment: I love monkey burgers. — Warren Ellis

1. It’s also easiest because human beings – at least in the Marvel Universe – are already predisposed to be able to do it a little bit – or a lot, in the case of some mutants/sensitives/etc. [↩]
2. Which requires you to repair millions of cells individually, just for a start – as well as understanding what cancer fundamentally is, not just on a scientific but philosophical level. [↩]
3. He called it “chaos catastrophe magic,” mostly because there are certain phrases Warren Ellis really loves and that is one of them. Also, “monkey burgers.” [↩]
4. That idea was entirely Brad’s and I want to credit him for it – we agreed on most of the powers Doc has at his fingertips, but codifying it like that was all him. [↩]
5. And IXNAY on the wishing for more wishes, pal! [↩]

Once, shortly before his death, the Ancient One sat Stephen down and told him some things that he figured Stephen would eventually have to know.

Some of it was pretty straightforward. (“Wear socks. You ever go to the frozen dimension of S’tohr, you’ll understand about the socks.”) Some of it was not. (“I know you don’t know the Insane Incantation of Ix, but if you ever learn it, only cast it backwards on a Tuesday while holding a strong cup of green tea. Also, wear socks. The socks are actually not related to the spell, but I want to emphasize their importance.”) Some of it was borne of years of life experience. (“If you are ever offered the opportunity to switch genders, make sure there is a reversal easily available beforehand. Trust me on this. Also, remember that women wear different types of socks.”) And some of it made no sense at all. (“Now, that ancient Etruscan phrase I just mentioned? Keep it to mind. You’ll know when you need it.”)

And he told Stephen about the Path In Winter.

Every Sorcerer Supreme sees the Path once. When they see the Path, it doesn’t matter if they’re in the middle of a fight for the cosmos, attending the birth of your firstborn child, or doing laundry: you have to start walking along it. Right then, right there. (Luckily, it only ever comes in wintertime for some reason, so at least Sorcerers Supreme can try to proactively schedule massive mystical undertakings for the summer.) Your very existence as a Sorcerer Supreme is dependent on walking the Path. And, since the Sorcerer Supreme is the mystical guardian of the entire universe, that means the universe itself depends on you walking the Path as well.

Once the Ancient One was certain that Stephen understood the importance of walking the Path, he promptly refused to discuss anything more about it and instead once again began talking about the importance of socks. “Every man walks his own Path, and it is different for each of us, so there wouldn’t be any point in relating my experience to you, as yours will be entirely different. That’s why we don’t discuss it.” (When Stephen quite reasonably pointed out that there was no way to tell if each sorcerer’s Path was in fact different without comparing respective experiences, the Ancient One responded by smacking him lightly upside the head.)

The nature of the Path – left a mystery. An ages-old enchantment, built by the very first Sorcerer Supreme (you know, Agamotto) to serve as a guidepost for his successors? Maybe it’s a discussion between the Sorcerer Supreme and the universe (which is not conscious per se, but a conversation between a sentient being and the universe has to be defined by the being’s point of view). Possibly it could be the Sorcerer Supreme’s subconscious using their magical utility to create an advisory moment on a subrealm. Or maybe it’s Death, pulling a Pratchett and politely warning the Sorcerer Supreme that their time, while not yet up, is definitely running short.

Maybe it’s any or all of those things; “each Sorcerer Supreme walks his own path” might not be poetic hyperbole.

But it’s going to happen, and soon. And because this is a comic book – or maybe just because it’s inherently a magical thing – it will happen at the most impossible time it possibly can. And when it happens, Doctor Strange will have to walk his Path just like every one of his predecessors did.

Top comment: TWIST: The Path In Winter appears right in the middle of Radical Steve’s winning run at the world skateboard championships. With his Subway subs sponsorship on the line, will Steve follow the path or do an awesome inverted kickflip? — liquidben

A brief history, for those who are not longtime Dr. Strange readers: Vincent Stephens was one of two magical avatars created by Dr. Strange a few years back when Strange needed to hide out and recuperate while preparing to defeat a particular enemy but couldn’t leave Earthly affairs alone for that time. Along with the berserker mystic known only as Strange, Vincent discovered his true nature and attempted to forestall his inevitable fate – namely, reabsorption into Dr. Strange himself – by any means necessary. Eventually in a climactic battle, though, Vincent Stephens ultimately failed to possess Dr. Strange and dissipated back into the magical energy that was all he ever truly was, and that was the end of Vincent.

