I have to confess, that as fond as I am of the comic that’s the subject of today’s blog post, I’ve always had a little trouble thinking of it as a “real” first issue. After all, Doctor Strange had already had a first issue of his own solo title all the way back in 1968 — despite Marvel’s having opted at that time to continue the numbering of Doc’s previous home, the double-featured Strange Tales, by sticking a “#169” on it. That solo series had run for fifteen issues before succumbing to cancellation in 1969, so no way was the comic book that showed up on stands in the middle of March, 1974, the actual first issue of Doctor Strange. Heck, this wasn’t even the first issue of his current headlining feature, since that had begun a little less than two years previously, in Marvel Premiere #3. The hero’s MP run had continued through issue #14 and then picked up here after only a three-month break; so, as far as I was concerned, Doctor Strange #1 was little more than the latest issue of the Sorcerer Supreme’s successfully revived solo series. “Fabulous First Issue!”, my eye (of Agamotto).
On the other hand, even half a century ago, I realized that it was more prestigious for Marvel’s Master of the Mystic Arts to be holding forth in his very own digs rather than renting space in an all-purpose umbrella title like Marvel Premiere. And, all these years (and multiple subsequent Doctor Strange #1’s) later, I can also now recognize that being the first “Doctor Strange #1″ is, in fact, something of a distinction. Finally, there’s this: as much as I like Dan Adkins’ cover for Doctor Strange #169, not to mention that of Barry Windsor-Smith and Frank Giacoia for Marvel Premiere #3, Frank Brunner’s masterpiece for Doctor Strange #1 (Jun., 1974) is still the Doc-Strange-premiere-issue cover to beat, five decades later. There’s a reason why I put it front-and-center in the 2022-2024 iteration of this blog’s header image, folks.
But, enough about covers, and issue numbers, too. Even if this hadn’t been the “first issue” of Doctor Strange, both Brunner and his primary collaborator, co-plotter/scripter Steve Englehart, had high reader expectations to meet in March, 1974. After all, in the previous episode, our hero had “met God and witnessed Creation“, as we’ll see another character put it just a couple of pages from now. What in the cosmos were our storytellers going to do for an encore?
That’s a terrific opening splash page that Brunner (and inker Dick Giordano) have given us for this issue — which makes it a real shame that its dominant image appears to have been appropriated by Brunner from an unpublished pencil drawing by his fellow artist, P. Craig Russell.*
Nope, “no doubt of her meaning” whatsoever — not to my sixteen-year-old self, anyway. As tame as this soft-focus-to-fade-out moment may seem by today’s standards, in 1974 Code-approved comic books, this was about as sexy as things ever got.
As those of you who’ve read this comic before already know, it (and the successive chapters of its storyline) owe a great debt to Lewis Carroll’s classic 1865 children’s fantasy, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. In 1974, however, my younger self hadn’t read that work (small, slightly-embarrassed confession: neither has my older self, at least, not all the way through), and only knew its contents from brief excerpts. (I hadn’t even seen Disney’s Alice in Wonderland.) So I’m pretty certain that it never occurred to me to connect Clea’s startling encounter with a white rabbit to Alice’s equally startling encounter with the White Rabbit (shown here as he appears in John Tenniel‘s immortal illustrations from the first edition of Carrol’s work).
Poor Wong… he seems to be called on constantly to demonstrate his martial arts prowess, only to have his ass promptly and easily kicked. (Or maybe that’s just a thing in Steve Englehart stories.)
The alarm-bolt makes a beeline for Dr. Strange’s slumbering form, but even splitting itself in two can’t prevent Silver Dagger from snaring it with a counter-spell…
Stephen Strange is, in fact, alive — but he knows the knife wound in his back is a mortal one, and so he asks Wong to bring Clea to him, along with his amulet. Of course, poor Wong has to tell his master that the assailant took both Clea and the Eye of Agamotto with him when he fled, forcing Doc to settle for the Orb of Agamotto, plus his Cloak of Levitation…
The Orb of Agamotto’s power “stems from necromancy“? Really? Honestly, it seems like that should have come up before, and I don’t believe it has (though I haven’t combed through every prior appearance of the orb to verify that suspicion, and so I could very well be wrong). But, hey, let’s not quibble, especially since the introduction of the “death” theme leads right into one of Brunner’s most spectacular full-page splashes…
Of course, here we have an even more obvious allusion to Alice than Clea’s white bunny-rabbit. I mean, a giant-sized specimen of Lepidopteran larvae sitting on a mushroom and smoking a hookah is about as direct a shout-out as can be imagined, amirite? But none of the Carroll excerpts I’d read as of March, 1974 had included the scene where his heroine converses with the Caterpillar, so the reference was completely lost on my younger self. (Or, to put it another way, I thought that Englehart and Brunner had made this character up all by themselves.)
