Eternity

Doctor Strange #13 (April, 1976)

Posted on by Alan Stewart

As regular readers of this blog will recall from our November, 2025 post about Doctor Strange #12, that particular installment of the adventures of Marvel Comics’ Master of the Mystic Arts ended not with a whimper, but a bang.  Actually, a series of bangs, by the end of which the planet Earth (the “real” one, writer Steve Englehart’s script assured us) had been completely and utterly destroyed, along with all living things thereon.  “But then,” Englehart’s omniscient narrator pointedly asked us readers, “how is it you remain?”  How, indeed?  The answer to that poser was promised for the next bimonthly issue… which, of course, brings us to the subject of today’s post.  Read More

Doctor Strange #12 (February, 1976)

Posted on by Alan Stewart

Four months ago, we took a look at Doctor Strange #10, which presented the first chapter in writer Steve Englehart and artist Gene Colan’s latest (as of July, 1975) four-part saga of the Sorcerer Supreme — this one involving our hero’s attempt to prevent the awesome cosmic entity Eternity from destroying the Earth.  Naturally, that story had continued in the next bi-monthly issue of the series; but since we didn’t manage to fit a full post about Doctor Strange #11 into our September blogging schedule, we’ll need to cover its main events before moving on to the specific comic whose name and cover you see at the top of this post.  If you’re a regular reader, you already know how this goes… and if you’re not, I’m sure you’ll figure it out as we roll along.  Read More

Doctor Strange #10 (October, 1975)

Posted on by Alan Stewart

Fifty years ago this month, writer Steve Englehart and artist Gene Colan were just coming off a four-part storyline in Doctor Strange that had focused on a couple of the Master of the Mystic Arts’ best-established arch-foes — the Dread Dormammu and his sister Umar — when the latest issue of the title arrived on stands with a cover signaling that the creative team was returning to the well for another deep dip into the feature’s past.  After all, Baron Mordo was arguably Doctor Strange’s oldest adversary, having first appeared in the heroic magician’s second published adventure (in Strange Tales #111 [Aug., 1963]), and then soon thereafter being confirmed to have played a role in his origin story (Strange Tales #115 [Dec., 1963]).  Meanwhile, Eternity (who wasn’t exactly a villain, per se) had almost as distinguished a provenance, his debut appearance having come near the end of the seminal run of Dr. Strange’s creators, writer Stan Lee and artist Steve Ditko, in Strange Tales #138 (Nov., 1965).  Read More

Doctor Strange #180 (May, 1969)

Posted on by Alan Stewart

As I’ve related in previous posts, I was a little slow in warming up to Doctor Strange.  Marvel Comics finally got me in late 1968, however, through the double-barrelled approach of first giving him a visual makeover, and then guest-starring him in The Avengers.  Those moves caught my interest — which, according to what Roy Thomas (a Marvel associate editor at the time, not to mention the writer of both Doctor Strange and Avengers) would state decades later in his introduction to Marvel Masterworks – Doctor Strange, Vol. 3, was precisely what the publisher had hoped they’d do.

But the next issue of Doctor Strange to hit the stands after Avengers #61 was a reprint, featuring the good Doctor’s “old look” — though, since it was a reprint of a classic tale by Steve Ditko and Stan Lee that co-starred Spider-Man, and which was 100 % new to me, I didn’t really have much to complain about.  Still, I was happy to see Doctor Strange #180, the “real” follow-up to Avengers #61, when it finally arrived in early February, 1969.  Read More