Review by C.J. Bunce
These days when you think of the occult in comics, you probably think of the black magic of Sabrina in Archie Comics’ Chilling Adventures of Sabrina. The magic of Doctor Strange is hardly the same thing at all, a creation of Stan Lee and artist Steve Ditko, the first stories of Doctor Stephen Strange–the would-be Sorcerer Supreme–and his battles with forces from the Dark Dimension, were more psychedelic, cosmic voyages, consistent with the more bizarre corners of 1960s drug culture. It’s a blend of Benedict Cumberbatch’s Avenger from the Marvel Cinematic Universe and the original defender and protégé of the Ancient One that takes center stage in this week’s new Marvel novel, Doctor Strange: Dimension War, by James Lovegrove, available in hardcover now here at Amazon.
Of the 19 novels from Titan Books adapting Marvel Comics (most reviewed here at borg), this may be the most comic book-ish yet, thanks in no small part to Stan Lee’s style of superhero world-building and naiming conventions. Readers won’t be five pages into the story before they feel the presence of Stan the Man via his frequent alliteration and story props created out of thin air with no deep meaning, but that just sound cool. This is comic book fun in the realm of Superfriends and the 1960s Batman from that other big comic book publisher. Readers get treated to battles between Doctor Strange and Baron Mordo, Nightmare, denizens of the Counterclockwise Circle, and ultimately Dormammu himself in the same style we once saw Batman outwit, in turn, the Riddler, Penguin, and the Joker.
Keeping with Stan and Steve’s original stories with Roy Thomas (this book pulls its story primarily from the first appearances of Strange in the Strange Tales comic), the story lacks any lead female heroes. Dr. Christine Palmer from the movies wasn’t an original comic character, but Dormammu’s niece Clea is introduced in the back half of the story as a potential mate for Strange in possible future novels (should we all be forgiven, however, if we see her in the form of Lara Pulver’s Irene Adler from the Sherlock TV series?).
Known for his adaptation tie-ins for Sherlock Holmes and the crew of TV’s Firefly series, James Lovegrove makes sense writing the voice of Stephen Strange if you’re a fan of the movie version of the character. Just like it is often difficult to separate the author’s take on Holmes from Cumberbatch’s voice, this Strange will be difficult to separate from Cumberbatch, too. Other characters will be less difficult. Dormammu isn’t manifest in human form in the movies, and this novel reverts to the original Ancient One, who took a male form, unlike the movie version played by Tilda Swinton. Whether or not readers see the rest of the cast as their movie characters will be up to the eye and ear of the reader.
And those characters fill out the primary cast here: Baron Mordo is Strange’s key adversary. Where Dormammu is seen as the story’s Big Bad and the Ancient One as his opposite, Mordo is more a dismissed student of the Ancient One, too fixated on the Dark Dimension. Most welcome is Wong, the key ally and fellow student of the Ancient One, a future Sorcerer Supreme in his own right.
But Lovegrove’s Britishness in dialogue also coupled with Doctor Strange’s psychedelic inter-dimensional travel might also have you seeing Cumberbatch, or, er, Doctor Strange as the Doctor of the Doctor Who franchise. Every time Strange soars from this dimension to the next, it’s like he’s flying through the introduction to the latest introduction to a Who episode. Maybe in the 21st century all the big sci-fi and fantasy players have merged as one, with seemingly every new tale about parallel Earths and alternate futures or pasts.
This is a fun revisit to Doctor Strange’s origins in a lively novel. Catch Doctor Strange: Dimension War, available this week in a hardcover edition here at Amazon.
