With this post, we come to the regrettably untimely end of writer Steve Englehart’s run on Doctor Strange. But before we get into DS #18’s “The Dream Is Dead!”, we’ll first need to take a look at the previous issue, which presented the first installment of what was originally planned to be an ambitious, multi-part story arc organized around the American Bicentennial; and since the ultimately truncated storyline’s conclusion (such as it was) occurred in the following, Englehart-less #19, we’re going to be covering that one here today as well. All of that’s to let you know that, well, we may be here for a while.
Doctor Strange #17 leads off with a cover by the title’s regular artistic tram of Gene Colan (penciller) and Tom Palmer (inker) — one that intrigues with its hints (conveyed through both the Merlin-type wizard’s dialogue and the Elizabethan-style outfits worn by the two men assaulting Dr. Strange and his lover/protégé, Clea) that we’re about to be doing a bit of time-traveling, but doesn’t really tip us off to the full scope of what Englehart, Colan, and Palmer were embarking on with this issue… which was nothing more or less than a journey through “The Occult History of America”.
Decades later, in his 2013 introduction to Marvel Masterworks — Doctor Strange, Vol. 6, Englehart briefly outlined his intentions for what was to have been his “next epic”:
We had come out of 1975 into 1976, and 1976 was a big deal because it marked America’s bicentennial. As it happens, there are a lot of mystical elements to the birth of America, and I proposed to wander through the best of them in these next four issues, which would come out in May, June, July, and August.
Before such wanderin’ could commence, however, there was one loose end from the past two issues’ storyline that needed to be wrapped up: namely, the fate of would-be sorcerer James Mandarin, whose shenanigans had resulted in getting not only himself, but Doc and Clea, imprisoned in Hell. We’d seen the latter two escape Satan’s clutches and return to Earth in issue #16’s climax, but weren’t shown what had happened to Mandarin until the splash page of #17… where we find him being chased down a dark alley by the Sorcerer Supreme himself…
Unfortunately for Mandarin, his frantic flight leads him right to Clea…
Clea is of course referring to the fact that she, along with everyone else on Earth with the exception of Dr. Strange, was destroyed back in issue #12 and then recreated in #13, with no memory of any of it. Her distress at learning this truth had figured into her and Doc’s temporary imprisonment in Hell, and so he now frets that she’s beginning to brood about it again; Clea, however, assures him that she’s put the whole business behind her. Before they can discuss the topic further, the couple’s attention is diverted to another matter — namely, the imminent departure of Rama Kaliph and Lord Phyffe, two mystical adepts who had shown up to offer Dr. Strange their support against his enemies Umar and Dormammu back in issue #9, and had been his house guests ever since.
Unfortunately, Steve Englehart would no longer be writing Doctor Strange “in but a few short months“, so his plans for Lord Phyffe would never come to fruition; a few years later, however, he shared the gist of his intentions in an interview published in Comics Feature #5 (Sep., 1980):
What I wanted to do with Lord Phyffe was basically, hundreds of years before, the Phyffe family was cursed and the curse would affect the tenth generation. Lord Phyffe was the ninth generation until the world was destroyed [by Eternity] and everybody was replaced. Then he realized that he was the tenth and he was going back to England. I would have done a British demon story.
Eventually, one of Englehart’s successors on Doctor Strange, Chris Claremont, came up with his own, different resolution to the Phyffe mystery — and since there’s at least a chance that I’ll be posting about that storyline come 2030, I’m going to avoid getting into the details now. (Though, if you’re really keen to know, the Appendix to the Handbook of the Marvel Universe has got you covered right here.)
Francis Bacon (1561-1626) was of course a real-life English philosopher, author, and statesman, perhaps best remembered in standard academic history as one of the founders of the modern scientific method (though the Baconian theory of Shakespearean authorship is also a thing). That said, much has been written over the years about Bacon’s possible involvement in secret, occult-oriented societies such as the Freemasons and Rosicrucians, and that’s obviously the kind of material Steve Englehart is drawing on here.
Your humble blogger is by no means an expert on this stuff; still, I have to confess that, based on the little I’ve actually read concerning these theories, I’m pretty skeptical concerning many of their claims. But regardless of these ideas’ historical validity, there’s no reason why they shouldn’t serve as an inspiration for entertaining fantasy fiction; or, at least, that’s my view.
As they take leave of Sir Francis, Clea mentally signals Stephen concerning her (quite justifiable) frustration at lacking the context to understand the preceding conversation. He puts her off until they’re outside, and then…
“The College of the Six Days’ Work”, aka “Salomon’s House” does indeed appear in Francis Bacon’s work of utopian fiction New Atlantis — but the phrase’s meaning basically amounts to “the College of the Natural World” (the “Six Days’ Work” being a reference to the Biblical account of God having created the world in six days), so one questions whether it really needs to be framed in the context of “western mysticism” as Stephen Strange (and Steve Englehart) do here. Allowing for the fact that, for many 17th century thinkers, the distinctions between mysticism and science were probably less pronounced than they are for us today, Bacon’s imaginary institution can be understood at least as well in terms of conventional scientific study as in those of the mystic arts; as Wikipedia puts it, “Salomon’s House is credited with being the standard upon which 17th century scientific academies, including the French Académie des Sciences and the English Royal Society, are based.“
Later, at the appointed time of 9:00, Strange and Clea arrive at Sir Francis’ mansion. There, after some brief mental probing by their host and the other members of his “literary society”, the couple is deemed to have passed muster. “My companions and I feel we may trust thee, Mister Strange,” announces Bacon. “There be far more to thee than thou hast yet related. Now, I shall speak freely!”
I don’t think there’s any direct historical connection between Nostradamus (1503-1566) and Francis Bacon, but hey, as long as we’re doing an “Occult History of America” here, why not include the famous alleged prophet’s alleged prophecy of the rise of the United States?
