dr. strange – Page 5 – Coke ⊕ Comics

Featuring: Dr. Strange
Release: April 9, 1963
Cover: July 1963
12 cents
Story: Stan Lee
Art: Steve Ditko
5 pages

The cover focuses on the epic battle between Human Torch and the team of Wizard and Paste-Pot Pete. It makes no mention of any backup stories, not the space adventure that follows it, nor this story shoved into the back.

It’s only 5 pages long. Just like the sci/fi tale that preceded it. A story of a bad man with a problem who encounters some mystical force and gets his comeuppance– recall for example the stories we’ve read with Odin, Merlin, or Medusa.

It seems like not really one of our superhero stories; it’s just like these weird tales that have populated these anthologies for years, and have continued to populate the end of these anthologies which all now begin with a superhero story.

Now, one of those weird tales did grow into something more in the superhero era. The Man in the Ant Hill used his shrinking formula again–now with a costume and a superhero name–to become Ant-Man.

There is one thing differentiates this story about a mystic from other weird tales. A small note at the end that tells us this character will return.

Seems fitting. After all, the comic is Strange Tales. What is so strange about Human Torch stories? Dr. Strange, Master of Black Magic, seems a much more natural fit to headline such a comic.

It does note he’s a different kind of super-hero.

Some argue that Dr. Strange is not a superhero, that he comes from a different archetype, an older one. The wizard; or the mage. But Stan Lee describes him as a “super-hero” right there on page 1. So that’s good enough for me to call the character a superhero.

Dr. Strange is the creation of Steve Ditko and Stan Lee, but really probably almost entirely Steve Ditko. Let’s see what we’ve got in his inaugural appearance.

Cool gloves. Mustache. Amulet. A cool design on the door window. Astral projection. Some unfortunate Asian stereotypes. The evil Nightmare from the dimension of dreams.

Featuring: Iron Man
Release: February 12, 1963
Cover: May 1963
12 cents
Plot: Stan Lee
Script: R. Berns
Art: Jack Kirby
Inking: Dick Ayers
13 pages

Confession time. I just made a dumb mistake here. Got confused by numbers and dates. This post should have come before my previous Journey Into Mystery post, as this issue is from February and the Thor story is from March. It’s a little confusing because both are cover-dated May. The Thor stories always seem a month out of sync in terms of their cover dates for some reason.

Robert Bernstein returns on scripting duties. He will be the regular scripter for a while. This is the first Iron Man story without Don Heck involved with the art (either as primary or finisher). This is perhaps why Tony looks so radically different from the previous 2 stories.

Maybe I’d recognize him better with black hair…

Though part of the problem is that his hair is brown in my omnibus (scanned above). Other modern recolorings make it black. It’s hard to speak intelligently to the coloring of these comics because of how wildly it varies between reproductions.

Iron Man is falling into a somewhat familiar pattern 3 issues in. After a very good origin issue, we get a sequence of pretty forgettable stories. Last issue, he fought Gargantus, and this issue introduces Dr. Strange. Neither of whom am I expecting to show up any time soon in a major motion picture.

Another familiar trope is that we’ve skipped the establishing of the hero. In this issue, the third Iron Man story, the first of which was set in a Vietnam jungle, we learn that children idolize Iron Man. So he, like the rest of the heroes, has fast become a sensation.

Tag: dr. strange

Strange Tales #110, Story C

Tales of Suspense #41