That fading-away-until-nothing’s-left-but-a-smile bit is yet another Alice reference, even though in Carroll’s book it’s the Cheshire Cat that does it, not the Caterpillar. And since I was familiar with the Cheshire Cat at age sixteen, I’d like to think that I caught this one.
But maybe I didn’t. Who can say?
At any rate, we’ve come to the end of our comic, though our storyline is just getting warmed up. I hope you’ll join me back here in two months, as Doctor Strange’s journey through the Orb takes him ever further in … and our storytellers’ imaginations take then ever further out.
*In 2013, Marvel published Marvel Masterworks — Doctor Strange, Vol. 6, a collection of comics from 1975-1977 that contained, among other things, a reprint of Doctor Strange Annual #1 (1976), which featured a 35-page story by P. Craig Russell (co-plot and art) and Marv Wolfman (co-plot and script).
Included in the Masterworks volume’s back-of-the-book bonus material is the following pencil sketch by P. Craig Russell:
The piece is accompanied by this caption:
Pencils for P. Craig Russell’s original Doctor Strange Annual #1 splash page. When Marvel bought it in 1973, the pages went in a drawer for three years. In the meantime, the first issue of the new Dr. Strange book came out with Frank Brunner’s take on the page.
In an interview published in Comic Book Creator #22 (Spring, 2020), Russell gives more details concerning the genesis of the project that eventually became the first Doctor Strange Annual. By his own account, he’d started plotting and drawing the story on his own initiative, without having gotten an actual assignment from Marvel:
I started it in 1973. I did 20 pages in pencil and went to the New York Con, up to Marvel, and [Marvel editor-in-chief] Roy [Thomas] saw it and said, “We can use this.” They paid me $20 dollars a page and put it in a drawer. I was so naïve and unaware of the politics! Someone has a regular gig on the book — Steve Englehart, they’re going to resent someone coming in with a story and saying, “Hey, I did a Doctor Strange book!” and Frank Brunner was the artist on that. So, I knew it was just sitting there for a couple of years… The first issue of Doctor Strange came out and I opened it on the stands, and it had my splash page, and I thought, “Hey, they used my story!” Then I started going through it and, no, it wasn’t my story, but I recognized one panel on a page from my story. So, I went in, and said, “Roy they’re just like cannibalizing this. Compare this with the original art.” He said, “It does look similar.” He had to tell them to stop doing it. They were just slicing up the story… The Annual in 1976, where we decided to do it, I had to do a new splash page and a new library image where that missing panel was.
Is there another side to this story? Perhaps; but as best as I have been able to determine, Frank Brunner has never addressed the matter on the record, and neither have Steve Englehart nor Roy Thomas.
Marvel continued Strange Tales numbering with Doctor Strange so that they could use the same mailing permit and wouldn’t have to file for a new one, which cost money. That was a common practice back then actually. Sometimes the post office let you get away with it and sometimes it didn’t.
It used to bug me slightly that some named superhero series had inflated number runs because they started in anthology comics. Now numbering is all over the place . There was also a theory that Marvel , who at one time used DCs distribution structure , were limited in the amount of new books they were allowed to publish in a single month, hence the gradual superhero takeovers of existing titles.
Also read that one of the main reasons letters pages were in early 60s comics was because a small amount of text only pages meant they qualified for reduced postage as “magazines” in some definition of the term used at the time. I think possibly even some 50s comics had a short text heavy story maybe bump them up in this way.
Yes DC did put a cap on the number of comics Marvel could publish. Martin Goodman, Marvel’s owner/publisher had a habit of when a genre became hot flooding the market with titles in that genre. The he would move on to the next hot genre without necessarily reducing the number of the first genre he was publishing. Of course this meant a lot of returns for the distributor to deal with. The cap was to cut down on those returns.
