Wednesday, November 15, 2017

Appearance Spotlight: Doctor Strange's magic

Recently, Marvel started a new initiative called Marvel Legacy that's basically supposed to get the characters back to their roots. As part of this initiative, they've started releasing brief retellings of characters' origins called Primer Pages, and Doctor Strange's is pretty interesting.

See, when Doctor Strange used his magic in comics, it generally looked like generic blasts of energy, like so:


But in the recent movie Doctor Strange (2016), they decided to make magic in the MCU look more like a mandala:


This was also how magic appeared in Guardians of the Galaxy Volume 2 (2017) when it was used by Krugarr:


And what do you know, it's also what magic looks like in the Primer Pages in Doctor Strange #381 (October 2017):


It remains to be seen whether this will become the standard appearance of magic or if it was only used in this story because it's retelling the origin and so did the movie, but surprisingly, it's not the first time magic has appeared like this in the Marvel Universe. Here's an excerpt from a miniseries called Spellbinders (2005):


If it were pretty much any other book, I'd assume Doctor Strange was purposefully referring to it. But Spellbinders was so small and inconsequential that I have a hard time believing it had any such impact. But if someone knows of an interview or something that says otherwise, let me know!

1 comment:

  1. I think Dr, Strange's magic was drawn as mandalas first in Marvel Mangaverse (2002). See the cover to issue #4 here: http://marvel.wikia.com/wiki/Marvel_Mangaverse_Vol_1_4 (and yes, that is the Magaverse Dr. Strange. The Mangaverse was weird.)

    I'm pretty sure this was in imitation of some manga... maybe Full Metal Alchemist?

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