Doctor Strange Vol. 4: Mr Misery - Jason...

To defeat evil Wong accepted an entity called Mr Misery into himself and now payment is being exacted. Doctor Strange really wants to save the man who has become his friend. He has to come to terms with the fact that Wong put his life on hold to help Doctor Strange and that that wasn't fair. Clea also re-appears and Thor has some screen time. Zelma (another Librarian!) also has to deal with power. There's also some building problems. All told an interesting read.

Borrowed from Dublin City Libraries.

So a couple of days ago I has a sudden urge to read some Doctor Strange comics. I can't recall why exactly this came over me, as he was never one of my favorite Marvel characters. One reason for this was the magical/fantasy elements, which was never my thing, while another was the solemnity and pomposity of his characterization back then. But after having read through some other stuff I decided to give some of the more recent issues a try.

After doing some research I started with Brian K. Vaughan's The Oath and I enjoyed it enormously. Then I started reading Jason Aaron's run from a few years ago and I liked his stories just as much. It's really interesting to see how much the character has changed; while no less arrogant in his decisions he's much more flawed and tortured than before. And with a recurring theme running through the issues of magic having a cost (one that is pretty much the entire lesson of The Magicians), the constraints Strange faces become a major factor in the storytelling. I intend to follow the future releases closely while working my way through the back issues, at least until I get back to the point where he was far less appealing of a character.

And it's super adorable.   They're fighting off Nightmare and Bad Dream and all those mystical folks who are disrupting everyone's sleep.  As always, this is an all-ages fun title - and that includes folks who are older like me, and who like both lighter and darker fare, so long as it's done well. 

This is light, fun, and done incredibly well, from the storytelling that finds ways to do these light, kid-friendly stories month after month without getting old, or the art that is, once again, very comic book style, but very well done.   And I keep bringing this up: there is, in American comics at least, a very standard style.   (Then again, Japan has manga.   And there are differences between artists, but even they tend to stick with a standard style.   And it's not really a bad thing.  I admit my favorite artists tend to stray from he style, or try something new, because they stick out in my mind, but I have some favorites - Michael Turner, or Chris Bachalo, or Brendan Cahill* - who do don't do it either.   What I'm trying to say is: standard style or not, I like it when the art is done well as it is in many of my favorite series.

*I own two Cahill originals, from Lost Light and Robots in Disguise, two Transformers series.   They are the TF pieces that resonate the most with me, and he became a favorite when I saw the art in person.   So, yeah, sometimes it's that...

Loved Rocket; he was all sass, especially about what a hellhole all of Earth is and that's always amusing.   I wasn't really into the whole plot, about the infinity stones and where they should go and blah, blah, blah...

But Avengers: Infinity War kinda killed all things Infinity in Marvel for me because of how that turned out.  I also don't really see the need to retread old storylines over and over and over again.  I prefer something new in general. 

So this wasn't the worst, but it didn't do it for me.   Nothing really happened that just wowed me or anything, so two stars. 

Let's add that it was technically very good art, but I didn't find it very emotive so I couldn't even fall back on that, thus why I don't feel like adding more stars.

This covers Doctor Strange from his inception to much more recent adventures with a variety of art styles and enemies.

Interesting collection, Lots of potential that hte film really did do well with.

It falls into (in my opinion)  Doomsday; Spellbound, Gothic, Ghost Stories, Genre: Horror; Supernatural; and Relics.  However I've used all those, I'm putting it into the Raven Square.