The letters pages were a replacement for the old text stories. They were cheaper to produce as they were part of the editor’s job so no extra pay there and you weren’t paying a writer for two pages of text. As well the fans seemed to prefer them.
I think the letters page and Stan’s Soapbox especially and the Marvel Bullpen Bulletins page were an especially clever and crucial means of promoting their more direct “warmer ” friendly uncle Stan and his new kids on the block” approach and identity , compared to DC , who never had quite the same feeling or warmth as a young reader, IMO, and I didn’t read much of , until following Kirby there in the 70s anyway.
That’s funny as when I was a kid reading comics I read far more DC Comics than Marvel. This was the case with most of my friends who read comics as well. In fact Marvel was probably number three as publishers went. Number 1 was DC and number 2 was Gold Key.
We were in the Uk where US comics were available but distribution could be erratic. I have my late father to thank for bringing home some Marvel comics (we always had comics on a Saturday morning, way before I had pocket money to buy my own. I think comics preference may to some extent imprint on young growing minds like new born chicks “imprinting” and preferring the first thing they see (same with popular music – the decade(s) you grew up in was always the best for music) though I can rationalize why Marvel felt better at the time and still does but I find it almost impossible to relate to later versions of the Marvel characters that I read occasionally online I find the stories mostly unreadable and the art often poor. It’s a completely different world.
If the practice of including text pieces in comic books to get a better postal rate doesn’t go all the way back to the very beginning of the medium, it comes pretty dang close. Stan Lee’s first professional comic-book writing credit was such a text story; it appeared in Captain America Comics #3 (May, 1941). https://time.com/5452565/stan-lee-name-change-history/
Batman and Scooby Doo has now put out its third number one for example. And yes, text pages were for that purpose.
The multiple number one’s can really be blamed on the current market. Everyone goes gaga for the first issue of a title to the extent that companies can count on selling many more copies of the first issue than of any subsequent issue. Can you blame them then for arranging things so that there are fresh first issues of titles.
That happened in several titles in the 1960s. What was much more unusual was Marvel relaunching Strange Tales in the early ’70s, with Brother Voodoo, and starting off with the numbering from the point at which it had previously been renamed Dr. Strange, so there was both a Dr. Strange #169 and later a Strange Tales #169.
Anyhow, I missed this when it was new on the racks but got it later and I fully agree about Brunner’s cover being a classic. I had, however, read Alice in Wonderland, so I would have been familiar with the references in this story. It would be a few more years before I heard the classic Jefferson Airplane song “White Rabbit”, with lyrics by Grace Slick very much based on Lewis Carroll’s writings. After I started collecting albums, in December 1976, J.A.’s Surrealistic Pillow was among the first dozen or so albums I got (Sgt. Pepper was the first — yes, I loved psychedelic music, despite never dropping any LSD and not even smoking any pot until many years later and only very infrequently afterwards; the music itself was intoxicating enough for me! But also, my teen-age self was very much a loner — I didn’t even know, much less hang out with, anyone who I knew was into mind-altering drugs.). Likewise, I loved the surrealism of this issue in the art and dialogue, putting our Master of the Mystic Arts through his own Magical Mystery Tour!
I did get Dr. Strange Annual #1 brand new when that was published. I’m fairly sure that was the first comic I got with art by Craig Russell. It initially struck me as, ahem, strange, but I grew to love his work, particularly his Elric issues in the ’80s, and on the Killraven series, although I didn’t collect that until the ’80s as well. This is the first I’ve read about Brunner poaching some art for DS #1 from Russell’s then unused art and was rather unethical to do so without giving credit. Seems rather odd. At least Russell’s work finally did get published!
The Silver Dagger storyline was one of Docs stronger ones. Helped by Brunner’s terrific art. I was mildly annoyed as usual, that Clea had to basically play the damsel in distress, kidnap victiom, but as will soon be reveals, she ends up having a pretty pivotal role in the storyline which was a nice surprise. And of course, now look at her!
The more you know, the more you get.
I may have caught some of the references to Lewis Carroll in “Through an Orb Darkly,” but “what hideous strength” completely escaped me.
(As did the nod to 1 Corinthians 13:12, “For now we see through a glass, darkly; but then face to face: now I know in part; but then shall I know even as also I am known,” but I was raised ultra-Reform Jewish, and my encounters with the New Testament didn’t come until my freshman year of college.)
