Why Doctor Strange? And Who the Hell am I?

Welcome to Strange's Scribe, where I will chronicle the adventures, travels, relationships, enemies, successes and failures of the Marvel Universe's Sorcerer Supreme, Doctor Stephen Strange.

And let me say up front that Dr. Strange is *gasp!* not my all time favorite Marvel superhero. No, that'd be Spider-Man. But Spider-Man's also the favorite of three billion other people on this planet and thusly there are already a ton of fansites out there for Spider-Man - the best of which is run by my friend Brad Douglas over at Spider-Man Crawl Space, including a monthly podcast!

So then why am I covering Doctor Strange? Because he's up there with my other all time favorite Marvel heroes - most of which already have their own fansites and fanblogs. Strange has his own fansites out there as well, to be sure, but when thinking about who else other than Spider-Man I'd want to regularly blog about I kept coming back, time and time again, to Doctor Strange. And covering Doc will also let me cover his countless appearances alongside other heroes - including Spider-Man - as well as the Fantastic Four, the Avengers, the X-Men... pretty much the whole Marvel Universe. If you're a hero in the Marvel Universe it's almost a given that at some point you've come across Spider-Man or Doctor Strange.

What I'll attempt to do is take a detailed look into the history of the character and give in-depth analysis for most of his comic appearances. We'll look at what works, what works well, and what doesn't work so much. We'll look at Doc's allies, his loves and his enemies and we'll explore many of Doc's abilities, powers and his many magical tools - from the Eye of Agamotto to the Cloak of Levitation. Who are the Vishanti? Who is Dormammu, and why does Doc sometimes call him Mormammu? What is the Wand of Watoomb? Who is Hoggoth and what makes his hosts hoary? And just how does magic work in the Marvel Universe, anyway? I'll cover all of this and more with you along the way. Hell, we'll even look for bloopers here!

I've also included a playlist.com playlist on the right sidebar under the 'Previous Posts' and 'Allies' sections that has some magical flavored music on it. I'll update this and include more songs from time to time. So if you like a little ambiance with your Doctor Strange enjoyment, feel free to listen!

Who am I? My name's George and I live in the North Texas area. I've lived here for all of my thirty-seven years and for thirty-four of those years I've been following Marvel comics. Where did it all start? Marvel Team-Up #37 from Sept. 1975. I was three years old. Spider-Man comics made me start to want to learn to read at an earlier age than other kids back then and as an only child with parents who were getting divorced I wound up imprinting on Peter Parker as an older brother. This explains why I am not much of a fan of Joe Quesada's 'One More Day / Brand New Day' direction for Spider-Man. In fact, neither Marvel nor DC really seem worth a damn to me right now. Quesada's Marvel is a pool of cynicism and DC can't stop rebooting itself for thirty seconds - and neither company can seem to let up on the unending, god-awful long, hundreds of issues long events and crossovers. And thus, I pretty much don't buy comics anymore. Anyhoo, Spider-Man was my doorway into comics, as were Marvel's cartoons in the early 1980's. Eventually I branched out from Spider-Man comics to Fantastic Four and Avengers comics and Batman, Superman and Justice League of America comics also. I don't even attempt to cover DC's insanely long history - I'll let my pal Michael Bailey cover that with his site and his Views from the Long Box & From Crisis to Crisis podcasts.

I didn't get into Doctor Strange comics until the mid-1980's, when I was in junior high. What drew me in? Strange seemed to know almost everything and seemed to know how to combat practically anything. More or less he was a Sherlock Holmes of Marvel's mystical themes. So I started following Doc's adventures and I've been a giant fan ever since. For a Doctor Strange comic, nothing's too weird or too out there. He's a roller coaster that freaks you right the Hell out and makes you want to stay on instead of leaving the ride.

So let's begin our long look at Doctor Stephen Strange - Master of the Mystic Arts and the Sorcerer Supreme!