The original run of Strange Academy flew by in a blur. The creators – fan favorites Skottie Young and Humberto Ramos – introduced the concept and characters, established a doomsday prophecy, and saw that prophecy to its massive conclusion in only twenty-four delightful, manic issues. Those issues occurred over two different series, 2020’s Strange Academy and 2022’s Strange Academy: Finals.
Those books were both great, though the rapid nature of the plot’s development left some character and concept nuance ill-defined. There’s an earnest hope for further stories, deeper exploration, for more.
Marvel Comics
An upcoming tie-in for this summer’s Bloodhunt, a moment being the background for 2022’s Midnight Suns, and one issue supporting 2021’s The Death of Doctor Strange seem to set a precedent that Strange Academy and its students are no longer sustainable without outside branding.
The same is true for the story collected in Strange Academy: The Deadly Field Trip. Utilizing the Miles Morales, Moon Knight, and Spider-Man brands, The Deadly Field Trip tells a story as conceptually compelling and breathlessly quick as the original series.
Marvel Comics
The guest stars – particularly Moon Knight – feel nearly incidental in the story, props on which to hang a deeper Strange Academy story in which the Strange Academy students attend a high-concept high school math bowl. Miles is present because this math bowl takes place at his school, Brooklyn Visions Academy. He plays a minor role throughout the story, but the book doesn’t dwell on him.
Instead, the Academy students are thrown into conflict with Dr. Erasmus “Equation” Dawnbright, a multiversal mathematician whose theoretical studies work as a sort of equation-based anti-magic. It’s just the right kind of educationally-based strangeness for our characters (though one just a few degrees removed from the Empirikul from Jason Aaron and Chris Bachelo’s 2015 run on Doctor Strange – a run already foundational to Strange Academy).
Manipulated by Dawnbright, Doyle and Shaylee get caught up in this practice, mathematically eliminating cultists, godhoods, and other magical sources. It’s up to Toth, Gusluag, Germán, and Miles to stop and rescue them.
Marvel Comics
Writer Carlos Hernadez taps directly into what’s special about the Strange Academy, delivering a story that doesn’t rely upon the main series’ drama. Even held up by the guest stars, the story works as proof-of-concept for further adventures with these characters.
The artists of these books (there are five of them) have the unenviable task of filling the shoes of the great Humberto Ramos, and they all approach it gamely, filtering his cartoony style through the lens of what feels like the modern Marvel house style: beautiful and grounded renditions without too much stylistic flair.
Pictured: Real Stylistic Flair
Marvel Comics
It’s a great dip back into the lives of our SA characters – made all the stronger by the inclusion of the Death of Doctor Strange tie-in issue – but, as ever, it doesn’t quite feel enough; it leaves the reader feeling worried that the concept is being left out to dry even as they thrill at the adventure unfolding. The story is so conceptually rich and character-true that it feels insulting to waste time on Moon Knight and Peter Parker.
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