Death of Doctor Strange (2021) #1 (of 5) (Death of Doctor Strange by Jed Mackay
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Well, this is annoyingly good. I say “annoyingly” because I only picked this up because I collect Peach Momoko variant covers, but I thought I might as well actually read it… See, I wasn’t going to get this series. Sure, I was interested, I like Doctor Strange, a lot, but I already read way too much…but after reading this I’m going to have to pick up the whole series.

I’m a sucker for a mystery, and that’s what this is. Doctor Strange has been murdered and there’s only one man qualified to investigate and find out who the murderer is…is Doctor Strange.

The writing is sharp, the art is great and the variant cover by Peach Momoko is stunning!

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Doctor Strange (1974-1987) #74 by Peter B. Gillis
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

So, according to Wikipedia some of the threads left dangling at the end of Gillis’ run on New Defenders were picked up in his subsequent work after that book was cancelled. Having read that run I figured that I’d check out his those books…which brought me to his short run on Doctor Strange and this odd little issue.

Odd because it’s a Secret Wars II tie in, and it’s been many years since I read any of the rest of Secret Wars II, not that I think this would make much more sense if I was reading it in context.

The Beyonder, in human form, seeks out Doctor Strange because he believes that he’ll be able to show him how to reach enlightenment. Strange initially contemplates just simply destroying The Beyonder, but instead decides to essentially make The Beyonder live through his origin story as a way to guide him to enlightenment. What The Beyonder learns is that he should try to increase people’s happiness and decrease their pain. A revelation, I know.

Ultimately it’s very much a nothingy, inconsequential part of a sprawling crossover, in which nothing much of any consequence really happens. For what it is it’s well written and the art, by Mark Badger, has an interesting Mognola-esque minimalism to it that I rather like.

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