New Avengers Annual #1

The important Marvel character of Doctor Strange is today relegated to a supporting role in the pages of The New Avengers. But New Avengers Annual #1 is all Dr. Strange. The art by Marco Rudy is so good I think it proves my point that the art in today's comic books is as fine as that found anywhere.

For many years I lived with a woman who was a fine artist, a painter, a holder of a prestigious degree from a respected art school. I lived with her while she practiced her craft, lived through her struggles getting her work displayed. We went to a lot of gallery openings and museum shows together. Prior to my relationship with Mary, I had figured out how to look at art by hanging out with my father-in-law, who was an artist and art professor. You sort of open yourself up and let it in, and then, being honest, you tell yourself what just happened.

When my father was going through a difficult spell with my mother, and probably with life in general -- this was during the Watergate era -- he read Doctor Strange: Master of the Mystic Arts. I think it had an impact on him, particularly Doctor Strange #4, "Dr. Strange Meets . . . DEATH!"  In that issue, Dr. Strange travels inside his powerful amulet, the Eye of Agamotto, to rescue his girlfriend Clea, who has been kidnapped and taken there by the evil villain Silver Dagger, who looks like an aging blue-collar Hippie.

Dr. Strange confronts death, actually dies, but, if my memory serves me, he triumphs in the end, in a later issue, not #4, by realizing that death is just his own ego. Very true. I think he smashes a mirror or the Eye of Agamotto itself and frees himself. I could be wrong. I am recollecting all this from grade-school boyhood memories.

The run of Doctor Strange issues that Steve Englehart and Frank Brunner produced together in 1973 and 1974 are definitive of the era, a high point culturally, up there with Bruce Lee movies and Neil Young's Ditch Trilogy.

Below you will find six scans from New Avengers Annual #1 (August 2014), the cover and first five interior pages minus the introductory title page with credits. All the art is Marco Rudy's. Frank Barbiere is the writer. The story flashes back and forth between time present and time past. Time past is Stephen Strange as a cocky young neurosurgeon. Time present is Doctor Strange on a trip back to the Tibet mountain hideaway where he learned the mystic arts from the Ancient One.