There's a lot more to Wong than meets the eye - even the mystical third eye.
Far from a simple magician's assistant, he's been an orphan, a lover, and even a doctor
himself.
Join us as we break down the history of the most loyal sidekick of the Sorcerer Supreme.
Wong was introduced alongside Doctor Strange in 1963's Strange Tales #110.
The duo is strikingly creepy in their first comic book outing - not evil, exactly, but
menacing to behold and always draped in shadow.
Strange is explicitly aligned with black magic and his Greenwich Village lair is creepy and
murky.
Wong first appears when he opens the front door of Strange's sanctum to a young man in
search of Strange's brand of help, inviting the guest in with the odd declaration of "Doctor
Strange knows all!"
Wong wasn't a character early on so much as a piece of set dressing.
He guided people to Strange's office, wore whatever the artists thought looked "foreign"
enough, and served as a visual reminder of Strange's ties to the mysterious knowledge
of Asia.
As was unfortunately common at the time, this amounted to whatever mumbo-jumbo the writers
thought sounded convincing.
It wasn't until Strange Tales #119 that the character even got a name.
"And you are?"
"Wong.”
“Wong?
Just Wong?
Like…
Adele?"
Things would change as the decades wound on, however, and readers demanded better representation
and more complex stories.
Wong's ancestors have served the masters of the mystic arts for untold generations, with
the family having a close relationship to the Ancient One in particular.
Wong was still a baby when he was first presented to the Ancient One, and was swiftly sent to
ensconce himself in studies of the arcane.
Wong is particularly tied to a figure named Kan, his ancestor who lived one thousand years
ago.
A student of magic and a brilliant warrior, Kan was the first to dedicate himself to the
Ancient One.
Given that Wong serves Strange and not the Ancient One, he is the first to break this
tradition.
Since the Ancient One commanded this, it's not exactly a transgression, but it does highlight
Wong's significance.
He's the first person in his family to break course in centuries.
Though Wong might come from a long line of warrior-monks singularly devoted to their
duty, he's made time for the ladies over the years.
Chief among them is Imei Chang, his betrothed.
Years passed from the time they were first engaged, during which they knew they were
promised to each other but were too young to wed - years in which Wong went on many
life-changing adventures and met many fascinating women.
Sara Wolfe, Strange's secretary, was a particular temptation: an attraction grows between her
and Wong that he puts a reluctant stop to, for the sake of his relationship with Imei.
Though he's far from a disloyal lover, he's definitely sort of a man about town - "town"
here meaning "the entire cosmos and parts unknown."
He's got a certain je ne sais quoi the ladies of every dimension simply can't deny.
Superhero problem number one is protecting those close to you - and no one's been around
Doctor Strange longer than Wong.
Naturally, this means that Wong has gotten kidnapped a lot.
There's the time in the 1970s when the Shadowqueen captured him and put him in her dungeon.
There's the time in the '80s when Urthona an alien baddie, abducted Wong along with
Strange's entire house.
This has happened what feels like dozens of times.
The bottom line is, he gets taken captive a lot.
But in the modern day, he tends to fight back more.
Gone is the Wong who must be held in mystical stasis for his own protection, as Strange
so often insisted upon back in the Silver and Bronze Age stories they starred in.
Here to stay is the Wong who gives as good as he gets.
Generally speaking, where Doctor Strange goes, so goes Wong.
But they haven't always gotten along.
More than once, Strange and Wong have fallen out, and at times have come close to ending
their partnership altogether.
In the mid-1990s, Doctor Strange: Sorcerer Supreme told a story in which a demon named
Xaos and the evil sorceress Salome turned Wong against his friend and master.
The two villains were able to pull off this act of trickery due to a very real tension
between Strange and Wong over the Doctor's failure to protect Imei from being killed.
They used the prospect of resurrecting Imei to manipulate Wong to try and kill Strange
on their behalf.
Though the two ended up reconciling, it was a moment of truly broken trust between the
duo that took some time to repair - but ultimately made their relationship stronger.
Wong has been around long enough to have faced a pantheon of foes.
Cosmic abominations?
Check.
Murderous sorceresses?
Been there, done that.
But in the 2007 miniseries Doctor Strange: The Oath, Wong faced down a truly formidable
villain: cancer.
At first, he tried to hide his diagnosis from Strange until he'd found someone to take his
place at the sorcerer's side - but Strange still discovered the truth.
The dude is a doctor, after all.
Heartbroken at the prospect of losing his oldest and most trusted friend, Strange embarks
on a desperate, frantic quest to save him.
He succeeded in curing him, but Wong's courage in the face of seemingly-certain death proved
his fealty to Strange, as well as their mission of service to the greater good.
There's no corner of the Marvel universe more, well, strange than the one Wong occupies,
and the best Doctor Strange creative teams lean into the mysticism of it all.
Theirs is the comic series that doesn't have to play by the rules of superheroics.
Their world is magical, and it follows its own rules.
It's funny, then, that by and large, Wong is not himself a magic-user.
This is very much not the case in the movies, where Wong wields sigils and scrolls with
the best of them.
"Oh!
UUnnnh.”
But on the page, with the exception of a few alternate universe interpretations and special
circumstances, Wong is merely a peak martial artist.
He's comfortable with the spells and sayings of the world Strange occupies, but he does
not use them himself.
He stands in contrast to the magic around him, and as such, acts as a stable pillar
in a shifting and mystical world.
Reimaginings are the bread and butter of superhero comics, but Doctor Strange and Wong have been
surprisingly absent from Marvel's many alternate takes - except for the time that Wong was
inspired by Doctor Strange to become a doctor himself.
In the 2004 limited series Strange, Wong was reimagined as a Tibetan orphan who had the
good luck to be saved by Stephen Strange, then a young medical student.
Inspired by Strange's act of kindness, Wong goes on to become an American doctor operating
under the name Stephen Wong.
He becomes a warrior and a sorcerer in his own right.
Despite all of this, Wong ultimately still manages to become Strange's servant - though
the story treats this development as a complicated one.
It's a powerful, boundary-breaking story that asks the question: who should be servants
and who should be masters?
It's up to the reader to decide.
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