Go on, pull the other one!

Energy can’t be created or destroyed – that applies to magical energy just as it does to regular old-fashioned energy. Vincent’s energy has been disparate, true, but it’s also been lurking in the background all this time. All it takes to collect it together is someone with some patience and an agenda. You know what just about anybody who wants to hurt Dr. Strange has? Patience and an agenda.

(I promise that it is not Dormammu, Nightmare, Umar, Baron Mordo, Dr. Doom, somebody brand new, or somebody so obscure that it essentially is somebody brand new. You will not fail to be surprised by the individual who brought back Vincent Stephens from the brink of nonexistence.)

When Vincent comes back, he’s obviously pissed at Strange, but truth be told – now his energy form is stable. Vincent Stephens is a realist – if he goes after Strange, he’ll get his ass kicked and he’ll probably get banished or re-dissipated (or worse, reabsorbed into Strange’s magical field). Vincent has absolutely no interest in going after his original creator. Which is of course why his Mysterious Benefactor demands that he do so, threatening to untie the magical knot that holds Vincent’s form together.

So Vincent goes about doing the only thing he realistically can do – which is use his uncanny similarity to Stephen Strange to ruin the good doctor’s reputation. Vincent knows some magic, after all – not much, but some – and he does have the ability to possess people. All of that can, in a pinch, mimic Stephen Strange fairly effectively. So one day, after a bit of a journey off the plane, Doc finds out that the Avengers are pissed at him and he has no idea why. The X-Men aren’t returning his phone calls and the Fantastic Four are clearly not comfortable having him around.

And that’s just stage one of Vincent’s plan – stage two calls for full public outrage at Stephen Strange, and Vincent is just the magical being to make that happen…

Top comment: Stage two: One night only! Dr. Strange will be performing stage magic at the Laugh Factory in LA. Be sure to come early and enjoy the comedy stylings of his close personal friend Michael Richards. — Dan

It takes the governments of the world a few days to realize it, because it’s in the Mongolian province of Khovd, which is some of the emptiest land in the world (Khovd has less than a third of the population density of Canada, which is pretty damn empty). Nobody really looks there, because why would you? Nothing comes out of Khovd except yaks and watermelons. It’s one of the most pleasantly boring places in the world.

Which is why it comes as such as a surprise when some minor government functionary, looking over the feed from a spy satellite that crosses over the area once every three weeks, sees the body.

It is male, and over seven miles high, or would be if it were standing straight. But this giant isn’t standing up straight; it’s lying on its back, sprawled out, very, very dead. There’s a giant hole in its chest, bigger than a strip mine, looking like something in between a stab wound and a burn-hole. This giant was murdered, and somehow fell to Earth without anybody noticing (or, for that matter, causing a giant life-destroying earthquake of the sort when something that is big and heavy and seven miles long falls and hits the ground).

The first time Dr. Strange – or any competent mystic – sees the giant, though? They know it’s Cytorrak. As in “the Crimson Bands of Cytorrak,” one of the go-to defensive spells for any competent mystic. There really aren’t a lot of giant bearded men wearing purple spiky body armour, you see. (Yes, the dead giant wears purple spiky body armour.)

And that causes a general panic among the mystics and mages of Earth, because Cytorrak wasn’t just big – he was ridiculously powerful, not surprising since he constantly granted his own power to lesser mages on a favour-trading basis. Anything that could kill him can probably squash them like a bug. A particularly unimpressive bug, too.

And what’s even more worrisome is that the Crimson Bands of Cytorrak still work. Something else is giving away that magical power now, and nobody has any idea who’s doing it. Is it the Vishanti? The Seraphim? Another of the major grantors of magical power such as Ikonn, Watoomb or Satannish? Or is it somebody else altogether? What motive would they have for both murdering Cytorrak and then supplying power to his magical-lessees? (Assuming they’re the same guy.)

And how do you dispose of a body that’s seven miles high, anyway? Never mind that there’s going to be a major territorial clash the moment every nearby government figures out that the seven-mile-high man is essentially a giant mineral deposit that just appeared out of nowhere – China will start insisting that Mongolia somehow influenced the giant to fall backward rather than forwards (into Chinese lands), and then the Americans will get involved about the time they realize that this guy wasn’t human or even from this dimension and thus potentially contains chemical compounds heretofore undiscovered.

