Featuring: Dr. Strange
Release: July 7, 1966
Cover: October 1966
12 cents
Editing: Stan Lee
Writing: Dennis O’Neil
Art: Bill Everett
Lettering: Sam Rosen
Technical advice: The Forbush Family Ghost
10 pages
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|---|---|---|
| Strange Tales #149 | Reading order | Strange Tales #150, Story B |
| Strange Tales #149 | Strange Tales | Strange Tales #150 |
“I dunno if he’s breaking any laws, but it won’t hurt to question him!”
“Yeah… chances are he’s not exactly a member of the Chamber of Commerce, dressed in those duds!”
On the first page, we learn Kaluu has spent 500 years in a nameless dimension. Last issue, the dimension was named Raggador, sometimes spelled “Raggadorr”.
Meanwhile, we have some very confusing word balloons. Who is speaking in that middle balloon? It seems to connect to both Dr. Strange and Ancient One’s balloons. Are they speaking in unison?
What is up with the Ancient One and the flying carpet. He seems to be passing through it. It seems to be intentional. He’s drawn with only his torso sticking out of the carpet for the rest of the comic, but they don’t explain why.
We get into the thing that is always a great challenge for Dr. Strange writers. A trap Ditko occasionally fell into, but also deftly avoided several times. Dr. Strange says some words and makes some lights appear. So does his enemy. So who wins the duel of sorcerers? How do we as the audience invest in the battle and understand who is winning and why?
Ditko employed a couple tricks. One was to have Dr. Strange resort to some cleverness we could understand, rather than winning through sheer force. The other was to show the toll it was taking on his own personal energy levels. We could see Dr. Strange getting tired and thereby relate.
O’Neil and Everett will have to use similar tricks or come up with their own. To simply tell us whose spell was stronger at any given moment lacks dramatic power.
In this case, Dr. Strange’s spell could not pierce Kaluu’s ectoplasmic shield.
Because.
Kaluu boasts he needs no encantations nor amulets. This seems to be a dig at Dr. Strange who turns to his amulet pretty constantly for help.
Leaving off background details is a common enough technique in these stories. Kirby and Ditko both skimp on the backgrounds at times. But they usually draw enough to establish a sense of place. Dr. Strange has been in his house this whole time, but because we never see walls or floors, it may as well be one of those weird dimensions everything floats around in. It’s almost easy to forget he’s just at some. The exterior shot and an interior shot of the window are our only visual clues.
The Ancient One keeps talking about how powerful Kaluu is. I’ve mentioned before this pet peeve I have where the hero spends to much dialogue building up the villain. Ancient One has already warned Dr. Strange Kaluu is tough. To keep going on about him sounds like whining.
This is the first time we’ve seen the Amulet referred to as the “Amulet of Agamotto”. The floating mystical eye which seems connected has before been called the “Eye of Agamotto”, though that is also one of the things Dr. Strange calls the orb that let’s him see mystical occurrences on the globe.
Dr. Strange thinks Ancient One is too old for the strain. He’s apparently about 500 years old. About the age the US likes their presidents to be.
This concern for Ancient One’s advanced age had not really been an issue before, though Ancient One was seriously injured in battle with Mordo. So he may be still recovering as well as starting to feel his 500 years. But Dr. Strange is talking about his master like he’s Aunt May.
The parallels run deep, as Dr. Strange needs to reach some fancy Serum to heal his master. Bury Strange under rubble and you have a Spider-Man story.
We get one of those art/script dichotomies we often saw with Lee and his collaborators. But now it’s O’Neil and Everett not being in sync.
The dialogue talks a lot about this Serum of the Seraphim. And by the dialogue we deduce Strange has retrieved the Serum and administered it to the Ancient One. But the artwork shows not a hint of any of this. No serums in sight. No trying to find a serum. No administering it. It’s like O’Neil and Everett are not telling the same story.
Kaluu looks not dissimilar from the Mandarin. His goatee and mustache make him a fairly standard caricature of an Asian person, as we’ve seen in many of these comics.
We finally see the interior of the house, and it’s wrecked. How much better if earlier in the issue we’d seen a single shot with the furniture intact.
Kaluu thinks he has triumphed but cannot find the corpses he had hoped to find. Are they invisible? Nope. Vanished? Maybe?
Could they be… candles?
Letters:
The first half of this issue saw the defeat of AIM, so it’s a good time to pause Nick Fury’s story. But this battle with Kaluu will take one more issue. So let’s go ahead and finish it up. We’ll read the back half of issue 150, and then we’ll check in with Iron Man, and get to the front half of issue 150 eventually.
Invocations:
- “By the Seven Rings of Raggador…”
- “By the Omnipotent Oshtur… by the enchanted realm of the Vishanti..”
- “By the Shades of the Seraphim…”
Rating: ★½, 29/100
Significance: ★★★☆☆
Maybe the rating is a bit harsh, but these post-Ditko Dr. Strange stories are so disappointing, especially contrasted with how good the post-Ditko Spider-Man stories have been.
Characters:
- Dr. Strange
- Ancient One
- Kaluu
Story notes:
- Kaluu has been freed of 500 years of exile in the nameless dimension to seek vengeance on the Ancient One.
- Dr. Strange and Ancient One seized by unseen force.
- Ancient One warns Dr. Strange not to leave his building where his power is greatest.
- Kaluu promises to release Dr. Strange if he surrenders the Ancient One. Kaluu’s quarrel is not with Strange.
- Kaluu turns Strange’s sanctum into a trap with all exits sealed, and unleashes the Demons of Danak.
- Random couple passes by Kaluu. Woman suggests calling the police.
- Amulet referred to as “Sorcerer’s Jewel” and “Amulet of Agamotto”.
- The Serum of the Seraphim is the most potent medicine known to the occult. It can save the Ancient One.
- Dr. Strange defies his master to hold the Demons at bay and reach the Serum.
- Ancient One orders Dr. Strange to abandon his physical self and seek aid in his ectoplasmic form from those he rescued from Dormammu. They had pledged loyalty.
- Dr. Strange thinks he has mere seconds to return. I imagine this will take at least minutes.
- Even his ectoplasmic form cannot penetrate Kaluu’s barrier.
- Police and bystanders remain curious about Kaluu.
- Once the Demons were all entirely inside the barrier, it was safe to attack them.
- Dr. Strange uses his Cloak of Levitation to try to trap creatures to no avail.
- He then uses the Amulet of Agamotto.
- The Amulet defeats the demons, but its power is drained.
- Kaluu uses a fraction of magic to freeze the police.
- Kaluu can turn emotion into energy and directs all his hatred into power.
| Previous | #583 | Next |
|---|---|---|
| Strange Tales #149 | Reading order | Strange Tales #150, Story B |
| Strange Tales #149 | Strange Tales | Strange Tales #150 |
Note that the demons are referred to as “mindless ones”, not to be confused with the Mindless Ones (TM).
Good point, especially as we’ll see the TM versions next issue.