On rare occasion, there have been instances where the Master of the Mystic Arts, Dr. Strange, faced "himself" in battle, though in each instance the culprit turned out to be Baron Mordo in disguise--once, when Strange reclaimed his vocation after a long absence, and again, when attempting (and failing) to prevent the destruction of Earth. But there has arguably been no "stranger" such battle than the one which took place when Strange was in the midst of a conflict with those sorcerers who called themselves the Creators, which led to Strange being forced to face a version of himself in a world gone mad.
To gain some perspective on the situation, we'll have to let Strange's disciple and lover, Clea, take us back a bit and recap the climax of Strange's confrontation of the Creators, where he inadvertently (yet recklessly) became responsible for handing the Creators their triumph.
With the world now remade to the Creators' liking, Strange and his party return to the relative calm of his sanctum. But he has failed to put two and two together and suspect that his dwelling might not be vacant--and that the Creators might have replaced his home's occupant with another who would give Strange a proper reception. And on this Earth remade, the nature of the new master of this sanctum is bound to take even one of Strange's background by surprise.
Dr. Stranger Yet, rather than being a creation of the Creators, has sprung from the minds of writer Jim Starlin and artist Al Milgrom (inked here by Pablo Marcos)--and as we've learned, the bestial doppelgänger has Strange at a disadvantage, since Strange is out of sync with the normal array of mystic forces he might call on from the Earth he had become attuned to.
Nevertheless, the battle, while fierce, is brief.
With Dr. Stranger Yet a captive, there is only the matter of using him for information, a process not without its own share of tension.
The info gleaned from his prisoner finally puts Strange on track in this conflict and reveals the true power behind the Creators, which Strange, with the aid of his former mentor, the Ancient One, eventually confronts. And since you and I are still around to talk about it, we can assume that Strange was successful in restoring our world to normal--and, needless to say, ridding his sanctum of the Stranger in residence.
And that's a fine example of why reading comics for more than ten years is a bad idea. In this specific case, I am no scholar of Dr. Strange, so many of his past conflicts are known to me only via adventures in The Defenders. I had no idea he'd "faced himself" so often, it is nearly a trope or cliche. Within the last year of the recent run of the comic, there's another example to add to the pile. Followed by (rather than preceding as in this post) the destruction of everything and the world needing to be rebuilt.
ReplyDeleteThey were still good stories, though, if less original than I thought.
A storyline where the hero finds himself in a world in which reality itself has been drastically altered by an enemy is a pretty old plot device, but only Starlin could come up with a warthog Doc Strange.
ReplyDeleteWhat was that guy smokin'.
I enjoyed this arc! It seemed like there was less and less good ol' cosmic epics coming out of Marvel as the '70's turned into the '80's.
M.P.