Doctor Strange #387 - Marvel Comics

DOCTOR STRANGE No. 387, May 2018

Perhaps somewhat surprisingly shifting 25,918 copies in March 2018, a rise in sales of over a thousand books according to “Diamond Comic Distributors”, Donny Cates’ narrative for Issue Three Hundred and Eighty Seven of “Doctor Strange” must surely have still disappointed some with its truly depressing depiction of the “once again” Sorcerer Supreme as a thoroughly broken man. Indeed, it is hard to imagine the Master of the Mystic Arts at more of a low point in his life than that at the start of this second instalment to the American author’s “Bleeding Neon” storyline, where he lies immobile on the stone floor of “Mephisto’s Hellish Hotel Inferno”, his useless legs shattered into pieces by “a demonic Thor… with a burning hammer” and his left bloodshot eye trickling tears of despair at his utter failure to defeat the demon’s power.

Fortunately however, the former preeminent surgeon does not languish in the doldrums for the entirety of this twenty-page periodical, and after some significant soul-searching, as well as numerous speech-balloon riddled panels, is eventually rescued by the unlikely trio of Clea, Loki and the Scarlet Witch. This sequence is undoubtedly the highlight of the “Damnation” tie-in publication, with a seemingly physically-restored Strange trading spiteful barbs with the God of Mischief over the bearded magic user’s dead dog, Bats, and a genuinely pulse-pounding action scene prodigiously pencilled by Niko Henrichon, which promptly places the entire quartet amidst a veritable sea of heavily-horned, terrifically-tentacled devils; “If we weren’t all in mortal danger, I’d quip something about a Highway to Hell, or going from the Pan to the Fire. As it stands, all I can think of is -- Dammit, Loki!”

Disappointingly though, this brutal battle is disconcertingly short-lived and abruptly over in a supercharged flash just as soon as “the daughter of Umar and the niece of the demonic tyrant Dormammu” is quickly captured and then spirited away to the side of a tuxedo-wearing Mephisto. Of course, this Clea's situation is later perturbingly revealed to be little more than another macabre machination manufactured by the cosmic hero’s “perennial foe”, but, for a brief while at least, “Marvel Comics' new wunderkind” finally appears to have penned this comic’s titular character as something akin to the magical powerhouse Stephen Strange is supposed to be…

Writer: Donny Cates, Artist: Niko Henrichon, and Colour Assistant: Laurent Grossat