I recently had dinner with a good friend, and the topic of upcoming films came up, and she asked: "So....anything on the horizon you're interested in seeing?"
Me: "Oh.....DOCTOR STRANGE. Definitely. "
Her: "Oh yeah....I heard about that. The new Marvel thing, right? What's the story on that one, besides being a comic book movie? "
Me: "Well......imagine "Harry Potter".....with an adult cast.....and that guy from "Sherlock" in the lead that gals apparently think is dreamy."
Her: "Ohhhhh.....really....."
(Long pause. Deadpan stare from yours truly.)
Me: "You do realize that I can audibly hear your panties melting from here. What is it about Cumberbatch? Jeez...."
Mutual laughter. End scene.
My fascination with Stephen Strange is driven by the character's connection to the works of his co-creator, reclusive artist Steve Ditko. You may have heard of him or at least seen his work. You've at least seen the influence his work has had over the course of the last half century, seeing as how his other significant co-creation with Marvel Comics writer/editor Stan Lee was a little thing called "Spider-Man".
But DOCTOR STRANGE is considered by many hardcore Marvel Comics fans, especially those like myself who fall in the camp labelled "Ditko Devotees", as the artist's peak achievement, due to the amazing amount of pure imagination on display in the work. It's been referred to as proto-psychedelia, which is appropriate seeing as how during the zenith of the character's popularity in the mid-1960s, the fledgling counter culture movement (and it's participating factions who endorsed the use of hallucinogenic substances) became the biggest fan base of the fictional magician and his weird pseudo Eastern philosophy driven "sorcery".
There's a few other factors that contribute to my love for the character beyond the Ditko connection, though. One being the general aesthetics of the adventures Strange goes on. Imagine Mandrake the Magician....if he had to cope with Lovecraft's Cthulhu Mythos. The other being something that proves to be testament to the fact that I probably over scrutinize and analyze this type of nonsense: the back story leading to his fictional origin.
Let's examine the fledgling Marvel Universe created by Stan Lee along with artists like Jack Kirby, Don Heck, Larry (Stan's brother ) Leiber, Dick Ayers, and the aforementioned Mr. Ditko. The one common factor is that it's populated by genuinely nice people who receive a sense of higher moral obligation via trauma or tragedy. The Fantastic Four, prior to their space faring accident, were basically a warped model of the 1950s nuclear family. Nice people. Thor. while there was the pathos that came from Dr. Donald Blake being a person living with a disability, that was quickly abandoned once he started hanging out in Asgard and shit started looking like a Wagner opera directed by Stanley Kubrick. Nice guy. The Hulk, a.k.a. Dr. Bruce Banner, is admittedly cowardly, book wormish, nerdy and timid, but he's a nice guy who stands downwind from a thermonuclear blast and then his life becomes a combination of Stevenson's THE STRANGE CASE OF DR. JEKYLL & MR. HYDE and the plot of every really good terrible B sci-fi movie from the '50s. Peter Parker, your friendly neighborhood Spider-Man, origin isn't really tragic or traumatic....that radioactive spider biting him was the best thing that ever happens in his shy, science geek existence. ...but, his youthful arrogance and short sighted perspective leads to the O. Henry twist that gives him the guilt filled knowledge that "with great power comes great responsibility ". Again, nice guy.
But, then....there's Doctor Stephen Strange.
Who, straight out of the gate in one of the first panels from his origin story as told in STRANGE TALES #115 (December 1963), we're shown is....pretty much a dickhead.
He's talented, rich, arrogant, driven by greed and vanity. Just the type of guy you love to hate. Even Tony Stark, a.k.a. Iron Man, who shares a lot of the same traits, is a sarcastic and likable kind of billionaire cut from the same cloth as a young quirky Howard Hughes. But not Strange. He's a flawed, ugly on the inside kind of guy. It isn't until he suffers a loss of everything he has that he gains the aptitude for selflessness.
Strange goes to dark places, needless to say, before choosing to seek enlightenment.....
The good doctor then embarks on his weird Eastern mysticism sabbatical, discovering the world is much bigger than himself in the process....and the rest is comic book history.
I dig Doctor Strange for the exact reasons outlined above: he's flawed, all too human, and in the end, extremely identifiable. In a crowd of smiling faces, he's an asshole. If Benedict Cumberbatch and the filmmakers behind the upcoming film capture half the character portrayed in those early Marvel comics, I'll be a satisfied fanboy who enjoys a little bit of rust in the cracks of his heroes' armor....
It might be because I'm a little bit of an asshole, too. But, that's a discussion for another day.
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