*That Hideous Strength* is the title of the final volume of C.S. Lewis’s *Cosmic Trilogy* (following *Out of the Silent Planet* and *Perelandra*) and the title derives from Sir David Lindsay’s description of the Tower of Babel:
The Shadow of that hyddeous strength
Sax myle and more it is of length.
(And wasn’t *Avengers* #125 published around this time, and called “The Power of Babel”?)
Lewis subtitled the work *a modern fairy tale for grown-ups,* and that’s a pretty good description of comic-books, isn’t it?
Much, much later, through the voice of Joan Baez, I learned that there was a song called “Silver Dagger”:
[Verse 1]
Don’t sing love songs, you’ll wake my mother
She’s sleeping here right by my side
And in her right hand, a silver dagger
She says that I can’t be your bride
[Verse 2]
All men are false, says my mother
They’ll tell you wicked, loving lies
The very next evening, they’ll court another
Leave you alone to pine and sigh
[Verse 3]
My daddy is a handsome devil
He’s got a chain five miles long
And on every link, a heart does dangle
Of another maid he’s loved and wronged
[Verse 4]
Go court another tender maiden
And hope that she will be your wife
For I’ve been warned and I’ve decided
To sleep alone all of my life
I shall stop here before wondering whether Stephen Strange’s sister Donna was named for the song in the musical *Hair.* Come to think of it, Ritchie Valens also had a Donna…
Two of the members of Neal Adams’s early 1970s version of the Algonquin Round Table for the graphic arts who surprised me for not becoming big stars were Farnk Brunner and Al Weiss. Each did painstaking and graphically interesting work. I suspect the issue, in each case was output, because the work was painstaking.
Dick Giordano’s inks were very effective on Brunner’s pencils.
I liked this issue, back in the day, because of the many “Easter Eggs;” not only the Lewis Carroll references, but the shout outs to tropes of Steve Ditko in drawing the strip. I had not read Carroll yet (I would, oddly enough, in a Victorian Lit class I took as a Second Classman at the Virginia Military Institute, which is somewhat surreal in itself) but I had some general familiarity because Disney re-released the animated film that year and it was being adopted on the Sunday comics pages of the local paper..
I liked the story arc (includding the reprint of the classic rLee & Ditko’s introduction of Dormamu from 1964). However, I thought it was odd that Silver Dagger was a former Cardinal.
The Sacred College is NOT an enourmous group and I suspect the Church would notice if one got away (as would the press in the prelate’s home country). Around thge time this appeared (1976) the traditionalist Archbishop Lefebvre became increasingly disfavored by the Church, culminating in his 1988 ecommuniction for his schismatic activities. Archbishop Millingo was leiticized in 2005 for ordaining married men as Priests (who were not Orthodox, Anglican or Lutheran Priests who were already married and “came over to Rome”).
I had the thought that Morris L. West’s 1963 novel, Shoes of the Fisherman (made into a film in 1868, which appeared on TV in 1972) inspired both this and Steve Gerber’s Dracula in the Vatican story. I’m sure the success of the film, The Exorcist around this time may have also had an impact.
I wonder if creators who came from (if not remaining within) a Catholic background (Mike Fredrich, Tony Isabella, Jim Starlin, Gerry Conway. Frank Miller or Denny O’Neil, for example) have used the character?
I may be wrong, but my sense is that Frank Brunner was in fact a pretty big star in his prime (within the narrow context of ’70s comics fandom, of course), at least as compared to Alan Weiss. Brunner had two high-profile (if relatively brief) lead feature runs — on Dr. Strange and Howard the Duck, respectively — which he seemed to parlay into the fine art book/poster/portfolio market pretty quickly and easily. Weiss never really got to that level, despite the quality of his work, due in large part (I think) to having most of his work appear in short-form in anthology books, and never pencilling more than one or two issues of any lead feature.
Of course, I wish we had gotten to see lots more comic-book art from both of them. But such is life. 🙂
Very true on the ‘wanting more’ comment – I’ve built up a nice collection of Brunner’s books and everytime I read one I go out and try and hunt some more! The next few issues of Doc are going to be a delight to read about, thank you Alan
I had limited access to American comics back then, so after he left Dr Strange I rarely saw any of his work – a Conan cover springs to mind, but not much else, although I did see his Bran Mak Morn portfolio many years later.
