This week’s Rundown leads off with Doctor Strange #1, which strands the good doctor in Asgard. Plus, we cover Hulk Smashes Everything #1 and begin our final dispatches from The Age of Revelation. Read on to see what our team thinks of this week’s books!
Doctor Strange #1
Writer: Derek Landry
Artist: Ivan Fiorelli
Colorist: Dono Sánchez-Almara
Letterer: vc’s Cory Petit
This current era at Marvel with its “MAJOR” status quo shifts seems to be this decade’s grim and gritty makeover and tacky new costume rolled into one. Characters get saddled with a new “direction”, then that gets dumped at most a year later. Readers saw Mile Morales turned into a vampire in Blood Hunt, but now he’s back to being human. Daredevil died, then resurrected as an amnesiac priest, and is now back to more or less being a lawyer.
So now we get to the what third or fourth status quo shift for Doctor Stephen Strange in the last decade? Magic is gone, magic is back. He’s not sorcerer supreme, then he has his title again. He’s dead, he’s alive. Does anyone know what to do with this character at this point?
Now from the fallout of One World Under Doom and recent Thor storylines, the latest Doctor Strange #1 sees the magical hero as Sorcerer Supreme of Asgard. Except he’s stuck there and everyone kind of blames him for Thor’s recent death (who actually isn’t dead, he’s just mortal). So now the Asgardians keep him as an errand boy as he attempts to return home.
A status quo shift isn’t a bad thing. Doctor Strange’s last series saw him with his wife Clea as a magical Nick and Nora Charles which was a lot of fun. The melodrama of superhero comics demands the occasional shake up. However, making a change to a character’s life and completely upending that life are two different things. No matter what possibilities the script by writer Derek Landry offers, ultimately we as readers know Strange will get back to Earth. This shift, as fun as it is, only possesses limited possibilities.
The other issue with setting Doctor Strange in this new world is that it flattens a character with a rich history tied to the occult into a generic wizard. Now someone, whose rich history dealt with horrors and weird fiction related adventures, exists in the middle of a Dungeons and Dragons campaign. At first glance, that idea sounds fun. Comics can and should be fun! Also horror and fantasy aren’t too far removed from each other. Horror giants like H.P. Lovecraft and Stephen King have written fantasy. So ideally Doctor Strange as a more traditional wizard again could offer possibilities.
But Asgard and the other Nine Realms feel pedestrian compared to the much stranger places the good doctor visited in past adventures. Remember this is a guy who in his earliest stories went into nightmare realms and witnessed a massive demon lord fight with existence itself. Someone who at one point killed EVERY vampire. The more traditional sword and sorcery worlds here just seem pretty tame compared to that. Fighting an evil elf wizard doesn’t hold the same impact as fighting Dormammu.
Really the saving grace of this comic is the art team of artist Ivan Fiorelli and colorist Dono Sánchez-Almara. Fiorelli draws expressive figures and props with heft to them which grounds the more fantastic elements here. The armor carry weight when characters move or characters struggle to swing weapons. Additionally, Fiorelli’s costumes pulls off making elaborate ornate but not overly busy looking. All of this aided considerably by Sánchez-Almara whose colors really work in tandem with Fiorelli making this a comic that is a joy to look at.
But that’s really the only joy to be in a series that reads like a place holder. While Wanda Maximoff might be Sorcerer Supreme at the moment, Doctor Strange likely is just biding time until someone comes up with an easy way to get him back to Earth. For now though, he’s just another wizard in another fantasy land. How unexciting. At least bring back the Mindless Ones.
Verdict: BROWSE
Rapid Rundown
- Hulk Smash Everything #1
- Sometimes a comic delivers exactly what it promises and exactly what you want it to. That’s what we’ve got here in the first issue from writer Ryan North and artist Vincenzo Carratú. Hulk is on a rampage spurred on by his arch nemesis, The Leader, and it puts him up against Dr. Strange and a host of dinosaurs. There’s very little substance here so far, just manic action. But for folks like me who are not super versed in Hulk mythology, it’s a welcome evergreen tale of the classic jade giant at his most savage. I suspect we will get more weight to the story as it goes on but here the emphasis really is on the action above all else and Carratú delivers with some explosive layouts. The way he arranges the panels, like daggers flying toward the reader, gives a propulsive energy and weight to the action that really sells the power on display. This is the first I’ve seen of this artist and what a first impression! Federico Blee’s colors are clear and bold, and his decision to desaturate and contrast all of the background detail makes the Hulk’s vibrant green pop even more—adding to his imposing prominence on the page beyond just the scale of the linear. Joe Caramagna goes to town on the SFX, selling each KRAKA-BOOM and adding a playful dynamism to the smashing. And that final page? You’ll never guess it, and it makes for one of the best, most ridiculous cliffhangers I can recall. This is just pure fun. – TR
Dispatch from the Age of Revelation!
- Amazing X-Men #3
- The End of the Age of Revelation BEGINS HERE! It’s the final month of this year’s big X-men Crossover and writer Jed MacKay takes this issue to set the stage for the final fight between the X-Men, Apocalypse and Revelation. Effectively a quite issue before the storm, we are treated to the future X-Men sneaking into Philadelphia and moment to rest after spending the previous two issues on the run. There are some great character moments in the issue as we see more of Beast and Animalia’s relationship dynamics. Honestly, MacKay does a stellar job with Beast as a whole. Throughout his run on X-Men this past year, MacKay has taken on the herculean task of “fixing” Beast after decades of a slow heel turn. Up until this point I haven’t felt like it was being fully realized, but in this issue, we get to see a Beast that is still flawed but heroic in nature. Essentially, he is an amalgamation of the last decade of the character and his 90’s counterpart. MacKay continues his excellent character work with Cyclops and Glob Herman. It’s been a fun dynamic to see play out. Artist Mahmud Asrar delivers a gorgeous looking issue that lets him flex his action muscles as well as showcase his talents for the more sincere moments. I said its “effectively a quite issue,” there is still a fight. This is a superhero comic after all. The only issue I have with the issue is that it doesn’t establish the main threat of Doug nor the conflict with apocalypse. Honestly, it isn’t until this issue we even learn what Doug’s evil plan is in the first place. Spoilers: It’s the B-plot to the early 2000’s Marvel Event- Maximum Security. That’s right folks we have an Ego, the Living Planet situation. I am enjoying Age of Revelation for what it is, but it is deeply flawed in terms of structure and execution. The bloat of tie-ins doesn’t really help. This week’s other titles Binary #3 and Laura Kinney, Sabertooth #3 both end their respective plot lines with little to no bearing on the main event. I am all for world building, but we have lost the plot in majority of the tie-ins. I am curious to see how the event ends but I fear it will leave me wanting. –JJ
