What makes the best comic book covers? It’s a great topic for debate. For us as individuals there is no wrong answer, of course. It’s purely subjective. But with a little thought it is frequently possible to explain what it is about a particular image that grabs you. The best ones are the ones that make you stop and check out something you weren’t previously going to purchase – and in some cases, you even end up picking up a title you’ve never even heard of before.
Audiences in the summer of 2016 were jumping up from their seats when the trailer for the new Doctor Strange film dropped. Filled with special effects that look as if they are torn from the drawing boards of M.C. Escher, the film looks as if it just might have fully captured the feel of a great Doctor Strange comic as originally drawn by Steve Ditko. Add in Benedict Cumberbatch’s uncanny natural resemblance to the great magician and it looks as if Marvel Studios may have another off-beat, unexpected hit. While he certainly ranks as worthy of a major motion picture, Doctor Strange had a long struggle to even get to his first cover appearance.
In truth, if the movie is a hit, it can’t be that unexpected. From his first appearance in Strange Tales #110 (July 1963), Ditko and Stan Lee had crafted a wonderful, fully dimensional and completely absorbing character who travels among infinite worlds and dimensions for the modern screenwriters and directors to act on.
Doctor Strange wasn’t a hit out of the gate. In fact, he wasn't even on the cover of the first issue that he appears in. It takes six months for him to get an image on a cover. His first cover mention is a simple box/blurb on Strange Tales #117 (February 1964).
That changes on Strange Tales #118 (March 1964). The Magician is seen working a spell across the bottom eighth of the cover. After this issue the covers slowly begin to take on a life of their own. In time they will become filled with space, time, dimensions, surrealistic images, and occasional trips into psychedelia. Ditko’s work on Doctor Strange during this early period is hall of fame material, a pure goldmine for fans.
Doctor Strange is definitely Ditko’s creation with Stan Lee adding his own touch of imaginative magic. In his debut story and working across those first five pages, Ditko creates a thick, heavy world of tightly constructed panels that can sometimes number ten to a page.
Despite the weight of the story and the panels, the character himself, on first introduction, seems to move with the lightness of a feather. It is an odd contradiction to his surroundings.
While the Torch and the Fantastic Four seem to often live and work in a brilliantly lit and detailed cityscape or open-spaced countryside, where Dr. Strange lives and operates seems to be the unsettling darkness of dreams and the ether. This is a world where astral projection is a legitimate means of travel and the dream state holds both nightmares and answers.
In this first appearance Doctor Strange is a five-page back-up feature that didn’t even rate a cover mention. In fact, Lee has noted in several interviews over the years that the first story was a bit rushed. Prior to Doctor Strange’s first appearance, Strange Tales hosted solo stories featuring The Human Torch.
It took a little more than half a year before the Mighty Mystic was able to move to the cover of the magazine. Strange Tales #118 (March 1964) fills seven/eighths of the cover with the Torch and the Fantastic Four. But the bottom eighth has a surprise. For the first time in his career, Doctor Strange himself appears on a cover.
His eyes are closed and he appears in deep concentration. That massive collar seems to wrap around half of his head and there is a strange medallion hanging from around his neck. On first impression, Doctor Strange seems to more than live up to the story’s title, “The Possessed.”
This appearance means that it is also the first time that he appears on newsstands across America. After some highly original work by Ditko and Lee over the last six months, Marvel seems ready to take a chance on the good Doctor’s ability to pull in readers for this title.
A quick look at the distribution of comic books in 1963-1964 helps explain why it took Doctor Strange so long to appear on a cover. With newsstands the prevalent form of distribution for comic books at the time, an attention-grabbing placement on a newsstand could mean death or life for a title.
Marvel’s distribution deal at the time limited them to a small number of titles eight every month. Which means that when they designed a cover, they had to go with the best possible image in order to sell the book. Which is one of the reasons that the Torch was so prominently displayed on the front of Strange Tales for so long. Plus, as comic fans know, you can’t argue with a Jack Kirby cover. And he did some fun, fun work on the Torch, Captain America, and The Thing on the Strange Tales covers during this period.
By Strange Tales #118 Marvel is starting to see the sales numbers on the title float in. They must have been good because shortly after Doctor Strange’s appearance that issue’s cover, he then makes a full body appearance on Fantastic Four #27 (June 1964).