Wong gets a raw deal here… “would you be so kind as to clean my cloak” seemed so clever to teenage me…
I assume it was dry cleaned, But who does that work for mystic (or technical) clothing?
At DC, they had the Gambi Brothers to tailor gear for good guys and bad guys, but I don’t know if they did dry cleaning.
Odd, that Doc and Wong had the definitive story about who provides Primary Care for Superheroes, in theThe Oath.
Possibly, they can do the same for drycleaning.
In a related note, it always assume Night Nurse is an NP.
I don’t know about Doctor Strange’s dry cleaner for his cloak, but I do know what tailor he went to for repairs. Rintrah (Earth-616) | Marvel Database | Fandom
Oh, this is nice. I still have issues 2-5 of this run, but either I never saw #1 on the stands, bought it and lost it or bought it and put it somewhere I wouldn’t lose it (and then lost it anyway). I have no memory of that spectacular cover by Brunner/Giordano and certainly think I’d remember it if I’d ever seen it before. It’s beautiful. Just to weigh in on the whole “had or hadn’t read Alice in Wonderland” discussion, by 1974, I had definitely seen the movie and I’m practically positive I’d read the book at this point, having gone through a brief phase of reading any fantasy-related book I could find after I’d discovered The Lord of the Rings a year or two earlier. Pretty sure I was familiar with Jefferson Airplane’s “White Rabbit” as well. I was a big music fan at the time and only a year away from beginning a 25-year career on the radio, so I’m pretty sure I was up to speed on this one.
As to the story itself, I always liked Silver Dagger, especially once I found out he was a former churchman who was using magic to stamp out magic in the name of some misguided religious fervor. Being raised in an extrememly religious Southern Baptist household, I’ve always been fascinated whenever “secular” stories included religious elements in their story-telling. The art is beautiful and I always liked Clea better than many of the other “girlfriend” characters out there, because, aside from looking lovely in that body-suit, she actually had a purpose beyond their relationship and a reason to be in his life as his apprentice.
As far as the numbering goes, it aggravated me when suddenly everything started being the FIRST issue, when all they’d done was bring a discontinued character back from limbo, because I felt like I was being tricked into buying a number one for collecting purposes and not because it was actually the first issue of a new title.
Anyway, I’ve had a lot of ups and downs with Doctor Strange over the years and the Englehart/Brunner run was definitely an “up” for me. Thanks Alan, for introducing me to the one issue I apparently missed when it came out.
Seems it was in 1968 that Marvel started including celebratory bursts on their covers touting “premieres” or first issues, promoting the co-stars of Strange Tales, Tales to Astonish and Tales of Suspense all either getting entirely new series starting at #1 – Nick Fury, Agent of SHIELD; Sub-Mariner; and Iron Man; or taking over the former shared mag – Dr. Strange, Hulk and Captain America. At that time, Subby, Cap and Hulk had all previously starred in self-titled number one issues, although in the cases of Cap & Namor that was over a quarter-century in the past at the time. So had Nick, although in his case it was as a Sergeant leading a small squad during World War II, rather than a colonel leading a large, elite, international spy organization in the present. The premiere bursts were also included on the first issues of the Silver Surfer and Captain Marvel. But until Dr. Strange #1 came out, Doc had missed out on ever starring in a self-titled actual first issue, and the mag wherein he made his first appearance anywhere, Strange Tales #110, made no reference to him anywhere on the cover, and he wouldn’t appear on the cover at all for several more issues. Also, curiously, when Thor took over the name and numbering of Journey into Mystery, with issue 126, there was no blurb referencing the change at all. The old title was gone and Thor’s logo was just moved up into its space. Of course, Thor was the one hero who took over one of the old mystery/horror titles who never had to share a mag with another prominent character, instead giving up space in the mag to his adventures of ages in the distant past.
After the big burst of new or re-named titles in 1968, the “premiere” or “first issue” blurb was used rather inconsistently on new series throughout the ’70s. Nova and Ms. Marvel got them on their covers, but not Tomb of Dracula and Claws of the Cat. Conan the Barbarian #1 one did not include a Premiere of First Issue blurb but instead noted over the title logo, “NEW! FIRST TIME IN COMIC-BOOK FORM!” as well as the story title at the bottom of the cover, “The Coming of Conan!” So it didn’t seem to matter much whether it was an entirely new character or a former supporting character converted into a super-hero, or a licensed or public domain character, but mainly the whim of the editor who had final say over whatever blurbs were included on the cover.
