Doctor Strange: A Separate Reality

Rating:
Summary: Beautiful art, overdone plots and a lack of cohesion.
Review: Dr. Strange is one of Marvel's most original and unusual superheroes. The stories represented in this volume are some of the best in his almost 40 year career.

This collecton presents Engelhart and Brunner's tales from the early seventies, reprinting the tail end of Doc's run in Marvel Premiere and the beginning issues of his second solo magazine. Englehart spins tales of the sorceror's most difficult times where he must make incredibly painful choices. You will read as the doctor must choose between killing his mentor or allowing evil to overtake the planet, travelling back in time and witnessing history with a being who will become God, and finally, realizing that all things come to an end and even he will not win every battle. Dr. Strange will die, only to be reborn more powerful than ever.

The dialog is as spectacular as the inspiring plot. The Doctor's lines show him as somewhat disconnected and aloof, without being ridiculous like the Roy Thomas days of the late sixties. This is as believable as comic fantasy gets.

Brunner's artwork is breathtaking. He gives us a solid view of reality and manages to incorporate the weird and fantastic seamlessly. It is truly a shame that these two are not working on the title today. Barring the Stern/Rogers/Austen run in the early eighties, this is the best since the original Stan Lee/Steve Ditko stories.

Rating:
Summary: Absolutely Magnificent
Review: Dr. Strange is one of Marvel's most original and unusual superheroes. The stories represented in this volume are some of the best in his almost 40 year career.

This collecton presents Engelhart and Brunner's tales from the early seventies, reprinting the tail end of Doc's run in Marvel Premiere and the beginning issues of his second solo magazine. Englehart spins tales of the sorceror's most difficult times where he must make incredibly painful choices. You will read as the doctor must choose between killing his mentor or allowing evil to overtake the planet, travelling back in time and witnessing history with a being who will become God, and finally, realizing that all things come to an end and even he will not win every battle. Dr. Strange will die, only to be reborn more powerful than ever.

The dialog is as spectacular as the inspiring plot. The Doctor's lines show him as somewhat disconnected and aloof, without being ridiculous like the Roy Thomas days of the late sixties. This is as believable as comic fantasy gets.

Brunner's artwork is breathtaking. He gives us a solid view of reality and manages to incorporate the weird and fantastic seamlessly. It is truly a shame that these two are not working on the title today. Barring the Stern/Rogers/Austen run in the early eighties, this is the best since the original Stan Lee/Steve Ditko stories.

Rating:
Summary: Could have been magical but isn't.....
Review: I am a big fan of Dr. Strange. It is wonderful to see the mystical and magical brought into this format. My one complaint is the sad small minded treatment of other world views in these 1970's reprints. For instance, by the time you finish the second story you find that one of the villans is called "The Living Buddha" with a mock drawing to go along. Could you imagine a comic with "The Living Christ" as a villan? Then there is a picture of evil taking over in the world. You see a Christian church in flames while a pagan symbol rises as a sign of evil. It would have nice to see this team learn a little of other world views before bashing them. The world has enough of this misunderstanding.

Rating:
Summary: Beautiful art, overdone plots and a lack of cohesion.
Review: The obvious selling point of this volume is the MAGNIFICENT and unique art of Frank Brunner, who worked in comics only a short time (Why do so many of the talents who come into comics with a nearly complete style seem to stay such a short time, ala Brunner, James Sherman, Mike Nasser, even Barry Windsor-Smith for a long time). Brunner's art was simply a decade ahead of it's time, at least, and this is probably the first time it has even been showcased on paper that befits it.

The stories are a mixed bag here. To be sure, the plots are about as cosmic as cosmic gets, but the execution isn't always. It always seemed to me that the best Dr. Strange stores (which are invariably the Steve Ditko ones) succeed because the emphasize the humanity of the hero, even if only through the mechanism of stressing how INHUMAN his opponent is. That's not really the case here, as he is very detached from his humanity during this era. There is some nice interaction with the Ancient One, but even that isn't as emotional as it ought to have been for someone who was Strange's de facto "second father".

The plots themselves borrow a bit from Lovecraft and even Michael Moorcock at times, which seems logical for Doctor Strange, I suppose. The only really weak story here is the one with a magician who essentially "becomes God" (or becomes absorbed BY God, depending on how you read it). The tales seems to jump about ten magnitudes of cosmic at the last minute without any natural flow. One minute the guy is a ho-hum villain, the next he's becoming God. Huh?

That aside, this is a really fine collection of Brunner art and, certainly, some of Steve Englehart's most...innovative... stories.

Rating:
Summary: Dr Strange Gets Cosmic!
Review: This is the pinnacle of 1970s "cosmic comics." Along with Jim Starlin's Warlock and Captain Marvel, this defines the brief but wonderful period when comics dared to tackle such weighty matters as Death, God, Religion, Life and the Occult. The writing was combined with an art style that straddled the line between the stream-of-consciousness style of the undergrounds and the ultra-polished mainstream look these comics broke new ground and expanded both the medium and the minds of its readers.

The early 1970s were a time of experimentation, both personal and artistic-in music, movies and even comics and nowhere does that experimentation bear more fruit than with these issues of Dr Strange. This slick, but affordable reprint is the perfect way to read these stories. Reprinted here are Marvel Premiere #s 9, 10, 12, 13, 14, and Dr Strange (2nd Series) #s 1, 2, 4, 5. The missing issues were reprints that had nothing to do with the story line (common in those days), and so this flows as one continuous tale. It was co-conceived and plotted by Frank Brunner and Steve Englehart (during long of sessions of "getting cosmic" and hashing ideas out). Brunner is the artist and Englehart is the writer. Both are masters in the comic field and at the top of their game. Brunner's art is absolutely stunning-on the slick pages of this full-color reprint his beautiful poetic imagery is even more sumptuous than on the faded pages of my originals. His art is smooth and flowing and yet eye-popping. Englehart's writing is top-notch. His Dr Strange has his own voice which may sound a bit stilted, but then, the "Master of the Mystic Arts" shouldn't sound any other way.

The story provides a lot to chew on, Dr Strange's mentor, the Ancient One dies (actually he becomes one with the universe) and passes the mantle of "Sorcerer Supreme" to Strange. Soon he finds himself pursuing a powerful magician backward through time. This particular time traveler has a curious scheme to go back in time absorbing all the magic until he himself is...God. Before it is all over Strange experiences death and takes a trip through his own personal Lewis Carroll-esque unreality before confronting mortality.

My only complaints with this compilation are that the wonder Brunner covers (nine in all) are crowded onto two pages. There is a one page introduction by comics historian Peter Sanderson, but little else to give this the deluxe treatment it deserves. Last, but not least, there is (GAH!) an ad page in the very back! Still, this is a slick, cheaply priced, convenient way to read some of the best comics of the 1970s-and I read it cover to cover and enjoyed every moment of it!