And as long as we’ve paused here, it’s worth noting that the concept espoused here by Bacon and his friends (and evidently endorsed by Dr. Strange) — that the “new world” of the Americas represents “virgin soil” ripe for well-meaning Europeans to build their personal idea of a utopian society, rather than a couple of continents already inhabited by a vast indigenous population with societies and cultures of their own — hasn’t aged very well at all in the last half century.
Title page of the 1628 edition.
Bacon’s New Atlantis was indeed presented as being “A Worke unfinished” when it was published after his death. But the idea that he’d actually written the “second half” of it, as opposed to just having intended to do so — let alone the notion that copies of that second half might still be floating around — seems to be purely speculative.
To the best of my knowledge, this is the first time we’ve had someone other than either Stephen Strange or his immediate predecessor, the Ancient One, identified as having (maybe) been Earth’s Sorcerer Supreme in times past; for all we’d been told prior to this moment, the Ancient One might have held the title for hundreds, even thousands of years.
History does record that Francis Bacon played a role in England’s “colonization effort” in the Americas — though it seems to have been mostly limited to Virginia and Newfoundland (and of course the latter ultimately became part of Canada, rather than the U.S.). So it seems a bit of stretch to posit that he hand-picked most of the early settlers of all thirteen original colonies, let alone that he chose them according to their suitability for building his “New Atlantis”. But who’s to say how things went down on Marvel-Earth, as opposed to our own?
We come now to June, 1976, and to the second chapter of Englehart’s planned four-part Bicentennial saga. Doctor Strange #18’s cover by Gene Colan and Al Milgrom is one of my very favorite DS covers from this era, so if you didn’t take a good look at it before, I encourage you to scroll up and do so at this time. And now, on to the book’s splash page:
In his Marvel Masterworks intro, Englehart noted that his sudden decision to quit working for Marvel (see our Avengers #150 post for the details) came in between his plotting DS #18 and his scripting of it:
…when I sat down to dialogue this issue before I went out the door, I titled it “The Dream Is Dead!”, which pretty accurately described how I felt about it all.
To be more precise, Stephen and Clea have landed in the London on March, 1775 — just in time to board a ship sailing for America, on which the man they’ve come to see — Benjamin Franklin — is also a passenger.
As best as I’ve been able to determine, there’s been considerably less written about the supposed occult inclinations of Benjamin Franklin than those of Francis Bacon; most of it seems to boil down to the fact of his having been a Freemason (as were several other Founding Fathers, including George Washington), as well as a possible association with the real-world Hellfire Club when he was in England. For my money, it’s a considerable leap from there to the claim that Franklin was (as Englehart puts it in his Masterworks intro) “a wizard”. But, again, that’s not to say that the idea can’t make for intriguing fiction.
The ship sets sail without further incident, and at mealtime that evening, Dr. Strange and Clea take the opportunity to introduce themselves to the object of their interest…
Dr. Strange may admire Ben Franklin’s resolve, but he’s well aware of the danger posed by Stygyro, and so he and Clea proceed to “search this ship from stem to stern!” Despite their best efforts, however, no sign of the evil magician can be found.
Stygyro disappears into thin air before Strange even reaches the deck, but the Sorcerer Supreme doesn’t believe for a moment that they’re out of danger; rather, he believes that their foe simply intends to kill all three of them at his leisure. His dark thoughts are mentally picked up on by Clea…
Dr. Strange hurriedly casts a spell that keeps the ship from toppling over the watery cliff, then seals Clea and Franklin in the latter’s cabin for safety…
In the 1980 Comics Feature interview with Steve Englehart that I quoted from earlier, when asked what the reasoning was behind Clea having an affair with Benjamin Franklin, the writer responded:
Because Benjamin Franklin had affairs with everybody he could get his hands on. It seemed like an interesting bit. And Clea was always in the background. After Dr. Strange met Death, I had Dr. Strange meet Love, with Mother Nature, Dormammu and Umar, and that’s where Doc and Clea really solidified themselves as more equals and as being solidly in love. But Strange is basically a loner and Clea didn’t appear a whole lot during that series and I figured she would probably get antsy about it. Plus the fact that, while Franklin is a pot bellied guy who’s balding, at the same time he succeeded at having affairs. He must have been a real good womanizer. He must have had something that would get all these women to go to bed with him. So in that last issue, which was written after I had quit, I’m sure it looked a little abrupt that she would go to bed with this guy. But if I had continued on the series, I would have expanded on that. Clea was a princess. She’s not prepared to sit around and be the little wife while Strange is out doing what ever. Where it would have gone, I don’t know.
My younger self was quite startled by this scene fifty years ago — less, I think, because of Franklin’s behavior (thanks to my enthusiasm for the Broadway musical 1776, I was already well-used to the idea of the great polymath being a “ladies’ man”), and more for the simple fact of Clea’s infidelity; fifty years ago, it was unheard of for a superhero’s girlfriend to cheat. Even then, however, I recognized that Englehart had carefully laid the groundwork for this development, having subtly depicted the growing tension between Clea and Stephen over multiple recent installments of the series.
Strange magically hurls the Stygyro-serpent’s fiery breath back at it, causing the creature to thrash about wildly in agony, so that it knocks down stone pillars that threaten to crush it as well as Strange…
With that next-to-last panel’s “Huh?“, Steve Englehart has written his last line of dialogue for Doctor Stephen Strange in this series. Perhaps it’s fitting that Doc’s final, questioning word is an echo of one many of this feature’s readers have probably found themselves silently uttering from time to time during the author’s run.
In 1980, Englehart shared with the readers of Comics Feature a few details about where “The Occult History of America” was intended to go next:
To the night they signed the Declaration of Independence… The trip was that there’s an occult legend that the night they all sat down to write the Declaration of Independence, a mysterious man in black showed up and told them what they needed to know and then vanished from a locked room. Just a legend, but decent material for Dr. Strange, and so I created Stygyro. The third episode would have been the night of July 4th: mystical battles while they’re writing the Declaration. The fourth episode would have been coming back to 1976 and finding Stygyro still around. The trip was that he was living off American patriotism: the energy involved in that was what he hooked onto as a vampire. So he was still around two hundred years later because America did get formed. It’s a power source, and he’s a vampire.