So Strange will have his hands full – not least because, for reasons that will become clear, nobody can know he’s going to take care of the problem. And that’s before you consider the fact that Cytorrak was traditionally invoked for spells of strength used either to hold stuff up or keep stuff (or demons) sealed in. And that’s before you remember that Cytorrak’s death probably affects the Juggernaut in some way (probably some way that isn’t good for bystanders).

So, you know. This is something to keep a Sorcerer Supreme busy.

Top comment: I disagree with Lance about the new export. It’ll be aphrodisiacal supplies.

“Godwang! Getcher godwang right here! Fresh off the god!” –equinox216

Astral traveling is Dr. Strange’s Batmobile if Batman used the Batmobile to do absolutely everything.. Need to see something in a hurry? Astral travel! Need to scout a dangerous area safely? Astral travel! Need to go to the store to get some milk? Astral travel there, then teleport your body, then buy the milk! It’s become a crutch.

Which is why Strange will be very surprised when he tries to access the Astral Plane one day for some mundane travel needs. For example, I have always thought that Strange, more likely than not, uses astral travel to occasionally attend Phillies games. He lives in New York, so traveling there directly is a pain. And you’ve got to figure that Strange appreciates baseball, the most mystical of all modern sports. Not that he admits this to anybody, of course, because come on, the Sorcerer Supreme has to have standards about what he does for recreation and filling out scorecards is not on the list. More people know the location of where Strange hid the Book of Behanna (containing no less than three spells capable of destroying humanity) than know that Strange uses the Astral Plane to make sure nobody hears him yell “battabattabattabattaSAWEEEEENGbatta, hecanthithecanthitSAWEEEEEEEENGbatta.”

(Yes, of course Wong knows.)

But I digress. So one day Strange prepares to enter the Astral Plane to watch the Phillies play off against the thrice-damned Yankees, and – whoops, doesn’t seem to be working. Checks his spells, his collection of mystical gewgaws, his Hello Kitty pyjamas (okay, he doesn’t have Hello Kitty pyjamas, I just wanted to see if you were paying attention), tries again – nope, no dice. Now he’s concerned, because he’s going to miss the opening pitch the astral plane is kind of like the magical equivalent of the ocean: it’s there all the time and you can swim in it whenever you like, although it might not be advisable to do so at certain times or in certain areas. The idea of the astral plane not being there is staggering.

Finally he decides to take things to the next level and, rather than spirit-travel into the Astral Plane, transport himself bodily into it, which is a bit more dangerous (as anybody who’s read up on their old Dungeons and Dragons sourcebooks can tell you) but will provide him with some answers. He opens the portal…

…and the resultant explosion takes out half a city block.

Of course, thanks to preparatory magic, he (and everybody in the blast radius) comes out with only scratches and bruises, and it’s easy enough to explain it away to authorities as a massive gas leak which grew concentrated until things went foom. (Authorities like easy answers.) But that’s not what’s actually happening. What’s actually happening is that the Astral Plane has become a enormous, calamitous spirit-storm, impossible to access by normal spiritual means and almost instantly deadly to anybody who wishes to traverse it.

What could have possibly caused that? The answer is nothing good. And how can the good Doctor restore it? First he has to figure out how to survive it.

But he’s on a clock. Because the Astral Plane isn’t just a convenient travel route for the magically inclined; its slight, universal touch is what allows sentient beings to dream and to meditate and to escape the real, if only in their own heads. After the first night, every sentient being in the universe wakes up slightly grumpy (and a lot of people taking yoga classes ask for their money back). After the second, it gets a little worse. After a week, folks are getting seriously stressed, and it’s when tempers start cracking and people start losing it. And if it goes two weeks, well – that would be very, very bad indeed.

And here’s one more kicker – Nightmare. He’s desperate and begging for help after the first couple of days (begging for help from Stephen Strange, for crissake), because the dream world is withering away at a ridiculous pace without dreamers to sustain it. This is, quite simply, killing him. And you have to think that Dr. Strange would really, really hate to save Nightmare’s worthless parasite existence – but more than likely he won’t have a choice.

