‘Doctor Strange by Donny Cates’ review

This is a collection of good comics with very good art.

July 14, 2023

I’m not a huge fan of Doctor Strange as a solo character. I think creators have a hard time figuring out the sweet spot between weird, genuine, and threatening, and there are only so many tentacle monsters coming out of portals that I can care about.

I don’t think this Strange run challenges all of everything I find tiresome with Strange comics, but Cates, Walta, Reis, Henrichon, Irving, and Bellaire made one volume of comics that were a lot of fun, and most importantly, gorgeous.

Now, I am going to end this thing with some degree of “8/10 very good Doctor Strange,” but I do want to make one thing pretty clear: this is very empty-brained stuff. I don’t think Donny Cates tends to write anything with more depth than, say, Iron Man 3, and I think that’s mostly fine, especially given that fans of the big 2 probably can’t appreciate anything with more depth than Iron Man 2 anyway. Donny Cates greatest skill is that he entertains the minds of everyone from Rob Liefeld enjoyers to Rob Liefeld haters: the trade-off there is that we mostly get very cool moments of guys with their heads on fire.

I do think Cates was pretty ideally set up to succeed with this run on Doctor Strange though, particularly with the way it lent itself to themes about recovery and atonement (when doesn’t Doctor Strange lend itself to those themes though, huh, maybe Cates was perfect all along). And for whatever reason, Cates gets paired with the best artists working today, no matter the project, so whatever sick concept he already thought of is going to look as cool as it possibly can—which is the main reason this comic succeeds.

From “Strange makes a staff from Yggdrasil,” to “Void-possessed Strange,” to “Ghost Rider Strange,” to “new demonic tower from hell in resurrected Vegas,” this run has cool concepts executed to their absolute coolest by incredible artists who are all cool in their own ways. Walta really gets into the emotions of his issues, and gets to play up how pathetic (in a good way!) Loki is. Reis is just so good at selling any kind of horror, especially in character reactions. Henrichon has the name of a guy who can draw a great tentacle monster, and lives up to it. Irving is one of my favorite living artists, and definitely draws people looking as weird as can be accepted in a mainstream comic. Together, they form a work that is probably pound-for-pound my favorite collection of art on my shelves. Just page after page of cool looking stuff.

All of that and this also fits in an all-timer Spider-Man (cameo) issue, one of my favorites, that also proves a point of mine about how Spider-Man is easier to write for one issue than he is to write an ongoing for. Thank you comrades Cates and Irving.

There might be better Doctor Strange comics (Fall Sunrise) and there might even be better-looking Doctor Strange comics (Fall Sunrise) but this is a collection of good comics with very good art. It’s for sure my favorite Donny Cates comic and the one I’d most readily recommend. In other words: 8/10 very good Doctor Strange comic.