By the hoary hosts of Hoggoth!
Doctor Strange is one of the most powerful characters in the entire Marvel universe,
but he’s gone relatively unknown by mainstream audiences.
That is until he got his own movie in the Marvel Cinematic Universe.
So today, I want to take a look at the history and origins of the Sorcerer Supreme himself,
Doctor Stephen Strange and who knows?
Maybe you’ll learn a thing or two about how Marvel does their magic in their universe.
Enjoy!
Doctor Stephen Strange was a talented, but arrogant surgeon who charged ludicrous prices
for treatment.
One night however, he was in a horrible car crash that permanently damaged his hands,
preventing him from ever operating again.
When he exhausted all of his resources and leads of where he could fix his hands, Strange
sought out a legendary healer in Tibet called The Ancient One.
When the old man refused to fix his hands, Stephen lashed out at the old man.
In retaliation, The Ancient One used a levitation spell on the arrogant doctor.
Unfortunately though, Doctor Strange thought this was a simple trick and tried to leave,
but was prevented thanks to a snow storm.
While staying in the temple Strange caught The Ancient One’s apprentice, Mordo, casting
a spell to kill his master.
However, Mordo put a mystical gag on Strange, preventing him from warning The Ancient One.
Don’t worry, the old dude knew that Mordo was evil the whole time, put a stop to his
assassination, and offered Strange the opportunity to learn the ways of magic as his new disciple.
During his training, Stephen excelled in his studies, discipline, martial arts, and technique,
but he still had many troubles conjuring and mastering spells.
A lot of this is due to the fact that Strange gets his abilities by invoking the power of
the Vishanti, a trio of god-like entities who took a while to warm up to the good doctor.
It was also during this time that Stephen befriended a man named Wong, a servant of
The Ancient One.
After multiple years, the doctor’s training was finally complete and he returned to New
York with Wong to work as a magical consultant at his Sanctum Sanctorum.
Doctor Strange has had his fair share of enemies over the years, but few are as consistent
as the demon Dormammu.
Their first run in was when Dormammu went after The Ancient One, but thankfully, Strange
was able to save the day.
For his heroism, The Ancient One bestowed his pupil with two iconic magical artifacts,
the Cape of Levitation, and the powerful Eye of Agamotto.
Fun fact.
Although the Eye of Agamotto is Doctor Strange’s most iconic relic, there are actually multiple
of them out there.
If getting powerful doodads for defeating Dormammu wasn’t enough though, Doctor Strange
even ended up taking on the demon’s niece, Clea, as his protege!
The two quickly fell in love and they even got married!
...Until Clea left to rule the Dark Dimension.
It’s basically just Hell under a different name.
And yes, I did pronounce her name as “Clee-uh” one time and “Clay-uh” as another that
way I get everybody happy with pronunciation.
Now after a massive war between two alien races called the Kree and the Skrulls, an
elite group of some of Earth’s most powerful and prominent beings was formed, the Illuminati.
This included Iron Man, Professor X, Black Bolt, Namor the Submariner, Mr. Fantastic,
and of course, Doctor Strange.
The Illuminati was designed to handle threats before they happen and trust me, we’ll be
talking about them a lot more later on in this video.
Outside of the Illuminati though, Doctor Strange was also a founding member of The Defenders.
These guys are a crazy rag-tag team that keeps assembling over and over for various circumstances
and despite having some of the strongest characters in the entire Marvel universe behind it, The
Defenders are incredibly unorganized, causing them to frequently break up and reform.
The Defender's chaotic nature is partly why Strange typically works alone.
In fact, shortly after forming the team, Stephen had to kill his former master in order to
defeat Shuma Gorath.
He’s basically Marvel’s Cthulhu.
Upon his death however, The Ancient One became one with the universe and made Strange the
new Sorcerer Supreme, the most powerful magic user in the realm.
Unfortunately though, Doctor Strange’s magic has been known to fail from time to time and
in the late eighties, he was unable to properly harness light magic.
It was for this reason that the doc teamed up with his former adversary, Kaluu, and dabbled
in dark magic for the first time.
This is super weird considering that Doctor Strange’s first appearance literally had
him labeled as a master of black magic...
