Now that Spider-Man: No Way
Home has come and gone, the most anticipated Marvel Studios movie
release is Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness so now is an
excellent time to take a look at Doctor Strange in the MC2.
While Doctor Stephen Strange first
appeared in Strange Tales #110, his MC2 counterpart makes his debut
in the pages of A-Next #3. Right off the bat, this appearance provides a
number of insights into Stephen’s new status quo, starting with the
issue’s opening page which pretty well confirms the Sorcerer still
resides within the Sanctum Sanctorum located at 177A Bleecker Street,
Greenwich Village. We also learn that Doc
Magus aka Dormagus has replaced Strange as the new Sorcerer
Supreme (as Dormagus puts it) ‘ever since The Vishanti
fired [Stephen’s] butt.’
Having foreseen a
world-threatening tragedy that will unfold in the near future, Doctor
Strange takes matters into his own hands and recruits his former Defenders teammates Namor the Sub-Mariner and
the Incredible
Hulk in an apparent attempt to save the day using extreme
measures. Doc Magus attempts to warn off Strange and
when this fails, he takes his mentor Deacon’s advice and
approaches the newly formed Avengers team for help. Soon
enough the two teams clash in Arizona until Dormagus uses
the Eye of Agamotto to uncover Doctor Strange’s true
motives were three-fold: to make Namor proactive once more,
ensure the Hulk is able to fulfill his
destiny and provide the new Avengers team a ‘baptism
of fire’.
While Doctor Strange
himself does not appear, he is alluded to in J2 #4 While in an unknown
dimension alongside the Avenger J2 battles a Darkling posing
as the original Juggernaut,
the dark lord Nemesus taunts Dormagus’ about
the mystic’s strained and dysfunctional relationship with his own father. When
he is thwarted and retreats, Nemesus’ parting words to Dormagus are
‘give my regards to your own dear
father!’.
Ignoring a warning from Doctor
Strange to wait for reinforcements, Dormagus and Zane
Yama aka J2 make their way to a pocket dimension to rescue Cain
Marko aka Juggernaut. Despite reuniting Zane with
his father, Nemesus appears and reveals Doc Magus had
fallen into his trap and closed the heroes gateway home, trapping them.
Fortunately, Doctor Strange appears alongside his fellow Defenders the Hulk and
the Sub-Mariner and aid in escaping from Nemesus’ dimension
before they are all swarmed by legions of Darklings. This story
makes clear some unexplored history between Nemesus and Strange (J2
#12).
Around this time, Doctor
Strange made an appearance in Wild Thing #0 where in he is
called upon by Wolverine to attempt to remove the cure of the Wendigo
from the land around Hudson Bay. Meeting Wild Thing,
Stephen makes a knowing
comment to Wolverine: ‘Independent children can be such
a trial, eh, Wolverine?’ With the aid of the Hulk, Wolverine
and Wild Thing, Doctor Strange successfully lifts the curse.
When the demonically empowered
vigilante Darkdevil is stabbed through the chest by the Venom Symbiote bonded
with Normie
Osborn, Doc Magus is called upon to save him. Struggling
to save the hero, Dormagus admits he is out of his depth and
accepts the help of Doctor Strange just as the demon Zarathos appears
and warns the two mystics to leave Darkdevil’s body as he
claimed it as his own. Unable to perform a conventional exorcism, the two are
forced to journey into Darkdevil’s mindscape and restore the
balance between the three vying avatars within the hero: the spirit of
vengeance Zarathos, the ghostly spirt of the costumed hero Daredevil and
the boy Reilly Tyne (Spider-Girl #83-#84).
With a string of superheroes going missing, Doc Magus sets out to find them on his own, once again rejecting the aid of Doctor Strange, only to wind up defeated in his astral form by a disguised Loki and fall under the villain’s thrall immediately afterwards when reunited with his mortal form and abducted (Last Hero Standing #2).
While attempting to resolve the
mystery of the missing heroes, Doctor Strange is instead attacked by the
culprit Loki himself, who mentions Stephen’s ‘fall from grace
is well-known to [him]’ before making short work of the Sorcerer. Still
enthralled and falsely believing he knows who kidnapped him, Doc Magus leads
the other heroes to Doctor Strange’s Sanctum Sanctorum only
to be confronted by a Loki-controlled and enraged Hulk who
makes short work of the assembled heroes indiscriminately. Upon finding that
Doctor Strange was seemingly in a coma, Dormagus was
unable to detect Loki’s handiwork thanks to the dark spell’s
effect (Last Hero Standing #4). Asgard’s Grand Vizier reveals the
truth to Doc Magus and Doctor Strange is shortly after present to
witness the death of Captain
America (Last Hero Standing #5).
Unless I’ve missed a cameo
somewhere, that’s the last time we see Doctor Strange in the MC2. I find
the still-unresolved mystery of how and why Doctor Strange lost the position
of Sorcerer Supreme to be a most tantalizing plot thread. I sincerely wish
we learned the details of this massive development.
Until I learn to master the
mystic arts and become Sorcerer Supreme only to lose the job under
unrevealed circumstances, I remain
frogoat