Strange #1 // Review
Dr. Strange died. And then he came back long enough to die again. And then again. Suffice it to say that his lover Clea is a bit exhausted from the whole experience. That doesn’t mean that she doesn’t want him back. She’ll look into resurrecting him again once she’s had a cup of decent coffee from her home dimension. Writer Jed MacKay explores the life of a new Sorcerer Supreme in Strange #1. Artist Marcelo Ferreira and inkers Don Ho and Roberto Poggi bring the story to the page with power and wit in a satisfying first issue of a whole new direction for Earth’s Sorcerer Supreme.
Dr. Doom is at the front door, and Clea hasn’t even had a decent cup of coffee yet. (“The coffee in this dimension is tragic,” Clea states...later referring to it as “a waste of time.”) It’s not difficult to brush off a foreign dictator, but will Clea find a decent cup of coffee without running into a group of magic-based terrorists? And how on Earth is she going to bring her lover Stephen back to life when he has already three times in the span of a single week?
MacKay’s humor fits the Marvel Universe’s magical realms like a glove. (He was leaning really, really heavily in that direction through much of his run on the late Black Cat series. His shift to Clea makes a lot of sense.) MacKay has a masterful handling of the distinct mix of weirdness that has become a bewilderingly complex Marvel Universe over the course of the past few decades. Clea has had a number of different interpretations by different writers since she was first introduced in the 1960s. MacKay gives her grit and strength as a warrior protector who served in a brutal dimension, which contrasts brilliantly against the caring physician who readers have come to expect from Earth’s previous Sorcerer Supreme Stephen Strange.
Ferriera and company do an admirable job with the disorienting mix of magic and tech from a contemporary Dr. Strange story. Not everything feels perfect. The art team doesn’t exactly capture moodiness that might accompany a walk with magic in the Marvel Universe. They DO manage some really appealing characterization of Clea, though. She’s related to some pretty powerful beings in the Dark Dimension...her rage flames out of her head when she’s really engaged (not unlike her uncle Dormammu), and she relaxes and luxuriates like her mother Umar in a more relaxed state. There’s a dramatic reverence for the complexity of the character in the art that is deeply appealing.
Some ends of the Marvel Universe have remained relatively flat over the decades. MacKay has a flair for shedding light on overlooked parts of the multiverse. With the first issue of the series, the author shows that he’s capable of doing for the Dark Dimension with Strange what he did for Marvel’s underworld in Black Cat and Taskmaster. It’s a fun look into the world of magic in Marvel as well.