Top comment: It’s always a gas leak, isn’t it? How about a recurring antagonist for Strange in the form of a gas main inspector so disgruntled with a public thinking he’s doing a lousy job that he manages to see through Strange’s glamour? Rassin’ frassin’ super muk muks givin’ ME a bad name! — HitTheTargets

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?

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

The gods of Ancient Egypt have been mostly very quiet for practically the entirety of Marvel comics history. With the exception of Seth, the Egyptian god of death, they’ve almost entirely been content to sit back and let the other pantheons do the heavy lifting in the Marvel universe. Which, if you think about it, is really kind of in character for gods worshipped by a civilization which largely lived in a desert. You live in a desert, you learn not to exert yourself more than necessary.

Which makes it all the odder that Djehuty – typically known to modern-day sorts as Thoth, but Djehuty was never one to be horribly impressed with Greek nomenclature – should travel to Earth and calmly begin… influencing undirected pagan worshippers to worship of the Egyptian gods. He’s quite effective, in his way; choosing to engage potential worshippers one-by-one or coven-by-coven. What could have been a sales pitch instead becomes a debate or discussion with someone who comes across as the best teacher you never had when you were growing up.

He usually leaves these discussion sessions with a few new converts. The question that remains is why. After all, it’s pretty conclusive that gods in the Marvel universe don’t actually need worshippers in the Pratchettian “belief is the food of gods” mode. Nobody worships Thor, after all (certainly not enough people to justify his massive power levels, or else Elvis would be – wait, maybe there’s a story there… no, wait again, it’s a pretty bad one in this context).

If it was any other god, you would assume it was either an exercise in egotism or perhaps simply that they were taking an interest in humanity. But Djehuty isn’t a self-important sort of god, and although he doesn’t dislike humanity he’s not exactly known for being a great advocate of it either. (Although he’s always very polite about it. He’s that sort of god, you see.) Djehuty is more the sort of god to take an interest – or, knowing him, telling someone else to take an interest so he doesn’t have to waste the time – only when he feels it’s absolutely necessary.

So why does he feel that way? What is so dire that it motivates him to do this – and why could something so seemingly inconsequential be so important to such an old god?

For one thing, he’s not actually interested in worshippers either. When Strange confronts him for the first time, Djehuty is very clear about his indifference to whether people worship him or not. (Again: desert. Tends to make you laconic.) He’s getting some worshippers, sure, but that’s going to happen when you are a god manifesting yourself before a small segment of the teeming masses and having a nice chat. He doesn’t mind the worship, but that’s not the goal. Chatting with Strange, he reveals that the point of all these visits is to put information into people’s heads – disguised in the form of stories, but magical implementation nonetheless. And although he doesn’t admit it, Strange is pretty sure that Djehuty has a specific list of people he wants to visit.

And now it is worth remembering that the various pantheons tend to have their own individual characters. The Asgardians are mostly brawlers who like a straight-up fight. The Olympians are hedonists and partiers at heart. The Japanese pantheon is the home of many inscrutable, insincere plotters. And the Egyptians – well, the Egyptians are like those old guys sitting on storefront porches in New England, who like little more than to discuss the fastest way to McKutty or the Great Frog-Walloping of ’43 or how that storm on the horizon sure resembles that squall from forty years done by, the one that trashed the Widow Simons’ home, and maybe it’s time to be getting home to the storm shelter, eh?

And a little more investigation shows that the other Egyptian dieties have done exactly that, metaphorically speaking. There’s a storm coming. Djehuty, for reasons unknown, isn’t running and hiding; presumably he has some sort of plan, executed by unknowing agents he prepares in full. Or maybe the people he’s talking to aren’t the ones who do anything important; maybe his influence on them influences other people differently, and he’s doing the interpersonal version of a triple bank shot (with a skip) on a pool table.

Which begs the question: what is he preparing for?

Top comment: Khonshu is going to kick your ass. — PMMJ

“Like House, but with wizards.”

That’s always been one of my favorite single-sentence ideas for a Dr. Strange series. The problem, of course, is that in the Marvel Universe right now there is a distinct… shortage of sorcerers, wizards, mages and so forth. The Scarlet Witch is crazy and/or depowered, and even before that she was a mutant who accessed magical energy rather than an actual practiced magic-user (which is what you need). Wiccan is also a mutant, although thankfully not insane. Daimon Hellstrom is too pushy for Strange to want to bother with. (Also, sometimes a bit evil.) Jennifer Kale is recovering from a zombie attack. Agatha Harkness is dead. So is Dr. Druid. Brother Voodoo’s skillset is too limited. The second Dr. Druid is green. Dr. Doom isn’t exactly what you’d call “trustworthy.” Man-Thing is a plant. And so on.

