Marvel Premiere #8-10

Marvel Premiere #8-10

Originally released in 1973

Written by Gardner Fox (#8), Steve Englehart (#9-10)

Art by Jim Starlin (#8), Frank Brunner (#9-10)

A Marvel vs. Capcom collection was announced today - these games had been unavailable in any legal form for quite some time now, so it's exciting that they're getting a proper re-release.  As such, I decided to focus on a recurring character from that franchise.

I skipped over the first few issues, so this story kicks off in the middle of the plot. Doctor Strange, his love interest Clea, Wong, and several ordinary people who are caught up in this are stuck in a house that has been possessed and is in the process of trying to kill them. Already, the use of magic and the spiritual is interesting, and it doesn't let up from here.

Strange manages to undo the possession, destroying the house in the process. From there, he travels to Stonehenge, where the evil forces have entered their world.  He is pulled through dimensions, leaving Wong and Clea unable to help him.

Strange arrives on a living world, where every form of life on it is an extension of the will of a being called Kathulos.  The master of Kathulos granted him the power needed to kill Strange, which is what he intends to do.

Kathulos is seemingly immune to magic, forcing Strange outside of his comfort zone.  Naturally, he manages to find a weak point for Kathulos regardless. (Interestingly, he tears apart Kathulos's vines with his hands, so I'm not sure if the hand injury that kept him from returning to the life of a surgeon has been healed or not)

To be thorough, he also blows up the planet that Kathulos is on.  It's a small planet, but it's an eerie precursor to his experiences with the Illuminati, though he doesn't feel guilty in this case.

Shortly afterwards, he encounters the voice of the mastermind behind these events - Shuma-Gorath.  Shuma-Gorath is a recurring character in the Marvel vs. Capcom series; from what I recall, the people behind Marvel Super Heroes were trying to put a roster together using a book of Marvel Comics characters, and Shuma-Gorath stood out to them because he was one of the few characters who wasn't humanoid, or specifically a person in a costume.

Strange's master, the Ancient One, had been kidnapped, so Strange returns to Earth after several days and heads for the Crypts of Kaa-U, where the Ancient One is being held.  There, he discovers the truth behind the Ancient One's kidnapping.

The Ancient One went to the crypts of his own accord, wanting to die there like his predecessors did to the point of starving himself.  Already, he was becoming vulnerable to being possessed by Shuma-Gorath, and using even a single spell could tip him over the edge and allow an ancient monstrosity to return to Earth.

Strange enters the mind of the Ancient One to try and force Shuma-Gorath out, but even a mental projection is too much for the Sorcerer Supreme to handle.  As a result, Strange is left with one choice, as much as he hates to even consider it.

In order to save the entire universe, and possibly more than that, Doctor Strange must kill his mentor to prevent Shuma-Gorath from entering their universe.  It's a dark plot point for a comic that's relatively early in Marvel's time, and a huge shift from the stories that were released a decade ago.

The blow is softened in the end, but still, in order to defeat Shuma-Gorath, Stephen Strange has needed to (at least) destroy a planet and murder his mentor. The artwork is the highlight here, with Jim Starlin and Frank Brunner doing interesting things with panel composition and lighting to make the parts where Strange is trapped in another dimension feel alien and very different from ordinary pages.

Likewise, Strange's use of magic feels fittingly eerie, with the Eye of Agamotto embedding itself in his forehead and him describing certain spells as though they're removing parts of his soul. Between this and the Tomb of Dracula, I'm liking what I'm seeing from 70s Marvel - it has a very different tone compared to the 60s comics.