Doctor Strange: The End #1 // Review
There is a conventional belief that all stories must end. All sagas must close. There will inevitably come a final story for every character in one way or another. (The jury is still out, obviously, on whether this is truly the case for long-running corporate-owned hero propertied.) In a place as big, expensive, and financially lucrative as the Marvel universe, there is room for many such stories. Writer Leah Williams and artist Filipe Andrade take a swing at the last story of Marvel's magician and master of the Mystic Arts in Doctor Strange: The End. Williams and Andrade make a valiant attempt to put together an end of a beloved character. Still, the best they can manage is a reasonably enjoyable story of Strange in the far future, as seen in shades of cyberpunk in a weird, little one-shot.
Doctor Strange is slumming it as a tarot reader. Punk swing by his business to ridicule him. Evidently, he Has an awful moment in his past that was captured on streaming video. Naturally, strange is aware of the punks' intentions. He deals with them rather efficiently. This wouldn't be the end of the character, were it not for the fact that aspects of his life are much more complicated than dealings a few punks. He's going to be struggling with far deeper mysteries at the end of his life.
Williams is clearly working to fuse magic with advanced technology in a tale at the end of a magician's life. Still, minor mysteries and strange interactions in a vision of the future out of the '80s feels anticlimactic. The aesthetic of cyberpunk is very interesting. However, Doctor Strange is someone who has encountered the most powerful characters in the Marvel universe. He's dealt with the deepest mysteries of a multitude of infinities. Any attempt to sum that all up in a single story is going to be doomed as he has delved so far into the abstract substance of the Marvel Universe. There's no final story that's going to feel final. The story Williams is developing, however, is not without its charms. Williams' sense of nuance in characterization is endearing. It's too bad that it wasn't tied to a more powerful story.
Andrade has a very earthbound sense of the fantastic. Williams’ nuanced characterization of Doctor Strange is picked up in odd corners at our ways throughout the entire one-shot. His approach to bringing the story to the page grounds it in a kind of emotionally pragmatic reality that suits it well. There's a subtle Wednesday about his line work. The progression of action from panel to panel feels subtly witty. It's a very emotionally articulate rendering of the story that dances well with the script.
It would be nice to see these to work on something that wasn't marketed as being as immense as this is supposed to be. This is the end of a major character. They're trying to bring to a close a series character with a life that's been going on for over half a century already. Granted, he will live on for decades or at least as long as Marvel does. But the idea of giving him a final adventure set in the far future really deserves some great final mystery as the character dives into the heart of the unknown. Williams' story is good, but it doesn't suit the end of such a powerful character. Given the right twist, these two would be really interesting together working on an entire series set in Doctor Strange's cyberpunk future.
