Strange Academy #4 - Marvel Comics

STRANGE ACADEMY No. 4, December 2020

Bounding along with an incredibly energetic depiction of “the craziest game of tag ever”, Skottie Young’s narrative for Issue Four of “Strange Academy” must surely have pleased its 46,000 readers upon this comic’s release in October 2020. For whilst the twenty page periodical’s plot undeniably focuses upon the magical variant of the popular playground pastime as a way for the students to blow off some steam, it also manages to weave into its story-telling some considerably much dark elements as well.

Indeed, the all-too brief appearance of the deeply disturbing wooden-faced Hollow may well only be limited to just a handful of panels. Yet such is the purple-robed cultists’ impact upon the book that their earnest threat to help rid the Earth of “the Rot” by teaching the children a strict lesson in not wasting the planet’s old power, permeates throughout the entire publication, and is always there at the back of the audience’s mind even when they’re following Emily Bright’s light-hearted headlong dash through numerous mystical teleportation doors.

Just as sinister, not least because of the young girl’s convenient happening upon a suspiciously helpful Catbeast in Woolly Woods who has the means of instantly transporting her home, is Bright’s stumbling upon the Sorcerer Supreme’s Sanctum Sanctorum and the mysterious prisoner locked tight in one of its underground rooms. Long-term fans of Doctor Strange will probably surmise the fledgling magician has inadvertently stumbled upon the cell of Mister Misery, but the suggestion that the Master of the Mystic Arts might be harbouring another perturbingly murky secret makes this a wonderfully tense interaction.

Pulling all these different threads together into a visual feast for the eyes is Humberto Ramos, whose marvellous pencilling both adds plenty of youthful joy to the kids’ crazy-brained shenanigans, as well as a truly sinister vibe to the plans of the fanatical followers of the Hollow. In fact, this comic is arguably worth its cover price alone for the Mexican penciller’s artwork, especially when it includes a thoroughly fun cameo by ‘your friendly neighbourhood Spider-Man’ and a bizarre-looking, multi-eyed purple blob which has apparently escaped from one of the Academy’s library manuscripts; “It was an accident! And how was I supposed to know it was a prison book for a giant beast???”

The regular cover art of "STRANGE ACADEMY" #4 by Humberto Ramos & Edgar Delgado