Stephanie Kay
Oct 13, 2007, 10:40 pm
<a href="http://www.comixfan.com/xfan/4images/details.php?image_id=10196" target="_blank"><img src="http://www.comixfan.com/xfan/images/previews/marvel/1106/DRSTROATH002_colt.jpg" hspace=10 align=left alt="Doctor Strange: The Oath #2"></a>Reviewer: Robin Lewis, lucillerobin@aol.com
Story Title: The Oath (part two of five)
A dip into the Sorcerer Supreme's past.
Writer: Brian K Vaughan
Art: Marcos Martin
Colors: Javier Rodriguez
Letters: Willie Schubert
Assistant Editors: Molly Lazer & Aubrey Sitterson
Editor: Tom Brevoort
Editor In Chief: Joe Quesada
Publisher: Dan Buckley
Published by: Marvel Comics (www.marvel.com)
With acknowledgement to the works of: Stan Lee & Steve Ditko
Doctor Strange is one of those odd characters in the comics pantheon. He's pre-eminent in his chosen field, more powerful than a hundred other heroes, recognisable to anyone with a passing familiarity in the Marvel universe, but utterly unable to sustain enough interest to launch an ongoing book. Instead, he's been getting mini-series (and Dead Girl was fooling no-one - it was a Doctor Strange series in all but name), as Marvel continually try to make enough people care about the Sorcerer Supreme to make that elusive ongoing a viable property. This time, fresh from killing Gert over in Runaways, it's Brian K Vaughan taking a stab at a Stephen Strange story. The first issue was a joy, a breath of fresh air in an incresingly fractious and sprawling Marvel universe. Here was a story told with wit and artistic simplicity that made Vaughan's leaving Runaways much less a cause for disappointment if the result was going to be books like this.
After retrieving an apparent cure for cancer last issue in an effort to save his most trusted servant, we pick things up as Strange is recovering from the gunshot wound that incapacitated him for long enough to see the elixir stolen. From here we flashback to the incident itself, then by way of a nice little gag about Brooklyn into Strange's past life as a deeply unpleasant surgeon. Oh, yes: Strange wasn't always the affable aesthete with a fine line in Vincent Price impersonations, and it's nice to see a little more of him than a sudden guest appearance as a deux ex machina in someone elses story. He even gets the chance to flirt a little, as Night Nurse accompanies him on the investigations into his attacker. Accompanying Vaughan in his quest to make Strange more human, Marcos Martin does some sterling work on art duties. His style is perfect for Strange, making him into a slender reed of a man: think David Niven, but with a wardrobe designed by the same guy who takes care of Ming the Merciless.
He wisely chose to get things off to a flier in the first issue, but Vaughan keeps things going at a decent clip here in what is essentially the set-up issue for his story. Vuaghan is proving himself to be one of the ablest writers Marvel have got at the moment, putting out four or five different books (and not all of them for Marvel), each of them excellent and of a consistently high quality, but each of them very different. Marvel are notorious for pushing out mini-series after mini-series with little to no publicity, seeing them then sink unsurprisingly into the very bottom of the sales chart. The Oath deserves much better, though I've seen very little in the way of hype or backing from Marvel. If they're are trying to test the waters of a possible Doctor Strange ongoing they have in this book a superb example of how good one could be. There's still no guaruntee that we'd be smart enough to buy such a thing, but based on this it would be well worth a shot.
OVERALL:
http://www.comixfan.com/xfan/images/reviews/mfull.jpg http://www.comixfan.com/xfan/images/reviews/mfull.jpg http://www.comixfan.com/xfan/images/reviews/mfull.jpg http://www.comixfan.com/xfan/images/reviews/mfull.jpg http://www.comixfan.com/xfan/images/reviews/mhalf.jpg
‘Buy this issue online now from X-WORLD and save!’ (http://x-worldcomics.com/yourvirtualstore/shopdisplayproducts.asp?id=2482&cat=DOCTOR+STRANGE+THE+OATH)
Story Title: The Oath (part two of five)
A dip into the Sorcerer Supreme's past.
Writer: Brian K Vaughan
Art: Marcos Martin
Colors: Javier Rodriguez
Letters: Willie Schubert
Assistant Editors: Molly Lazer & Aubrey Sitterson
Editor: Tom Brevoort
Editor In Chief: Joe Quesada
Publisher: Dan Buckley
Published by: Marvel Comics (www.marvel.com)
With acknowledgement to the works of: Stan Lee & Steve Ditko
Doctor Strange is one of those odd characters in the comics pantheon. He's pre-eminent in his chosen field, more powerful than a hundred other heroes, recognisable to anyone with a passing familiarity in the Marvel universe, but utterly unable to sustain enough interest to launch an ongoing book. Instead, he's been getting mini-series (and Dead Girl was fooling no-one - it was a Doctor Strange series in all but name), as Marvel continually try to make enough people care about the Sorcerer Supreme to make that elusive ongoing a viable property. This time, fresh from killing Gert over in Runaways, it's Brian K Vaughan taking a stab at a Stephen Strange story. The first issue was a joy, a breath of fresh air in an incresingly fractious and sprawling Marvel universe. Here was a story told with wit and artistic simplicity that made Vaughan's leaving Runaways much less a cause for disappointment if the result was going to be books like this.
After retrieving an apparent cure for cancer last issue in an effort to save his most trusted servant, we pick things up as Strange is recovering from the gunshot wound that incapacitated him for long enough to see the elixir stolen. From here we flashback to the incident itself, then by way of a nice little gag about Brooklyn into Strange's past life as a deeply unpleasant surgeon. Oh, yes: Strange wasn't always the affable aesthete with a fine line in Vincent Price impersonations, and it's nice to see a little more of him than a sudden guest appearance as a deux ex machina in someone elses story. He even gets the chance to flirt a little, as Night Nurse accompanies him on the investigations into his attacker. Accompanying Vaughan in his quest to make Strange more human, Marcos Martin does some sterling work on art duties. His style is perfect for Strange, making him into a slender reed of a man: think David Niven, but with a wardrobe designed by the same guy who takes care of Ming the Merciless.
He wisely chose to get things off to a flier in the first issue, but Vaughan keeps things going at a decent clip here in what is essentially the set-up issue for his story. Vuaghan is proving himself to be one of the ablest writers Marvel have got at the moment, putting out four or five different books (and not all of them for Marvel), each of them excellent and of a consistently high quality, but each of them very different. Marvel are notorious for pushing out mini-series after mini-series with little to no publicity, seeing them then sink unsurprisingly into the very bottom of the sales chart. The Oath deserves much better, though I've seen very little in the way of hype or backing from Marvel. If they're are trying to test the waters of a possible Doctor Strange ongoing they have in this book a superb example of how good one could be. There's still no guaruntee that we'd be smart enough to buy such a thing, but based on this it would be well worth a shot.
OVERALL:
http://www.comixfan.com/xfan/images/reviews/mfull.jpg http://www.comixfan.com/xfan/images/reviews/mfull.jpg http://www.comixfan.com/xfan/images/reviews/mfull.jpg http://www.comixfan.com/xfan/images/reviews/mfull.jpg http://www.comixfan.com/xfan/images/reviews/mhalf.jpg
‘Buy this issue online now from X-WORLD and save!’ (http://x-worldcomics.com/yourvirtualstore/shopdisplayproducts.asp?id=2482&cat=DOCTOR+STRANGE+THE+OATH)