Doctor Strange [1968] #183 - Marvel Comics

DOCTOR STRANGE No. 183, November 1969

With hindsight it is perhaps somewhat easy to see just why this title was abruptly cancelled following the publication of “They Walk By Night!”, as Roy Thomas’ bizarre tale about three demonic gargoyles draining the life force out of the man who helped sponsor Stephen Strange through his medical education probably just bemused its audience at best. True, at the time the Missouri-born writer thought the comic featuring the magic-user’s disconcerting fully-masked new look “was [still] actually selling a couple hundred thousand copies” per month, but in the late Sixties a book “needed to sell even more” if “Marvel Comics” were going to ever consider it a sustainable success.

In addition, the three-time Shazam Award-winner’s decision to suddenly change the lead protagonist’s name to Saunders at the very start of this twenty-page periodical, courtesy of the awesome entity called Eternity, must have completely baffled and potentially alienated a number of readers too, as its inclusion appears to simply be a rather clumsy attempt to move the “Master of Black Magic” in line with rest of the publisher’s roster of super-hero alter-egos; “He saw that, in a desperate moment, I had revealed my name to a milling crowd… and he knew how vulnerable I would be if I lived on as Stephen Strange..! Thus he changed my name… My very identity…”

Happily however, despite this notable change to the magic user’s moniker, as well as the book’s odd premise that in order to reveal the location of a mysterious idol the Creatures of the Night would simply keep Kenneth Ward a wheelchair-bound prisoner within his own home, there’s actually quite a bit of enjoyment to be had during Strange’s investigation of the “sombre brownstone” residence. Indeed, the sorcerer’s sleuthing skills prove to be the highlight of the comic, as he stealthily circumnavigates his colleague’s captors in order to elicit an account of Ward’s latest adventure “in a lonely valley between Himalayan Peaks…”

Gene Colan also appears to be at the very top of his game, providing the good Doctor’s spells with some wonderful, eye-catching embellishments, most notably his magical exchange with the Creatures of the Night when they finally reveal their true physical nature. Disappointingly, this battle is all-too quickly brought to an end by Strange subjecting his fast-petrifying foes to sunlight, yet there is still enough time for the American artist to draw a cracking panel populated “with mirror images of the mortal!” before the fantastic fight concludes.

Writer: Roy Thomas, Artist: Gene Colan, and Embellisher: Tom Palmer