At the risk of prejudicing this blog’s readers concerning the next (and final) comic we’re about to look at today, I still wish we’d all gotten to read that conclusion to the story, rather than what was actually delivered to us in July, 1976.
Not that the cover of Doctor Strange #19 — another fine Colan job, this time inked by Klaus Janson — gave any indication of the major changes in store for us once we opened up to the splash page:
To begin with, we’d had a complete turnover the book’s creative team, with Englehart, Colan, and Tom Palmer being replaced by Marv Wolfman and Alfredo Alcala — two talented creators, to be sure, but ones that immediately brought a very different vibe to what we’d grown used to, especially on the visual end of things. (As a side note: in addition to taking over as writer with this issue, former Marvel editor-in-chief Wolfman also resumed editorial duties on the title, following Archie Goodwin’s one-issue stand in #18).
And then there were these brand-new characters and concepts. Who the hell was Xander? Or the Creators? And what in the name of Oshtur wass a “Quadriverse”? Had we all missed an issue, or something?
As it turned out, “Lo, the Powers Changeth” was a continuation of the ongoing storyline — though we’d have to wait for over another full page’s worth of dialogue between Xander and the Creators before the focus shifted from them to the crystal globe — or “star-stone” — held in the former’s hand…
Dr. Strange’s reference to himself as being the only “true human” following Eternity’s recreation of the Earth suggests — to me, anyway — that Marv Wolfman didn’t completely understand what happened in that story.
We saw Stephen, Clea, and Ben set sail from London in March, 1775 in the previous issue; if it’s now early May, does that mean they’ve been hanging out together for over a month? And that Clea has actually been canoodling (at the very least) with Stygyro this whole time? That’s… not good.
Dr. Strange manages to arrest the second destruction of the Earth (two hundred years prior to the first) by causing time to stop in its tracks — a tremendously demanding task that takes a proportionally heavy toll…
While it’s good to learn that Clea has not been sleeping (or whatever) with Stygyro unawares for more than a month, the idea that the whole Clea/Franklin affair has been illusory doesn’t make much sense. After all, Dr. Strange was fighting Stygyro at the bottom of the Atlantic during the couple’s shipboard assignation in issue #18, so how could that incident have been a “shadow play” in Strange’s own mind? Best we not think about it too much, since Marv Wolfman obviously wants to wrap this whole business up and get on to other things.
Among the other things Wolfman is more interested are Xander and the Creators, so he and Alcala give us another page of them conversing before returning to the main narrative to wrap things up…*
It takes Strange the best of another page to completely blast away the skeletons, but at last the job is done… or so he thinks…
Fifty years ago, Doctor Strange #19 was one of the greatest disappointments I’d ever experienced as a comic-book reader — and it still ranks pretty high on my all-time list of such. Marv Wolfman’s resolution to Steve Englehart’s storyline doesn’t stop at simply abruptly truncating Strange and Clea’s quest to discover America’s secret origin, or even at returning the couple’s romantic relationship to its normal setting; rather, by framing everything that’s happened for the last nine issues or so as a “test” by the Ancient One, and then having our hero stripped of his status as Sorcerer Supreme, Wolfman has essentially rewound things back to where they stood at the beginning of Englehart’s run — and by doing so, implicitly suggests that the whole direction of the series for the last three years has been some sort of mistake.
An editorial by Wolfman that appeared on #19’s letters page offered further confirmation of his intent to take a “back to basics” approach in writing Doctor Strange; it also brought the news that the book was returning to a bimonthly publication schedule:
I don’t recall exactly what my younger self made of “A Memo from Marv” back in 1976, but re-reading it in 2026, I have to say that it rankles me more than a tad. The whole idea that sales had been suffering due to the series’ recent direction seems somewhat spurious, given that the title had only just gone monthly with Doctor Strange #14, published a mere five months earlier, and complete sales figures for the most recent issues wouldn’t have been available yet. And what’s this about there not having been enough villains in Englehart’s stories? Working backwards from #18, we’ve had Stygyro, Satan, Dracula, Nightmare, Baton Mordo, Eternity (not exactly a villain, but an adversary nonetheless), Dormammu, Umar… and now we’re all the way back to Silver Dagger, mentioned in Wolfman’s editorial. What am I missing here?
For his own part, Steve Englehart seems to have accepted the situation with rather more equanimity that your humble blogger. In his Marvel Masterworks intro, he provided the following annotation for Doctor Strange #19:
Okay, my departure was abrupt, and so, too, was the need to replace me. Marv Wolfman, possibly because he’d just written Doc in the Doc/Drac crossover, was called upon to pick up the pieces, and the book immediately reverted to bi-monthly status to cut him some slack. Marv is a consummate pro, and he took everything that had happened, married it to his own idea of the series, and produced a solid “conclusion” to the epic. Is it what I had in mind? Not at all. But comics writers take on books all the time with no idea what the previous writer had in mind; it’s the nature of the business, and part of being a pro. Was one path better or worse? The question’s irrelevant.
“Irrelevant”? Well, maybe it is for Mr. Englehart; as an ordinary reader, I’ll reserve the right to have my own opinion on the matter. And so, while I’m not petty enough to assert that the author should have sucked it up back in the spring of ’76 for the sake of us faithful fans, and stuck it out at Marvel for just long enough to wrap up his already-in-progress Doctor Strange storyline, I figure I’m entitled to still have regrets regarding the path not traveled.
Going forward, Doctor Strange would continue to be a regular purchase for my younger self — after all, its titular star was my second favorite Marvel hero (after Thor). Still, the book would never quite be the same for me following Steve Englehart’s departure. While any number of talented writers would follow him on the feature, few if any brought the same combination of comics storytelling skill and genuine interest in/knowledge of “occult” subject matter that had made his collaboration with both Frank Brunner and Gene Colan so special. Yes, there were still plenty of great Dr. Strange stories ahead — but they’d depend more and more on the talents of their illustrators to bring the magical milieu bequeathed them by Steve Ditko and Stan Lee to vibrant visual life.
