Doctor Strange #18 // Review
The Sorcerer Supreme of Earth’s dimension stops by the residence of an unsuspecting couple. They are quite unaware of his reason for being there. Things are about to get strange: Doctor Strange. The series continues to wind-down the final issues of its current run in a fun, little story written by Mark Waid with art by Jesus Saiz. After just reconstructed the whole of the Marvel Universe from scratch with both Eternity and the Living Tribunal looking on. Dr. Strange goes for something set in a much more mundane setting as Waid throws him into a perfectly ordinary domestic American setting. It’s a fun contrast to Strange’s recent cosmic adventures.
Doctor Strange has returned from a grand Multiversal adventure that featured some of the most powerful entities in the Marvel Universe. Naturally, the next place he’s going to turn up is a small house in Kansas. The couple who reside there is about to have a party for their daughter. Strange isn’t there to do party tricks. The couple is quite perplexed at their sudden uninvited guest. They are even more perplexed to find Strange engaging in conversation a demonic being known as Xennerak who speaks in rhyming couplets.
Waid jumps right into the story with no explanation. The reader is every bit as perplexed as the residents of the small Kansas home. Precisely how it was that Strange came to be where he is now from where he was at the end of the last issue is unexplained. Which serves the confusion of the chapter quite well. The reader is far more familiar with Strange than some anonymous couple living in Kansas. Yet the reader sees the entire adventure more or less through their eyes, which is kind of an amusing juxtaposition. Waid’s recent work on a cosmic level with the largest possible canvas felt a bit weak. Here he’s working on a canvas as small as a single-family home, and it works beautifully.
Saiz has a beautifully articulated grasp of the fantastic as a monstrous demon prowls about an otherwise normal-looking midwestern home. Strange is far too lost in his investigation to pay too much attention to the people occupying the home. Saiz’s smart rendering dramatic contrast between people rightly upset with the sudden home invasion and Strange’s intent focus makes for a clever human dynamic. The home itself feels very sparsely-decorated. Saiz hasn’t taken too much care to focus on the home. The TV sitcom soundstage-like feel of the home dampens some of the impact of the setting. A bit more of a lived-in feel etched into the backgrounds of the panels would have amplified the weirdness of demonic manifestation in a midwestern home. This is scarcely an issue as the lack of distraction in the background allows the focus of the visuals to land quite squarely on the conflict between Dr. Strange and the slimy demon Xennerak.
Doctor Strange #18 is a sharp departure from the usual. A standalone house call involving an invading demon is such a deliciously simple concept for a Doctor Strange issue. Surprisingly, a story like this hasn’t been tried more often in the long and winding history of the series. It’s a great deal of fun.