(Yes, I did read the most recent issue of New Avengers. Rest assured it will be mentioned eventually.)

Of course, that doesn’t mean there aren’t others more suitable for the job. Sorcerers have a knack of not showing up in top-secret government files; it’s easy to stay off the radar if you’re talented and know what you’re doing. Strange needs a team of “interns,” much like House needs the black guy and the Australian guy and the girl and eventually Kumar. So who does he get?

Sir Humphrey Clarkson, Lord of Wattlesbury-on-Parbeck, wasn’t from a particularly rich aristocratic family. This suited him fine; his yearly income from family holdings and investments was enough to fund his magical studies and travels, and beyond that he lived quite modestly. By 1922 he had mastered Hermetic magic well enough to slow his aging to a crawl, placed his assets in extremely long-term debt instruments (Pater always insisted on maintaining the estate), and faked his death, reappearing as his own bastard son at the funeral with a few skilled magical facial alterations, just enough that there was a resemblance but not so much that anyone would doubt the papers proving his parentage.

He did this about every thirty years and continued study into the Hermetic traditions; as the discipline grew to encompass machinomancy and eventually technomancy, he grew proficient in these emergent arts as well. He occasionally glanced into other magical styles, of course, and probably would have begun advanced study into them – if not for the Incident about ten years ago.

That was when Zzzax, the beast-man of living lightning, went on a rage through a certain chunk of rural England. Now, the fine folks of MI-13, working in concert with S.H.I.E.L.D., captured and reimprisoned Zzzax in short order. But that was unfortunately after Zzzax absorbed the electrocardial life-forces of fourteen Englishmen. Including Sir Humphrey, of course.

However, as you might have guessed, Sir Humphrey did not, in fact, die of this. Any good Hermetic knows the value of preparation – especially defensive spell rituals performed months or years or even decades in advance. His protection rituals interacted with Zzzax’s living electricity in ways as yet unseen. Sir Humphrey’s electrical life-force was indeed absorbed by Zzzax – but equal electricity was siphoned back from Zzzax, which kept him alive.

But the new electricity from Zzzax wasn’t quite the same as his normal bioelectricity – and so, Sir Humphrey found that he had an edge most other magicians simply did not. Namely, a healthy supply of raw, regenerating magical force, the creation of his practiced magical auras colliding with the sheer power of the Living Lightning Bolt.

Of course, this new advantage came with a degree of difficulty, considering that raw magilectricity tends to interfere with fine-tuned rituals. So he went back into seclusion, and continued his studies – but his old, methodical nature of spellcasting and research was, he found, now somewhat unsatisfying anyway. He enjoyed visceral magical experience more and more, discovering at the age of one hundred and twenty-three that he had a sudden desire for adventure. (Whether this is the aggressive influence of Zzzax or simply the result of a traumatic event causing a profound personality shift is a topic for debate.)

All of this? The experience, the impressive research skills, the sudden influx of talent at making things explode, and of course the sheer Britishness (which, let’s be honest, is the sort of thing which Stephen might not himself affect, but would definitely be comfortable with)? Made him an ideal candidate to assist Stephen Strange. But there was one other reason for Strange to select Sir Humphrey, one he didn’t mention when he approached the Englishman.

See, the Zzzax energies combined with the magical energies represented a strange conflux of the real and unreal, almost unprecedented in magic. More on the nature of magic coming up later, but for now, understand that easy access to extant magical energies which are simultaneously normal energies explicable by physics is almost impossible. When Dr. Strange casts the Magical Fires Of Faltoor upon his foes, it’s not normal fire, it’s magical energy masquerading as fire, or alternately it’s regular old-fashioned fire that he transported from somewhere else (like that forest fire he knows is happening in Uganda). It’s never both. Except that in Sir Humphrey’s case, it is.

It would, Stephen believed, prove exceptionally useful as a surprise…

Top comment: He’s not a magical being, he’s a really smart guy who learned how to do this. Ghost Rider might be the bitchinest Gibson Guitar with a custom neck and airbrushed flames on the front, but Dr. Strange is Eric Clapton. — John