One such story — scripted by none other than Marv Wolfman, but co-plotted as well as drawn by P. Craig Russell — would in fact be coming up in just a few months. Naturally, we’ll be taking a look at it in this space; so, please make plans to return in October for our exploration of Doctor Strange Annual #1.
*All these years later, I have absolutely no recollection of what happened in regards to Doc’s new antagonists in the next storyline. I do plan to re-read those issues in the near future, but I’m in no hurry — and in any case, I won’t be posting about them. So, if you’re curious to see what Xander’s whole deal was, I will once again happily refer you to the Appendix to the Handbook of the Marvel Universe for the lowdown.
Great book – nothing beats 70’s Marvel – thanks for posting!
While I loved Alfredo Alcala’s short story work at DC in 1972-74 in House of Mystery, House of Secrets, etc., it must have been jarring to see Dr. Strange’s art switch from Colan/Palmer to Alcala in 1976. His work is loaded with mood and textures, but his figures are a bit distorted (intentionally) when compared to Colan’s, and Alcala’s Dr. Strange looks like his face is almost bloated (stay off those sodium loaded hot dogs and carbs, Doc).
And we know from *Marvel Premiere* #4 how much pleasure Stephen derives from consuming an ordinary hot dog!
Do you think he ever participated in any of Nathan’s Famous Coney Island hot dog-eating contests?
(Ben Grimm ate a dozen hot dogs in *Fantastic Four* #105.)
Apropos of nothing, Peter, Mary Jane, Harry and Liz dropped by Nathan’s about this time (okay, a couple of months later) over in the main Spider-Man title.
Also, must have been something in the air; Roy Thomas dropped his Fantastic Four scripting mid-story within the year.
The Strange/Clea riff has some echoes of how Englehart handled the Captain America/Sharon relationship. Works better here, though. as you say, it’s a crying shame we didn’t get more.
In fairness to Wolfman, I doubt he could have wrapped up anything resembling the original Occult History plotline effectively. So while “it was a pretentious surreal hallucination” as a friend of mine puts it, was unsatisfying, it may have been the best choice. Still not a good choice.
The idea of Styggro battening on American patriotism is novel.
The finished epic would have made an interesting “double bill” with Ostrander’s occult take on American history in Spectre.
Nice shout-out to that Ostrander/Mandrake arc!
I commented about Englehart’s last Cap issue, #186, that he “… seemed to run out of ideas towards the end of a run …”, and threw in some fairly bad starting points for future writers, like the much-criticised Sam Wilson ‘rewrite’.
This certainly seems to bear that out: Clea supposedly jumps in the sack with somebody she’d met, what, the day before? I can’t agree that Englehart ‘carefully laid the groundwork for this development’, it seems like there was only a few lines of dialogue to suggest that Clea was at in any way disgruntled with her relationship with Doc. To me, this development came out of nowhere. Englehart saying her behaviour was that of a princess who wouldn’t ‘sit around like a little wife’ doesn’t even factor in, because for most of her life (even beyond this point?), she didn’t even know she was a princess, did she?
I’d totally agree that #19 was one of the greatest disappointments I’d experienced as a reader up until then, but I was quite happy to let my head canon settle for maybe the last couple of issues being dismissed or forgotten (as quickly as possible). The rest of Doc #19 barely even made sense, and the dialogue about dropping in rank from ‘Sorcerer Supreme’ to just ‘Master of the Mystic Arts’ was, to me, abject silliness. Don’t both job titles amount to pretty much exactly the same thing? I kind of get that Wolfman’s intentions were a kind of back-to-basics idea, but it could have been so much better presented – if it was even necessary.
Stygyro didn’t get a chance to receive any kind of characterisation in his limited appearances, but wouldn’t he have gone through some kind of ‘rising and advancing of the spirit’ to claim to be his time-period’s Sorcerer Supreme? Otherwise, he’s just stock bad guy from central casting, and his outfit was the. Least. Imaginative. Ever. I’d hope that there was some intention to reveal a secret regarding his real identity and appearance.
A nod as well to #18’s guest appearance by ‘Mr Fletcher’, a crewman who presumes to debate his captain’s decision, the mutinous dog!
Yes, I noticed the “Fletcher” too.
My impression from when Stephen became Sorcerer Supreme was that it marked his growth in power — it didn’t confer power in itself (though he did inherit some from the Ancient One). This seems to be the start of the assumption that losing Supreme status means losing power as well.
Yeah, I certainly think Englehart had a much clearer understanding of what Doc’s ‘spiritual’ journey involved. How can someone be demoted from a position that they achieved through personal growth?
Englehart has said that he saw his time on Dr. Strange as following “the rising and advancing of a spirit.” Really, that was the theme for just about ALL his heroes.
This is how much of an Englehart apologist I am. I was, at the time, willing to accept the idea of “Snap” Wilson, because when he did that, Englehart fully expected to be the one to follow through on it. He turned the book over to John Warner for what he thought would only be a handful of months. But then DR. STRANGE went monthly and other things cropped up.
I honestly don’t think it was a case of “I got nothing else for this character, so I’m going to do this crazy thing, and let someone else clean up the mess.” (But I’ve been wrong before.)
I always saw it as a way to break way from Sam’s “model minority” character — The Red Skull brags at one point that he constructed the Sam Wilson fake persona along those lines to win Cap over — but if so, it was not the way to go. I agree, it doesn’t feel to me like a “screw it, I got nothing” idea.
I wasn’t suggesting that Englehart actively, vengefully planned to leave a mess for others to clean up, but the problem with the seat-of-the-pants, plate-spinning style of plotting popular back then meant that when someone (like Englehart) upped sticks and quit mid-story leaving no clear outline for future plans, it had the effect of leaving the mess to someone else.
