Featuring: Dr. Strange Release: June 9, 1966 Cover: September 1966 12 cents Magical editing by Stan Lee Mystic script by Denny O’Neil Mysterious art by Bill Everett Makeshift lettering by Artie Simek 10 pages
“…he will be punished for whatever dark deeds he has committed! I, Dr. Strange, vow it!” “Enough! Your babbling is that of a callow schoolboy, Disciple!”
Finally, Dr. Strange is starting to get the cover slot sometimes.
You can see my own copy of the cover has seen better days.
For this issue, O’Neil copies the structure of X-Men #12. That structure didn’t work then and this won’t either.
In the X-Men story, Juggernaut is attacking the X-Men, but rather than prepare, Professor X insists the X-Men must first know his entire life story, instead of just telling them the relevant bits.
Same idea here. Kaluu has just attacked and stolen the Book of the Vishanti. The Ancient One will keep stressing how urgently they must stop him. But first he thinks he needs to tell Dr. Strange his entire life story.
“Zowie! He’s the ever-lovin’ gearest! Far as I’m concerned, the mods have had it! That crazy cape really comes on strong!” “Man! Like there’s a boss bunch’a threads! That dad is gotta be what’s happenin’!”
The first issue of Dr. Strange without Steve Ditko. I think the first Spider-Man stories without Steve Ditko actually went pretty well. That John Romita guy is doing all right. But what even is Dr. Strange without Steve Ditko?
Stan Lee never cared about Dr. Strange. He never understood the character. He never understood the character’s appeal. He accepted the character had fans and was fine with that.
You can see this in his treatment of the character. The gap between the early issues, the character rarely being featured on the cover, the story always the back story of each issue, behind Human Torch and then Nick Fury.
He wrote the character for dozens of issues, but almost all the writing really came from Ditko.
On the other hand, Stan Lee loved Spider-Man. And you can tell. There are eternal disagreements over how much of the character and stories come from Lee and how much come from Ditko. But it was a much more collaborative process than Dr. Strange ever was, at least early on. And Stan Lee loved the character of Spider-Man like a son.
So when Ditko left Spider-Man, Lee put everything into making sure the next issue would keep the readership. He found the best artist for the job, told an extraordinarily eventful story, and plainly put his all into assuring readers that Spider-Man would continue to be great after Ditko.
For the first issue of Dr. Strange without Ditko… Lee writes half the script then hands the back pages to his new hire to write, a guy who’s scripted like 5 comics by this point. He just doesn’t care.
This is the second recent comic to refer to Stan Lee as being on vacation. Some reprints of this issue omit that, and change the credits to read “Smilin'” instead of “vacationing'”.
Bill Everett isn’t a bad choice for artist. He created Sub-Mariner and Daredevil. He’s been doing solid work illustrating the Hulk. But Ditko brought something wild and unique to these pages, while Everett is, well, less wild.
Though I’ll give him some credit for this image. He’s certainly taking his best shot at being Ditkoesque.
