Doctor Strange Annual #1 // Review
The Sorcerer Supreme of Earth's dimension appears again in another big annual. It's another #1 in a rather long string of them for a character who started appearing and disappearing from his own series long before it was cool. 2019's Doctor Strange Annual #1 is a two-story affair released the day before Halloween. Writer Tini Howard tells the story of a get-together at Dr. Strange's sanctum between himself and a few other prominent sorcerers on the evening of Halloween. Artist Andy MacDonald conjures the visuals in a story of Halloween. A fair amount of chromatic enchanted embellishment comes to the page courtesy of colorist Triona Farrell. The opening story is followed by "Treat": a tale of murder and demonic manifestation written by Pornsak Pichetshote that is drawn by Lalit Kumar Sharma with inks by Sean Parsons.
The opening story has Doctor Strange joined by Doctor Voodoo, Talisman, Scarlet Witch, and Agatha Harkness at Strange's Sanctum in Greenwich Village on the night of Halloween when barriers between the living and the dead are the thinnest. Tini Howard's little party is followed-up by a tale of a couple of sociopaths who break into houses on the night of Halloween every year for the thrill of killing strangers. They get a bit more than they expect on an evening when they are confronted by a portly inky black demon with a pair of jagged-toothed crimson mouths looking for treats.
The one-shot Halloween issue of Doctor Strange is placed half-way between one life and another for the Sorcerer/Surgeon supreme. The Halloween eve 2019 makes for a festive "journey into mystery" for the character. Howard's unique clustering of mystics for a party on the 31st is well-thought-out, executed, and probably long overdue. Pichetshote's follow-up has a more standard horror story set-up that allows the Marvel Universe twist on the supernatural to slowly seep in around the edges of a story that might not have been entirely out of place in an old EC comic like Tales from the Crypt featuring Doctor Strange's valet Wong. It's a delightful fusion.
MacDonald's rendering of the initial story gives each of the sorcerers his or her own distinctive style and power. It feels like an eldritch celebration with shadow and intrigue that is given significant amplification by Farrell's colors. Her colors wind their way around a very dark ink-work by MacDonald that punches things up visually without compromising the moodiness of the visuals. It's a really delicate balance that MacDonald and Farrell execute in the lead story. Sharma and Parsons' work on the back-up story has a much heavier contrast between light and dark that serves the stark horror of the supernatural quite well.
Existing as it does sort of outside the formal timeline set-up between the end of the last Doctor Strange series and the beginning of the next, this is a fun, little excursion into some other time for a few quick moments of magic and horror just in time for Halloween. Howard and Pichetshote engage the Marvel universe from its darker edges in a fun glance into the shadows as the nights begin to get longer before a couple of months before the arrival of a whole new decade.
Grade: B