I noticed that, as well. It’s interesting that the character is Mr. Fletcher and not Mr. Christian. Did Englehart not realize the name is Fletcher Christian or did he not care much because it’s just some fun.
I have zero memory of this or Xander even though I was a completist still the. I know I read that Black Cat two parter and don’t recall it either so Xander must be cursed somehow and it’s affecting the ‘real world’. You’d think as much as I dislike Alcala’s work I would have remembered somehow otherwise. I’m neutral on Colan but the switch would have been horrific to me. The conclusion cements that while I enjoyed some of his work, the vast majority left me cold or disliking it. Strange fell into the disliking category. The power of the sorcerer supreme (which honestly should be of Earth, not the cosmos since Strange rarely bothers with more than our plant) is a variable thing that now comes with its own power upgrade no matter how little or much personal power the sorcerer supreme du jour had prior. Now we have the Scarlet Witch just deciding that’s her new title, getting a power upgrade to go with her plot contrivance power that has always having the one essential spell to easily defeat anything she faces.
BTW, Xander’s star stone the one from the battle with shuma Gorath or the Hyborian Age?
This one HURT. Even more than AVENGERS #150-151.
I’ve never been shy about stating that Englehart’s writing got me through some difficult times, DR. STRANGE #16, in particular, hit me where I lived. With only a handful of hiccups (some of the “Love” arc in #6-10, the Englehart run on this title was nothing short of astonishing. So his abrupt departure – smack dab in the middle of an intriguing arc – really did a number on 17-year-old me.
I’m so much of an apologist that I was willing to accept the Ben/Clea dalliance. I like to think there would have been some kind of satisfying resolution that would have ended up deepening both Stephen and Clea’s character. (But hey, I was willing to accept “Snap” Wilson, since we never REALLY saw what Englehart might have done with that character, so clearly I’m an unreliable narrator.)
This could have been a fascinating examination of America from a different perspective, and I’m really sorry we never get to see how it REALLY would have played out.
Another reason I was upset was that – as I recall – the printing of #18 was pretty bad. The colors seemed washed-out, and even Palmer’s reliable inks didn’t quite have the same zip. Was the monthly schedule catching up with him and with Colan? We’ll never know. And I agree, Alan, that the “sales aren’t justifying a monthly schedule” argument is suspect, coming mere months after it wa upped from bimonthly.”
And in the “might have been” category – if I ever get to Lucian’s library in the Dreaming, where all the unwritten books are found, one of the first ones I’ll check out is the three-parter that was slated to follow this arc, not only because it had Shang-Chi but also because it was going to mark Frank Brunner’s return to the title, albeit for one arc.
“The Dream Is Dead,” indeed.
I wish I could edit posts after the fact! Yes, the “Love” arc was issues #6-9. Yes, it’s “Lucien” in the Dreaming, not “Lucian.” And the typos! That’s what I get for dashing things off.
As for Clea’s “royal” status – well, she had been established as Dormammu’s niece, and since he seemed to be the de facto ruler of the Dark Dimension, referring to her as a “princess” doesn’t seem to be TOO much of a stretch, right?
And I think it was not until a few issues before this (the Dormammu/Umar storyline), that Clea was ever identified as being family to the rulers of the Dark Dimension (and she didn’t find out herself until some while after us readers), so I don’t think the haughtiness of a princess particularly suited her.
Regarding Clea, I’m reminded of the female lead in the play 6 Rms Riv Vu, who says that having never having been with anyone but her husband, she wonders if all men kiss the same, touch you the same, make the same grunts. Clea as far as we know has no experience with dating (though we didn’t know much about her life in the Dark Dimension) — I could see her succumbing to Ben’s charms (plus the frustration I mentioned in my other comment). And it could have led to her and Stephen working past it and growing closer.
Side trivia note, along with his intellectual accomplishments, Franklin was a skilled swimmer in an age where most Americans didn’t swim. In France “the swimming American” put on displays along the lines of synchronized swimming, which astounded them.
This was tremendously disappointing and I remember Dr. Strange 19 as a painful reading experience. I did not care for Alcala’s art so that came as a huge shock after the excellence of Colan and Palmer. (and Bill Nutt, you are correct, there was something wrong with the printing in DS 18 and the book had a strange washed out quality). Looking back on this 50 years later, I can sympathize with Marv Wolfman that he was put into an impossible position, most likely asked to take over this book, and without any plot information had to figure out how to resolve this storyline. However, my sympathy ends there. It’s puzzling to me that Marv, who wrote Dr. Strange so well in TOD 44 just a few months earlier, showed no understanding of the character in DS 19. The business about Clea and Ben Franklin planning to get married was just silly, and removing his title of Sorcerer Supreme and saying it’s better for him to just be a man, was awful. If he’s just a man then he’s not Dr. Strange. Undoing everything Englehart had done with the character was very disrespectful. This was essentially a retcon, which as I later learned was then retconned itself by Roger Stern about a year later and Dr. Strange would again be Sorcerer Supreme as that had actually never changed. Xander was an awful villain who looked like he should be fighting the Hulk not Dr. Strange, and the Creators were ridiculous.
As for Clea and Ben Franklin, sorry but I don’t believe much groundwork was there to prepare us for this. I had only seen appearances of Clea in the Dr. Strange series and the Defenders, but she had only been portrayed in those appearances as Strange’s ultra loyal and loving girl friend. Could her behavior have been because this was a “new’ version of Clea, after the events of DS 13? I guess that’s possible but we’ll never know… As for Steve’s comment that Clea was an alien queen, well as others have pointed out, she didn’t know that and wouldn’t know it for many years, so not really sure what Steve was up to there.
