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