Cloaked in a green glow at the back while the Fantastic Four and the Sub-Mariner go at it right in front of him, Doctor Strange is easily recognizable. Beginning with the previously mentioned Strange Tales #118 Doctor Strange starts to receive cover blurbs and occasionally art. The front covers are still dominated by the Torch, but Strange is now there.
As an editor and writer, watched the numbers on the last six issues of Strange Tales and he could see that there was something special about the mysticism and mind-expanding art that Ditko was creating. By placing the Mystic on the cover, albeit in a limited capacity, the editor was testing to see how much those who were buying the magazine really wanted to see the good Doctor.
The next few covers of Strange Tales see Doctor Strange drop back to a cover blurb. Finally, on the cover of Strange Tales #121, Doctor Strange gets some serious space on the cover. The top three quarters find the Human Torch battling Plantman (again…?). But the money for this issue is on the bottom quarter.
Against a purple background that contrasts sharply with the light blue and brilliance of the Human Torch’s fight with Plantman, two shadowy figures stand poised for a battle. Surrounding them are a motley group of stone-faced denizens who look as if they popped up from a dungeon in the Middle Ages. To the right stands a guard whose helmet looks as if it houses the jaws of a giant predator. Next to him is an executioner so weighed down by the heft of his axe that he can barely stand. Between the two figures sits a crowned thug who looks as if he could have crawled from the depths of a stone quarry and had been animated by the vengeful mind of the great god Zeus. On the far left a stern-faced man stands as if it is, in fact, he who is in charge and not the fool on the throne. In the center are the combatants. One, the man on the left in the gold-belted blue tunic, looks as if he is defending a religious cult while the other appears to have emerged from a gulag run by Evil Joe Stalin himself.
While Ditko could make Doctor Strange soar over the astral plane like no other artist in comics, this time the magician seems to be rooted on the physical plane. While the title, “Witchcraft in the Wax Museum,” locks the image in the real world, Ditko’s skill removes from this simple plane of existence and takes him into the ethereal. It is a long panel that recalls a close-up in a giant Cinerama movie show. It is a strong, regal start to a series of covers that, once the reigns of Marvel’s distribution deal have loosened up, would eventually take Doctor Strange into his own book.
But it is Strange Tales #123 (July 1964) that takes the cake as well as the prize of being this week’s Cover Story feature.
The Doctor Strange of #122 is shown in full battle. As exciting as Ditko makes it, it is still a common image on a comic book cover. There isn’t a chance for a new reader to grab onto anything really identifying in this portrayal of Doctor Strange for nothing about his individuality really seems to come through.
The Doctor Strange of Strange Tales #123 (August 1964) is a goldmine. And it isn’t just because Loki shows up either. The issue features cover art by Kirby, who isn’t really known for drawing Doctor Strange before.
His version is very close to Ditko’s, but look at the good Doctor’s hands. They are a bit more, well, chunky and Thing-like than when Ditko draws the Sorcerer. There is also something just a touch more menacing about the way that Kirby has portrayed the Doctor. Especially when compared to Ditko’s style which tends to stay closer to the mystical and light feel of the character’s normally thin frame. As to that frame, Kirby seems to add a few more cloaks, or at least add weight to the Doctor in general.
The inside story is all Ditko as Doctor Strange takes on a villain-character that is closely associated with cover artist, Kirby. His touch on Loki as well as the world of Asgard itself, is lighter in tone but just as heavy on thrills.
The way that the artist portrays the complicated machinery of Asgard doesn’t bear the complexities and details that Kirby imbues his machines with when the King draws them. But instead the images float in an almost serene surrounding that buoys up the world that Kirby and Lee created in a more free-flowing form.
Splitting the cover with the Human Torch for the first time, Doctor Strange looks to be deep in concentration and completely assured of himself as he pares off with Loki. A box featuring a headshot of Thor masks his bottom half, but Kirby still adds a sense of dignity and authority to Doctor Strange that the previous covers didn’t seem to have time or space to do.
Earlier covers gave a hint of what and who Doctor Strange was. Strange Tales #123 shows them who he is in all of his full glory.
-Mark Squirek