As for the Dr. Strange series, I did pick up the next issue, DS 20 by Wolfman and Nebres which I did not care for at all and I hated Xander (if that was not clear before). When I saw DS 21 on the stands, It had a new cover (Colan/Palmer!) but inside it was a reprint. This was when the Dreaded Deadline Doom finally got to me and I refused to buy it. I was cutting down on my comics buying anyway and comics had recently gone up to30 cents (that sounds so quaint!). Ironically, I don’t believe I had seen the reprinted issue before (DS 169), although I did get it several years later. I was done with Dr. Strange for awhile. I don’t believe I returned to the series until what was Roger Stern’s second run on the series in 1981. As it turned out, Marv’s turn as writer on Dr. Strange was very short lived. He only wrote 2 more issues, DS 22 and 23 and then was gone. As I later learned, Jim Starlin and Roger Stern would try to make some sense of things. I did continue to buy Tomb of Dracula until the end of the series so still liked Marv’s writing generally.
Just wondering..did Stygyro every appear again? He didn’t leave much of an impression. It is a shame we did not see the full version of Englehart’s occult history of America storyline. And Englehart had mentioned in interviews that he had a number of unrealized Dr. Strange storylines planned so that is a shame. Would have been interesting to see Fu Manchu v. Dr. Strange. Oh well…
I recall that I did pick up the Dr. Strange Annual in October 1976 so look forward to your comments on that book. Thanks Alan!
Styggro did not appear again, ever.
I didn’t have a problem with Clea. It seemed like she was indeed restless in earlier issues as Stephen’s duties kept drawing her away from him. I think of it as the outcome of going from a long-distance relationship to living together (even given they’d started that back in Roy Thomas’s run).
A minor correction/clarification: Stygyro appeared in a couple of issues following #19; evidently, he got worked back into the “Creators” storyline as it played out under Wolfman, Stern, etc..
http://www.marvunapp.com/Appendix/stygyr.htm
I’m trying to solve a mystery in my own head here. Fifty years ago, I didn’t read Doctor Strange. I had given the book up when Brunner left and had never gone back, not even to skim a few pages here and there. Yet, when you covered the pages of Doc #18 dealing with the assignation of Clea and Ben Franklin, my head was flooded with memories of reading those specific pages fifty years ago. I saw them clearly in my mind’s eye as if I’d read them for the first time only yesterday. To put it mildly, that’s weird. I remember nothing from before those pages, and nothing after them, but that one sequence I remember well. What would have possessed me to pick up a copy of a book I was no longer reading regularly and scan a couple of pages from the end of the book? Did you show it to me, Alan? I know in June of ’76, we’d just finished our Freshman year at Mississippi College together; were you so “startled” by those pages that you just needed to discuss them with someone and I just happened to be the only comics fan within reach? Was this the first time you and I ever discussed comics? Not sure how it would have worked since it was June and school was out. I know I was still on campus that summer taking a couple of classes and working for the campus radio station, but I don’t remember how much if any of that summer you’d have been around for us to discuss it. I had no other friends at that time who were into comics, so if someone showed it to me, it had to have been you, but…I don’t remember. Do you? This is gonna bug me all day.
As for the rest, I actually liked Colan and Palmer’s work in #18. It felt finished to me in a way that Colan’s work usually didn’t, so maybe he had more time to work that month, I don’t know. As for the creative switch on #19, I liked Alcala just fine and would have had no problem with the pictures, but the story…oh my god, what a jarring move into a completely different direction! I can understand why everyone would have been upset. If I’d been a regular reader of the book back then, I’d have been upset too.
Now if you’ll excuse me, I have to find my deerstalker cap and my Meerschaum pipe. The game is afoot and I have a mystery to solve! Cheerio!
Don, I’m afraid that I have no memory of sharing that scene with you, either in the summer of ’76 or later. But, hey, that doesn’t mean it didn’t happen! We are old, and we forget things, alas.
Yeah, I have no memory of it either, but there was literally no one else in my life at that time who could have shown it to me. We had to start talking about comics at some point! Getting old sucks.
The Magic Was Gone
No other way to put it. My disappointment easily echoed that of Alan and every other person who read both Doctor Strange. #18 and #19. As it was, it wouldn’t be until the arrival of Paul Smith as the artist before I’d buy another issue of this title. I know there are some good issues that I missed – I do mean to read through the entirety of Roger Stern’s run – but I simply couldn’t imagine this series after what I considered to be the creative heights established by Englehart, Colan and Palmer.
As for my assessment of Marv Wolfman’s explanation for the changes, I take us now to a specific scene in Animal House where John Belusi and his Delta House colleagues respond to charges issued against them in the Student Court.
Gotta cut this one short since we’re on vacation and if you think Clea can be vengeful, then you’ve never met my wife, Amy! (Actually, she’s an incredibly good sport!)
Englehart, Colan, and Palmer being abruptly replaced by Wolfman and Alcala and Englehart’s story being dropped reminds of another such incident a year or so later, when Jim Shooter and Mike Grell simply disappeared from Superboy and the Legion of Super-Heroes after issue #224, leaving their epic Pulsar Stargrave story hanging and unresolved. It’s a miracle that so much good work was ever done in the monthly grind of superhero comics that chewed up and spit out creators like it did. A British politician once remarked that all political careers end in failure, and the same could be said for creative runs on superhero comics – one looks at Jack Kirby, whose Fantastic Four run just stopped in the middle of a Sub-Mariner/Magneto story, or whose Fourth World was cancelled out from under him, and one sees that what happened to Englehart, Colan, and Palmer here is par for the course – if one enjoys a great run of a superhero comic, one had better enjoy it while it lasts, because sooner or later it will end, and almost certainly not on the terms its creator envisioned, as has been baked into the Dr. Strange series since Steve Ditko abruptly quit because he could no longer get along with Stan Lee. Yet the show must go on, and creators like Englehart, Brunner, Colan, and Palmer, and, later, Michael Golden, Paul Smith, and Craig Russell all put their own stamp on the character for the time they were able to do so.
