Yes! When he first appeared, Dr Strange seemed almost secret, as if not meant for everyone. His short strip was in the back of STRANGE TALES, starring the flamboyant Human Torch, and Dr Strange was not mentioned on the cover at all until HIS sixth episode (and that only a discreet blurb without a picture). The stories were more than a little creepy and well, strange. Lee and Ditko continued turning out the fantasy/horror one-shots that they had been enjoyably doing for years but added a continuing protagonist. I would say that Mandrake was not much of an inspiration for Strange, but radio's CHANDU THE MAGICIAN was. Both sorcerers had an elderly teacher in Tibet they could call upon for guidance, both were Americans who had learned magic in the East, both used incantations. Another big influence seems to me to have been the 1963 version of THE RAVEN. After that movie came out, Dr Strange gradually lost his sinister, quasi-Asian features and became much more conventional-looking. He rather resembled Vincent Price, in fact. Trimming that mustache and eyebrows with those odd upward spikes helped, of course.
In STRANGE TALES# 126, Strange became more colorful and overtly super-heroic, more in line with the general Marvel tone. He entered the dimension of Dormammu for a real (mystic) slugfest, and his somber dark blue cloak was replaced by a bright red cape with yellow trim and a pointed collar that gave him a distinctive outline very useful for artists. And of course, in the long decades since, he has been humbled, broken, rebuilt, died and come back, become "NEW! SHOCKING!" gone back to the basics, and all the other fates comic book heroes endure.
Not enough Silver Age annotations round here lately. Let's see, how about STRANGE TALES# 116, from back in January 1964..?
Page 1. Holy cow. This is heavy stuff from the subconscious of Steve Ditko. Imagine you are ten or eleven, and you just finished a light-hearted Human Torch strip in the first half of the comic, all colorful and sassy, typically super-hero stuff. Then you come to this and it takes your breath away. What is going on here? Who is that ominous figure on an evil unicorn, prodding a sort of red spider-critter toward an all-white ghost? Why is the ground wet? Who knows? Why is there a sinister eye in the shrubbery, or for that matter why are there tentacles uncoiling from it. Because it's the universe where nightmares come from. It has its own logic. It's a universe away from Johnny Storm's carefree laughter as he plays tag with some masked bank robber.
Page 2. Dang. I am STILL not sure what we're looking at in this first panel. Your guess is as good as mine. Then we meet the villain. Quite a concept, "Nightmare," the ruler of the dimension where we go when we dream. Dr Strange would tangle with characters who are embodied concepts rather than living creatures of flesh and blood, most notably Eternity itself (the universe within a human outline) but nothing could beat Nightmare. Panel Two shows how Ditko envisioned Evil as Eastern Europe, with ragged peasants in chains and hulking brutal secret police. Why is the ground wet, again? Beats me. Maybe they were hosing the blood away. Nightmare has a sort of David Bowie-look there; Ditko basically associated short neat Brylcreem hair with everything decent, while dry wild shaggy hair was a sign of degeneracy. I bet as the Sixties hit and the streets were filled with longhaired bearded freaks, he got all agitated and thought it was a sign of the end times. Panel four is evocative. Is Nightmare being shown his two enemies in a pair of eyes... Sure seems like it. Panel 5 is another mood-setting glimpse into the nightmare world. Is that some robed denizen going on a mission there? Hard to say. And what are those drops splashing into a blob of something or other, Sheesh. When we see Dr Strange himself in his "shadowy candelit apartment", he seems downright normal after where we just were.
Page 3. Here the representatives of everything sane and established and authoritative admit they have failed. A uniformed cop and a doctor with his black bag say they are useless against this sleeping sickness and have come in desperation to the Unknown for help. All that's missing is a college professor. It's funny that in a few years, Ditko would likely have not included this scene (if he did a mystic character at all). After he went overboard with Ayn Rand, he showed all useful knowledge as coming from Logic and Reason, with of course no room for grey because everything was either All Good or All Evil with no shadings. After Rand, I don't think he would have shown Dr Strange as anything other than a charlatan to be exposed by the hero.
Page 4. Interesting that Strange invokes Dormammu when casting a spell. At this point, Stan was just making up wild names but of course we soon get to actually meet Dormammu. You know it's a bad-ass dimension when you have to walk between giant rattlesnake fangs!
Page 5. Nightmare seems to have captured the souls (or spiritual essences or ectoplasm or whatever) of the humans he has affected with his sleep spell. That's a typical Ditko version of a cell they're trapped in The floating demon head with a door for a mouth is also classic Ditko. You notice in panel four, that when Strange steps through that door, there is no back to the demon head he just entered.. .it's just a doorway in open space. That's quite a drop in panel 6, watch your step, Doc.
Page 6. The cross-hatched area around Nightmare's bolt is a nice touch. It makes the blast itself look brighter by contrast. Quick thinking there, Dr Strange. That sash is not there just as a fashion statement. I am sure he could also dip it in water, twist it and give Nightmare a stinging wet-towel sort of snap. ("That's what I think of you, Nightmare.")
Page 7. Here is where Nightmare does that Nelson laugh from the Simpsons. ("HA-ha!") Got ya. Strange should have backed down the path but he stepped up on the platform and now he's screwed. That Spinybeast has zero cuddle factor. Not sure just what that Thing is at the bottom of the crevice but I don't like the looks of it.
Baron Mordo shot and killed in Los Angeles Mentioning Dr Strange reminds me of this unfortunate incident:
This just in. Karl Mordo, evil sorceror who has long been a public menace to our dimension, was killed this afternoon by a single gunshot wound to the head. Apparently this mundane weapon took him by surprise.
In custody, the unnamed perpretator is quoted as saying, "The fool was throwing gang signs. He dissed my hood, I had to pop a cap on his ass."
Mordo's longtime arch-enemy Dr Stephen Strange of New York City reportedly could not stop laughing long enough to make a comment. In lieu of flowers, the Mordo family asks that goats be sacrificed to the Dread Dormammu.