Oh yeah.
It was also during this time that Doctor Strange lost an eye when fighting a demon.
Don’t worry, Strange got it back from Agamotto of the Vishanti who made an appearance as
the smoking caterpillar from Alice in Wonderland… because comics.
For a while, Doctor Strange fell into the background as a secondary character, but he
made some significant appearances with the rest of the Illuminati such as when they launched
The Hulk into space since he was too powerful and unpredictable.
The group even decided to take more power into their own hands by hunting down the powerful
Infinity Gems and giving one to each member for safekeeping.
Arguably one of the most important meetings of the Illuminati though was to discuss the
upcoming Superhuman Registration Act.
Strange was adamantly opposed, but didn’t actually fight in the Civil War that erupted
from it.
This was probably for the same reason why Hulk was REALLY launched into space.
The writers thought that he would be too overpowered for the fight.
Despite remaining neutral during the war, Doctor Strange hid the unregistered New Avengers
in his Sanctum Sanctorum.
Soon after though, The Hulk came back from space seeking revenge on the Illuminati.
Part of this… involved breaking Strange’s hands…
again.
Without his hands, the doctor wasn’t able to cast many of his spells so he resorted
to channeling a powerful demon named Zom to take on The Hulk.
But wait, there’s more.
Strange had to channel Zom a SECOND time in order to help save the New Avengers after
they were attacked by a horde of villains.
This made Stephen lose his mastery of magic AND his title as Sorcerer Supreme.
With his powers severely neutered, Stephen went on a soul searching journey which…
involved him attending a demonic baseball game and a demonic child beauty pageant.
Again… because comics.
Thankfully, Strange was able to build up a bit more of his power, join the New Avengers,
and was even able to become the Sorcerer Supreme all over again!
It wasn’t all fun and games though.
The Illuminati had to re-assemble when they discovered the Incursions, universes smacking
into each other and destroying the multiverse.
It was ultimately decided that they would need to destroy the other universes to save
their own.
Doctor Strange took part in some events around this time like Infinity and Original Sin,
but the Incursions were definitely the most significant for him since he was having to
use literally every single resource that he had to stop the destruction of his home universe,
Earth-616.
A great example of this is during one of last Incursions where the Illuminati encountered
heroes from another universe and almost lost!
See beforehand, Strange tried to sell his soul for power, but actually didn’t have
all of it.
Instead, Stephen channeled an evil entity… again… in order to have an edge against
the opposing force.
This time, it looks like Stephen might have possibly channeled Shuma Gorath.
Doctor Strange even went so far as to team up with Molecule Man and Doctor Doom to defeat
the source of the Incursions, the Beyonders, and take their power for themselves.
While Doctor Strange refused to take this energy, Doom certainly did not.
During the final Incursion, Doctor Doom took bits and pieces from the multiverse and constructed
the patchwork planet of Battleworld where Doctor Strange served as its sheriff.
This made Doctor Strange one of the few characters that remembered the pre-Battleworld multiverse.
When some survivors of the Incursions show up though, Strange helps them out.
Though Doom didn’t like that and killed Strange.
In the end, none of this matters because at the end of the event, the Marvel multiverse
was all fixed up and everyone’s life was as it was before the Incursions.
In this new sort of rebooted universe, Doctor Strange fought an interdimensional army that
worshiped science.
These guys were so tough that in order to retaliate, Strange had to use like… 99.9%
of the universe’s magic to try to defeat them, but failed.
Yeah, these dudes literally broke magic.
Stephen scoured the world looking for the last traces and artifacts of magic and was
able to defeat the army with the help of some other magic users, but at the end of it all,
magic was still broken.
These days, Doctor Strange has to rely on an assortment of magical and enchanted items
to do battle which in my personal opinion has actually been really fun to read!
With all of that super dense information out of the way, you’ve got a pretty solid abridged
history of one of Marvel’s longest running characters!
If you’d like to read more about Doctor Strange for yourself then I would recommend
checking out Doctor Strange: The Oath from 2006, Strange Vol 2 from 2010, and the recent
Doctor Strange Vol 4 from 2015.
So did you learn anything new?
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