Englehart’s decision to write an “occult history of America” based around the Bicentennial reminds us that, no matter how fanciful and absurd superhero comics can be, they are ultimately grounded in our reality. In recent posts to this blog, we’ve seen Jack Kirby make similar nods to America’s history in the Madbomb story (and also Cap’s Bicentennial Battles), and one of the very first comics I ever bought and read, Batman Family #1, from 1975, features Robin and Batgirl teaming up to battle a resurrected Benedict Arnold, who is possessed by a demon, in a story maybe not so different from the Bicentennial story Englehart wanted to tell in Dr. Strange. Just as we saw Watergate seep into the Nomad storyline in Captain America (and into Kamandi and other books of the day), it would be suprising if the Bicentennial, and, with it, meditations on America’s history, didn’t seep into the comics of 1976.
For anyone who’s too young to know, the Bicentennial was huge in ’76. It’s not surprising comics creators jumped on the bandwagon. I thought the idea America had made it to the 200th issue, so to speak, was incredibly awesome.
I was 8 in 1976, and I remember all of the hype around the Bicentennial. My family took a road trip from North Carolina to Philadelphia to see the Tall Ships, if anyone remembers that particular event. Aside from 1976 comic stories like this one that specifically addressed America’s colonial history and the Revolution, DC comics that summer had a special red-white-and-blue banner across the top of their covers that said “America Salutes the Bicentennial,” even if the issue in question had nothing to do with the Bicentennial.
Oops, the banner read “DC Comics Salutes the Bicentennial,” but, yeah, I remember the banner fondly, because my parents bought a big stack of comics to dole out in the car to keep me occupied during the aforementioned road trap, and of course all of the DC issues I got that day had the red-white-and-blue banner up top, and I still vividly remember those issues that had it, such as All-Star Comics #61.
John, we covered that “Benedict Arnold” story here last year, if you’re interested in reliving the memories 🙂 . And, of course, it’s never too late to comment!
https://50yearoldcomics.com/2025/06/14/batman-family-1-sep-oct-1975/
I remember that Shooter-Grell story! Their departure kept me away from the Legion until Darkseid took the seat of honor in the Levitz-Griffen classic several years later. Another “hard right” that caught me off guard.
Good to know others are still as pissed off and disappointed at this mess as I still am!
It’s a kind of homeopathic cure to hear you vent about this.
The crash landing of Mcgregor/Gerber/Englehart’s books was the end of my time as a Marvelite. I still picked up a few books here and there but it was time to move on.
PS: Yes, we got the Englehart/Rogers Batman.
I understand being upset about what happened to McGregor, Gerber, and Englehart, but, as I’ve said before, the chaos and inmates-running-the-asylum state of the Marvel Bullpen from roughly 1972-76, that produced both amazing creativity and a lot of missed deadlines and other problems, was never going to last forever. That a superhero comic series lasting decades will be divided into “runs,” and that most of those runs will end badly in one way or another, is sort of baked into the cake. For me as the next generation of reader, I never really got over John Byrne and Terry Austin leaving the X-Men. I’ve dipped my toe into the occasional X-book since then, but for me the Claremont/Byrne/Austin team splitting up was as frustrating as the Englehart/Colan/Palmer team splitting up was for a slightly older generation of readers. The best we can do as readers is to enjoy the good that somehow is produced under a system that was geared more towards separating kids from their quarters and selling Daisy BB guns that it was to creating Art, even though, against all odds, Art was somehow often still created.
I dunno, John. I’m a “slightly older reader,” and I was pretty upset about Byrne/Austin leaving X-Men, too. Also Marshall Rogers leaving Detective and Walt Simonson leaving Thor. You always hate when what you love comes to a close.
For sure, Don. As I said above, though, if one sticks around with comics past childhood, it becomes pretty clear that what you love is always going to come to a close sooner or later. From one point of view, I don’t think anyone has ever surpassed what Steve Ditko did with Dr. Strange. That original Baron Mordo/Dormammu/Eternity epic has never been topped. And yet we keep reading, and I like what Thomas, Colan, and Palmer did with Dr. Strange in the ‘60s, what Englehart, Brunner, Colan, and others did with the Doctor in the ‘70s, what Golden and Craig Russell did with the Doctor in the ‘80s, and so on. I’m even reading and enjoying the current Dr. Strange series with Steven stranded in Asgard with a bunch of characters I don’t fully understand.
Another item to be filed under “that’s what makes a horse race”: I, too, am reading the current Doctor Strange series — and am really struggling to get into it, despite the Asgardian setting (which ought to be right up my alley).
I’m not a very big Dr. Strange fan… but I’m a big fan of Ditko’s Dr. Strange. They’re their own thing!
I love Englehart, Colan, and Palmer…but Doc Strange as a solo act didn’t grab my 10 year old self in ’76. I bought an Englehart/Brunner Doc Strange tale when it was in Marvel Feature (Doc vs. Silver Dagger) at a younger age, and recall being wowed by the art, but utterly confused by the story. Given the nods to Francis Bacon and New Atlantis I think it’s safe to say that Englehart was writing above the level of a comic reader who was in elementary school. That said… reading Englehart’s Strange at an older age leaves me with the belief that he had a real feel for the character, and that it was a very daring book for the mid-70’s.
Guys, guys! You’re killing me! Bad enough to have to recall the departure of Englehart-Colan-Palmer from my favorite Doctor earlier today. But now you’ve got me reliving Shooter-Grell’s exodus from the Legion, Claremont-Byrne-Austin breaking up in the X-Men, Simonson leaving Thor and so on.
To console myself before dinner, I’m going to watch “The Empire Strikes Back: for the very first time ever. I hear we find out the identity of Luke Skywalker’s father. Now don’t anyone go spoiling that for me. 😉
Good point about the Daisy BB gun ads..!
Adult me understands all of this. 15 year old marvelite me demands that Englehart return to finish this story ¯\_(ツ)_/¯.
Stan made some implicit promises (all of that “continuity!” that no one could keep and it’s probably also worth remembering that the writers (and some of the artists) of these books were also Marvel Marching Society besotted fanboys themselves.
