The Doctor is WAAAAAAAAY OUT! Tom Wolfe, Doctor Strange and the Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test!

The late "New Journalism" pioneer Tom Wolfe referenced Marvel's Doctor Strange in...

...a non-fiction book about the cross-country adventures of Ken Kesey and his Merry Pranksters in passages like

“Kesey is young, serene and his face is lineless and round and smooth as a baby’s as he sits for hours on end reading comic books, absorbed in the plunging purple Steve Ditko shadows of Doctor Strange.”

(BTW, dig that psychedelic cover by graphic design legend Milton Glaser!)

Several years later, writer Roy Thomas (a former English teacher and big fan of Wolfe), penciler Gene Colan and inker Tom Palmer returned the favor in Doctor Strange #180 (1969)...

You can read the whole story HERE.

Strange's "...an old friend of mine...haven't seen him since '64..." line is a reference to the year Electric Kool Aid Acid Test was published.

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Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test
by Tom Wolfe

DOCTOR STRANGE in ULTRAVIOLET

The Doctor Strange story we ran for the past two days...

...produced not one...

...but two...

...classic blacklite posters in the early 1970s!

Third Eye Studios produced, using Marvel artwork, a line of fluorescent-ink posters, greeting cards, and puzzles that glow under ultra-violet ("black") light...

 

(Click to enlarge)

...all of which are now hard-to-find and expensive!

Ironically, the hardest to find and most collectible posters are the montage shown above and this one with new art by John Romita Sr...

(Click to enlarge)
...which were not for sale, just display!
There were three Doctor Strange posters, the two Colan/Palmer ones and a Dan Adkins piece.
Note: while all the puzzles repeated art from the posters, some of the greeting cards used art not seen on the posters, so while there are repeats, there are also unique cards that make the set worth collecting!
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This New Year's

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Digitally-Restored and Remastered DIRECTLY From an Original Poster!

DOCTOR STRANGE "Eternity, Eternity" Conclusion

When Last We Left the Sorcerer Supreme...

...it was the end of 1968, New Year's Eve, to be exact.

After seeing a vision of the etherial Eternity changing into his old enemy, Nightmare, Dr Strange takes his alien love, Clea, to Times Square to experience New Year's Eve: New York City Style...where a pterodactyl crashes into the clock as it strikes midnight!

Yep, True Believer, it's another of Marvel's patented "continued stories"!

But our intent here is to present only the New Year's Eve part of the tale, since both parts have been reprinted recently.

So we're going to show you how Marvel itself got out of re-running the entire two-parter when it ran this tale from Doctor Strange #180 (1969) in Marvel Treasury Edition #8: Giant SuperHero Holiday Grab-Bag (1975)!

The editors took the Gene Colan penciled and inked presentation piece showing the finalized design for Doc's "superhero-style" costume that appeared as a pin-up in Doctor Strange #180...

...took out the final panel of the story and used the Doc figure with a new word balloon!

Sneaky, huh?

Written by Roy Thomas, penciled by Gene Colan, and inked by Tom Palmer, this tale is one of the koolest of the era's Dr Strange stories with pop culture references galore and accurate NYC locales!

The cover, btw is a combination of a Steve Ditko Eternity figure, a new Doctor Strange by Colan and Palmer and a New York City photo background (Marvel did several photo background covers during this period)

Tomorrow:

The Splash Pages that Became BlackLite Posters!

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This New Year's

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Marvel Masterworks

Doctor Strange

Volume 4

...featuring this tale and it's continuation!

Happy New Year with DOCTOR STRANGE "Eternity, Eternity" Part 1

The year was 1968, going into 1969...

...and the wildest New Year's Eve story in comics history was about to begin!

To Be Continued...
on New Year's Day!

Yeah.

It's a heckuva point to break off our tale until tomorrow, but you'll need an incentive to get out of bed on New Year's Day!

Please Support Medical Comics and Stories
This New Year's

Order This BlackLite-style Reproduction Poster!

Digitally-Restored and Remastered DIRECTLY From an Original Poster!

Halloween Hospital Horrors DOCTOR STRANGE "The Coming of...Dr Strange!" Conclusion

When Last We Left the Sorcerer Supreme...

...Doctor Strange, recovering from recent conflicts, re-lives how he went from being one of the world's foremost surgeons to a homeless hobo due to an auto accident that damaged his hands, rendering them useless.

Hearing of a mysterious figure called the Ancient One who might be able to restore his hands, Stephen Strange journeys to the Himalayas...

We detailed what became of Stephen Strange when we presented his original origin HERE!

BTW, we'll clue you in as to what we're doing next Halloween...

...a month-long extravaganza featuring all of Marvel's currently-operating MDs (super-powered or not) teamed-up in a two-part saga!
And before you ask where's Mighty Thor and Doctor Druid, Thor's no longer Don Blake MD, and Doctor Druid is dead (for now, at least)!

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Medical Comics and Stories

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Marvel Masterworks
Doctor Strange
Volume 3
...which begins with this story!

Halloween Hospital Horrors DOCTOR STRANGE "The Coming of...Dr Strange!" Part 1

One of the things about comics is a tendency to modify or rewrite the past!

...as Marvel did when the Sorcerer Supreme finally got his own book, the long-running anthology title Strange Tales which he had been sharing with Nick Fury: Agent of S.H.I.E.L.D., now retitled Doctor Strange: Master of the Mystic Arts!)

Writer Roy Thomas decided to retell and enhance the origin story we showed HERE to introduce new plot elements he would utilize down the road, plus give any new readers a chance to catch up!

So lets get down to business...

What awaits Stephen Strange in what looks like a set from the movie Lost Horizon?

(If you read the original origin, you'd know this ain't no Shangri-La!)

And why is he smoking like a chimney?

Because, before the early 2000s, almost all adult Marvel characters (heroic or villainous) smoked cigarettes/cigars/pipes...but no marijuana!

To Be Concluded...

Friday!

(Just in time for Halloween!)

The art style is quite different from the renderings of the character's creator, Steve Ditko!
Illustrator Dan Adkins trained under Wally Wood and was a big fan of classical comics illustrators like Alex (Flash Gordon) Raymond and Hal (Prince Valiant) Foster, which certainly shows in his work here!
Problem was that Dan, though a proficient penciler, was slow.
As a result, he had to drop penciling and inking the monthly title, and moved to inking other artists.
Since his amazingly-clean inking style enhanced almost everybody's work, and he was fast when he was embellishing others, Adkins switched to inking full-time, doing the occasional full pencil/ink assignment.

BTW, Nick Fury got his own book, Nick Fury: Agent of S.H.I.E.L.D., making him the only heroic Marvel character with two series being published at the same time (S.H.I.E.L.D. and Sgt Fury and His Howling Commandos) during the Silver Age of Comics!

Please Support
Medical Comics and Stories
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Marvel Masterworks
Doctor Strange
Volume 3
...which begins with this story!