‘Doctor Strange by Mark Waid’ Vol. 2 finds its humanity

The intimate concerns of living come to light.

July 31, 2024

Doctor Strange by Mark Waid Vol. 2 begins with a conceptually massive story: the corruption of the arcane planes by the hard science of Galactus.

While Strange is by no means a stranger to the High Concept – an examination of his earliest adventures, which introduce abstracts like Eternity, is evidence enough – those big ideas are not where this volume shines. Cool as it might seem for Galactus and Dormammu to pal about, the six-issue Herald Supreme arc feels mildly tepid and hollow.

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No, the best issues of this volume are the issues in which Strange is forced to interact with the mundane world (and we small people who inhabit it).

Starting with the brilliant standalone issue #18, the reader is presented by a charmingly earnest middle-American family. Two parents – the Stantons – hustle to arrange a surprise party for their teenage daughter, who has placed second in a regional figure skating competition. Expertly rendered by Jesús Saiz, the Stantons are expressive, their reactions made so lifelike that the reader can nearly feel their shock themself.

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Waid lays the foundation of their everyday lives in the first few pages: financial struggle, altruism, warmth. These are people we feel like we know, who we instantly care about. There is no World Devourer, there are no interplanar wars, and there will be no reality-threatening crossover event. This is Kansas. When has anything world-shaking happened in Kansas?

Then Stephen Strange arrives, alerted to something horrifying going on beneath the Stanton’s noses. Their house has been infested, corrupted, from within. Whatever it is, it’s in the pipes. In the heart of the house.

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What follows is a delightfully funny issue as two normal people – people like you and me – are subjected to the destructive nature of magic. They follow Strange from room to room as he devastates their home. Strange comes off as cold-hearted, disinterested in the lives of this family or their concerns: he’s got a creature to hunt, a spiritual barrier to uphold. He feels, from the point of view of the Stantons’, nearly as inhuman as their monstrous invader. Luckily, it’s easy enough to magic away devastation; he even spruces up their surprise party.

This separation from humanity has long been a hard-to-swallow aspect of Doctor Strange stories. The high concept always seems to drown out the simple, intimate concerns of living – it’s hard to think of human frailty in a story about a space god fighting a demon god. This not only makes Stephen hard to relate to, it renders his conflicts threatening in abstract rather than purpose. The fabric of reality itself might be too big a canvas for relatable content.

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This humanity continues after this issue: a ghost causes a woman to crash her car, and her son suffers massive brain damage. Can the Sorcerer Supreme magic his way into brain surgery? Will the boy live? The ghost nearly becomes an afterthought of the story, a condition rather than a conflict. Human lives are at stake.

Ultimately, this trend toward the human led to the brief Dr. Strange: Surgeon Supreme story, where Waid manages to root the inter-dimensional intrigues of a good Strange story in the mortality of hospital patients whose illnesses appear, to Stephen, as grotesque beings. Artist Kev Walker applies his distinctive cartooning skills to human suffering and magic castles with equal zeal.

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While the miniseries tends more toward the classic magic struggles, the firm roots of humanity make it one of the more memorable Doctor Strange stories of recent years. It’s a shame that we didn’t get to luxuriate in this grounded space for a bit longer before Jed MacKay’s The Death of Doctor Strange, which immediately dives back into the big and inhuman.

Mark Waid’s run on Strange played with an incredible range of story styles, taking us to space and back, playing with doppelgangers, and contrasting magic and science. It is in these final stories in Doctor Strange by Mark Waid Vol. 2 that he finds his most grounded notes.