0227: Doctor Strange (vol. 2) #35
Cover Date: June 1979 On-Sale Date: March 13, 1979
And we're back. To Doc's solo adventures. Doc gets serious about finding out who is needling him from another dimension. There are guest appearances from a couple of Avengers and Doc finally pics up his investigation on the Black Knight's petrified body seemingly sleepwalking out of his basement around issue #29. This is Tom Sutton's final outing as Doc penciller, but the awesome Gene Colan will be back next issue to impart his own form of bonkers onto Doc's adventures.
After fighting sewer demons, defeating a sorcerer wanting to run him through with a magic sword, defeating a duped bohemian party girl and causing his most recent foe to off himself, Doc has finally gotten around to answering the Avengers' call about his buddy Dane's petrified body finding the Sanctum Sanctorum basement so weird, it animated itself and walked off.
After a brief recap from Iron Man, Doc spends two-thirds of a page on a spell to put Humpty-Dumpty back together again. Despite Doc being powerful enough to move Namor's undersea castle to a faraway location way, way back in Fantastic Four #27 with no sweat, reassembling a statue exhausts him.
Clea is still wearing her sleeveless number with those odd streamer things, although they seem to be attached at the wrist now. That's probably a slight improvement in a practical sense. But Doc's got thousands of pointy mystic artifacts lying around the Sanctum just waiting to get ahold of things like that. Perhaps they're semi-sentient like Doc's cloak and just move out of the way. On the plus side, she's wearing some lovely, big earrings. Even those Dark Dimensioners must have a Claire's to get their piercings. Oh, and Doc notices that the status has a sword when it shouldn't. There's speculation it could be a fake. Doc will test the sword to reveal the truth and we get to see him banging away with it.
Doc and Clea leave with the sword. The Black Knight's body stays at Avengers Mansion for the moment. Doc explains to Clea that the sword may have been taken from Dane in the middle of a battle leaving him helpless. This leads to Doc saying he'll go back in time to check things out. The Dweller isn't happy about this. Doc's probing may stir up evidence of his temporal shenanigans. A distraction is called for.
Dweller dude sets his sights on some hapless guy crossing the street who blames all bad driving on New Jersey. This, plus the Dweller's influence causes him to blow up a hot dog stand and something a tad more sinister arises from the wreckage.
Doc and Clea do their quick-change act and go into battle with the gas monster. Doc contemplates what's going on and suspects there's a greater intelligence behind all this.
Realizing he'll need more pawns, Dweller dude scours the cosmos. Pretty much everyone politely declines the honor of serving the Dweller. We actually get to hear Umar's RSVP.
The panel above this show's Tiboro. Did Jed McKay see this and think "What if Tiboro knocked up Umar and they had to get married?" We may never know the answer. Dweller dude eventually finds a sap ready to do his bidding.
Ludi is looking for revenge against pretty much everyone because humanity found it a bit distasteful to sacrifice a bride to him every so often. That and his brother, Ningal, encountered someone named Murdoch Adams that got them both locked in a transparent cylinder.
Dweller dude reads the minds of the captive pair and finds something interesting. Seeing as Doc and Clea are about to trounce his gas monster, Dweller dude gets ready to send Ludi as a replacement. Back on Earth, the gas monster turns into a little magic whirlpool and Ludi emerges from it.
That's a really cool panel! Someone should make one of the exclusive statues of it. Ludi appears immune to Doc and Clea's magic bolts and they try to fight on. Meanwhile, Dweller dude has freed Ningal and Murdoch. Ningal is unconscious and Dweller dude is holding him in reserve. Murdoch appears on street in Manhattan. This whole situation doesn't seem to phase him. He immediately jumps in a cab and heads to Doc's Sanctum.
Back at the battle, Ludi is about to claw Doc to pieces when Clea unwraps the Black Knight's Ebony Blade and hurls it to Doc. Through Ludi! Doc then proceeds to hack relentlessly at Ludi until he turns back into the magical whirlpool. Our original hapless dude hating on New Jersey has returned seeming none worse for the wear.
Moving back to Greenwich Village, Murdoch has arrived at the Sanctum. He asks Wong for Stephen Sanders!
Whoa! Stern and Macchio have taken big steps to truly integrate Doc into the Marvel Universe at large with this issue. Sure, Doc's been getting lots of guest spots in other books, but this story refers back to lots of other heroes' previous adventures. They're even tying it to a story from an old Chamber of Chills issue when Marvel was reviving its monsters after the Comics Code Authority was somewhat defanged. Feel free to check out issues #3 and #4 of that title to get the back story.
I think the story flows nicely with my only real beef being Doc wanting to collapse after putting the Black Knight back together again. But that's a minor point and I can overlook it.
The Dweller is interesting here. He respects both Doc's power and intelligence. Many of Doc's foes do neither and underestimate him. The Dweller is being very careful not to do this. His plans are agile and adaptable to ensure Doc doesn't stumble on a possible weakness. Sadly, the version of the Dweller introduced into the MCU embodies none of this and barely resembles his comic counterpart.
There's some violent imagery here. If this tale was printed to today and drawn by a less surreal artist, the New Jersey hating dude and the final swordfight would have been much more visceral. Our unnamed thrall my have been shown blasted to pieces amongst the hot dogs and Ludi may have looked like Wolverine had a go at him. However, 'twas not the era for such things.
Lastly, we get a nice mystery when Murdoch asks for Doc's long abandoned alias. It gets solved rather quickly, but it was still something for contemporary readers to mull over for two months while waiting for the next issue.
I am well pleased with this one!