The start of another great arc. I didn’t think of the White Rabbit as Alice at all though the caterpillar I got at once.
The second Marvels miniseries has Phil citing the giant rabbit running loose in Greenwich Village as an example of how weird the world is getting.
No, there’s never been a prior reference to the Orb deriving power from the dead.
I’ve often thought about Mordo and Silver Dagger hanging out in a bar somewhere and commiserating — “I could have been pope, but they passed me over for less qualified men because they said I wasn’t the right sort!” “I hear you man — I was worth ten of Strange but just because I struck a bargain or two with Dormammu …”
For me, it’s always been Cyclops and Balder talking about Emma Frost and Karnilla.
“My girlfriend is weird,” says Cyclops. ”There’s this guy who pretty much has a nervous breakdown when he hears the word parsley.”
“That is peculiar, friend Scott,” says Balder. ”The lady in my life pretends to be a child when she knows full well that she is a woman. But I shall not criticize her. Balder the Brave is no longer the god she knew, and she is most earnest in discovering him.”
“And Emma isn’t afraid to admit that Cyclops is right. Another mead, Balder? My round?”
“Oh, no, this one is mine, assuming the bartender will permit me to charge our frothy drinks…”
So Karnilla’s regressed to childhood? Or what?
Not quite!
I’m thinking of the battle against Surtur in the Simonson run. Balder comes to recruit Karnilla and she takes her standard line: she’ll do as he asks, but only if, afterwards, he’ll be hers forever.
Balder considers this in a silent panel and then bursts out laughing, telling the Queen of the Norns that she should stop playing games and be the woman he knows she is rather than the child she pretends to be. He then gives her an amazing kiss and tells her:
“Balder the brave is no longer the god you knew. But you shall know me, madam, indeed you shall.”
(We have a hint of Karnilla’s deeper side earlier in the arc when a depressed Balder passes through Nornheim, and he expects her to behave as she usually does. Instead, she offers him the hospitality of her realm and says she won’t bother him. She will not toy with a hurting soul.)
A conversation between the White Queen and the Queen of the Norns would probably go something like this:
“You love Balder, Karnilla, and I love Scott Summers. Does that make any sense?”
“Love seldom does, Emma.”
“Bad girls do have a weakness for good boys.”
“They come no better than Balder.”
“Scott’s no slouch himself. Another Martini?”
“Yes, thank you, and without an olive this time.”
Got it. Yes, I knew Simonson was going to be awesome when he tossed over such an old Thor cliche so deftly.
From Terry
White Rabbit? Hookah-smoking caterpillar? Yes, it’s from Alice in Wonderland, but I strongly suspect that Englehart and Brunner were more inspired by the novel’s derivative: “White Rabbit” by Jefferson Airplane. Loved this psychedelic series. I had all the Brunner issues of Marvel Premiere and Dr. Strange when they came out. Still have them, and I re-read the full run just a couple of years ago. Among the best comic book series of all time!
When I think of the last half of 1973 and the whole of 1974, I don’t feel like I need to offer too much explanation why I considered Steve Englehart my favorite writer of this period. Considering the Silver Dagger story (particularly that mind-blowing #4), what’s coming up in CAPTAIN AMERICA & THE FALCON in just a month, and what’s around the bend with AVENGERS (to say nothing of his exemplary script for CAPTAIN MARVEL #33) – no one was clicking on all those cylinders in so many titles.
I think there might have been a certain trepidation about how Englehart and Brunner would follow up the white-hot-needle-between-the-eyes that was MARVEL PREMIERE #14. I think this issue laid that concern to rest by effectively killing the title character and sending down him the rabbit hole. (And yes, I confess that 15-year-old me had already read both ALICE’S ADVENTURES IN WONDERLAND and THROUGH THE LOOKING GLASS, so all the little – and not-so-little – allusions were not lost on me.)
I like to think that we didn’t take this run for granted while it was going on – especially since it would only last a few more issues. Sigh…
I certainly didn’t take Englehart for granted. He was a favorite of mine, too.