Don McGregor’s Panther was the biggest loss for me. Followed by (sigh) Kirby’s run with the unused plot threads later resolved by Ed Hannigan, possibly the worst writer of the Bronze Age (his Defenders run was, I think, the first time I quit buying because I hated the writing).
Odd thought from a History buff: I wonder if Dr John Dee, might not have been a better focus for this?
Dr Dee was accused of trying to bind, not a demon, but an Angel in order to get more information. Dee, who also dabbled in both Astrology and Optics, developed a number of techniques for grinding glass that were applied to telescopes and optometry. He is also remembered as one of the people who influenced the development of British Intelligence, along with such worthies as Sir Francis Walsingham.
Many assume he inspired Shakespeare’s character Prospero in The Tempest.
I’m guessing Bacon’s utopian visions play into Englehart’s themes more than Dee would have.
Certainly a different kind of “utopia.”
https://tombrevoort.com/2021/07/04/bhoc-doctor-strange-17/
I missed Doctor Strange #18 but did get #19. I don’t recall having particularly strong feelings about the change in the creative personnel – at least not as much as I felt about Englehart leaving Captain America & the Avengers and Gerber leaving the Defenders. And I generally liked most of what I’d read by Wolfman, although most of his superhero fare struck me as pretty middle-of-the-road – usually fun to read but rarely anything genuinely memorable or moving in some way. Englehart, yeah, he managed that more often. And Wolfman was better than average on Tomb of Dracula. I never got into the New Teen Titans, so I can’t comment on that. I think the next highs I felt in reading the Master of the Mystic Arts’ exploits in later issues were Starlin’s all too brief run and then Stern & Rogers’ run.
Regarding the Bicentennial, I was 14, between 8th grade in Potrero Hill Junior High School in San Francisco and starting 9th grade as a freshman in Lemoore High School. During the summer vacation, my family took a road trip to Texas for the wedding of one of my cousins in Mineola and to visit other relatives near Paris. I can’t remember which month we moved to Lemoore Naval Air Station, maybe late July or early August. And I can’t remember anything out of the ordinary we did to mark our nation’s 200th birthday, although I remember the “Bicentennial Minutes” on tv with various factoids about the Revolutionary War.
Sometimes it feels a bit weird to have gotten old enough to look back upon the past as various fragments, some clear, other opaque, a world at once near and far, familiar and yet ever more alien. In the realms of fantasy, Stephen Strange and Clea could travel to the past so easily to check things out for themselves, but in reality we can only keep moving forward and even if we can maintain some keepsakes from our past lives, such as our comics, we can’t go back to that lost world of the past in which we obtained them. Meanwhile, it’s fun reliving that past as best we can with our host, Alan!
I bought a few DC comics cover dated September 1976: Swamp Thing no. 24 (the final issue, and a real disappointment), Ragman no. 1 (great Kubert cover, and okay Kubert-Redondo studio interior art, with a serviceable, but not special story by Robert Kanigher), Green Lantern/Green Arrow no. 90 (a far cry from O’Neil’s “relevant” storylines of 1970-72), Starfire no. 1, & Sgt. Rock no. 296.
My kid brother bought Marvel Tales no. 71 ( reprinting the classic death of Captain Stacy story in Amazing Spider-Man no. 90), and I gave Nova no. 1 a try.
For me the real showstopper comic cover-dated September 1976 was Eerie no. 77 with a classic Rich Corben cover and interior story (scripted by Bruce Jones). You can see it here:
https://archive.org/details/eerie_magazine_077
I also bought Mad magazine no. 185, cover dated September 1976, when it was new. It was the last issue (with three later exceptions) to feature the work of artist Norman Mingo on the cover. He had created the definitive Alfred E. Neuman likeness in the late 1950s for Mad, based on less polished precedents that go back to the 19th century. Unknown to me at the time, Mingo was quite aged and ailing, so publisher Bill Gaines moved him over to the smaller and less artistically demanding Mad paperback book covers. It was the end of an era, though by this issue Mad was becoming pretty weak overall. Artists Mort Drucker, Sergio Aragones, and George Woodbridge were always in top form, but other old favorites were slipping.
So how does Stephen know that Styggro is Sorcerer Supreme rather than merely Sorcerer Very Powerful?
Dr. Strange says Huh? at the end of Issue 18 because he’s noticed that Clea’s blouse is now tied at the top whereas when he left her it was open. Clever story telling. Oh, and about the whole switch after Englehart left? Issue 19 was the last Strange I bought. Ever. How’s that for your “sales seemed to decline”, Mr. Wolfman?
I don’t think so – the last clear shot we have of Clea before Doc dives beneath the waves is when they find the ship deserted, and her blouse looks done up (as much as you can tell from the side view). When we first cut to inside Ben Franklin’s cabin (when he pours her whiskey), it’s clearly still done up, and doesn’t come undone until they ‘get down to it’. After Doc is pulled out of the water, it’s back to being done up like it was when Doc left her, so he never saw it undone.
Alcala, perhaps subconsciously, channels the classic pose from the cover of Superman 1 in the panel where Doctor Strange is blasting away at skeletons.
Mike Breen, looked it over and you’re correct. You’re a Sherlock Holmes caliber sleuth!
The thing with Ben Franklin macking on Clea and snuffing the candle out and Clea being into it is just very very weird, and odd for a mainstream Marvel comic. Was Stan Lee on a photo shoot in LA at the time? Regardless of any friction between her and Strange that had gone on for a number of issues… what! I was a fast worker when I was young and hair-follicly blessed, but that was truly fast work.
I was a hit or miss reader of DS in the day, mostly miss. I Loved the Brunner DS, meh on the Colon issues. Gene Colon’s anatomy and perspective is as wonky as Frank Robbins’, in my opinion, although Robbins’ sharp lines are more abrasive. The distorted anatomy works more with Dr. Strange and Dracula, mystical mist vibe, than it does with Daredevil and Iron Man.
In another “horse races” example, I liked him on both hero books. Particularly Daredevil, where he did well with the acrobatics and action.