Just this share today.
https://tombrevoort.com/2026/06/27/bhoc-doctor-strange-36/
BHOC: DOCTOR STRANGE #36
I was never really much of a DOCTOR STRANGE fan, and so outside of a few key runs, it wasn’t a title that I read avidly. Especially in the 1970s, when the tone and tenor of the series was being influenced by the wave of interest in the supernatural and metaphysical that was going on in the larger popular culture, I found the series to often be difficult to connect with. I was twelve, I didn’t really have broad philosophical concerns that I was grappling with, nor was I especially interested in spirituality. So DOCTOR STRANGE wasn’t really my jam. And yet, I bought this issue, largely, I expect, because I’d purchased the preceding two. it made so little impact on me that once again it’s a comic that I know I read but that I have scant memory of.
DOCTOR STRANGE had been in an almost constant state of turmoil since the sudden departure of writer Steve Englehart a few years earlier. No truly consistent creative team had stepped in to take over the series. Rather, there was a revolving door of writers who would produce an issue or three and then cede the assignment to somebody else. One gets the sense that, apart from Englehart, nobody up at Marvel really wanted to write DOCTOR STRANGE, at least not on a regular basis. This particular issue was plotted by the always-solid Roger Stern and scripted by Ralph Macchio, who had been called in to pinch hit on the book a couple times already. It was a yeoman effort, but as I said at the start, so unmemorable that it’s slipped from my mind almost entirely.
The artwork for this issue was produced by Gene Colan, an artist who was somewhat hit-or-miss for me. In part, this was due to the fact that Colan was notoriously difficult to ink well. He incorporated a lot of greytone work into his pencils, which made it an exercise in interpretation to translate his images into straight-up black and white. Colan also had a sort of personal relationship with anatomy, so his figures could sometimes feel a bit bloated or oddly-constructed. And his page layouts often tended towards the chaotic. Here, though, Colan largely makes good use of defining gutters, possibly urged to be more straightforward by editor in chief Jim Shooter, who felt strongly about clarity. Also, a bunch of the credit has to go to inker Dan Green. I don’t associate Green as an inker over Colan, but here he does a nice job of tightening up Colan’s looseness while maintaining the essence of his cartooning.
The story in this issue can only be described as a cornucopia of continuity clean-up. The issue opens with Doctor Strange, Clea and Murdoch Adams on their way to England to investigate the demon cult of Ningal. Adams, you see, had previously encountered this cult and this demon in a one-off story in an issue of CHAMBER OF CHILLS some years previously. He sought out Doctor Strange, but under the name Stephen Sanders, which was a short-lived alternate identity that Eternity had once created for Strange to operate under but which had been undone. The very fact that Adams remembers Stephen Sanders is what made him noteworthy enough for strange to meet with him in the first place. And all of this is recounted in a series of extended, foot-note-laden flashbacks that attempted to present all of this backstory in a digestible manner. I was usually a fiend for stuff like this, but in this instance, it was all so head-spinning that I didn’t connect with any of it.
The group has also brought with them the petrified body of the Black Knight, who had been turned to stone several years earlier. They hope to be able to at last reunite Dane Whitman’s spirit with his body and restore it to normalcy. This too requires some extensive flashbacks to explain. To keep matters from getting entirely too encyclopedic, at the outset, Strange is forced to release his astral form to do battle with Ningal, who wants revenge on the trio for having killed his brother-in-arms Ludi last issue. Ningal, in turn, has been set upon them by the Dweller In Darkness, a malevolent entity who had been causing problems for Strange for some time, but who still remained largely undefined except as a string-puller of several lesser mystic threats. Anyway, after a bit of dancing around, strange is able to repel Ningal with the Eye of Agamotto, sending him back to the Dweller in momentary defeat.
Eventually, Strange’s plane touches down in England and the trio head out to Garrett Castle, the Black Knight’s homestead. There, they run into Victoria Bentley, another character from the past. Victoria had been saved from Baron Mordo by Doctor Strange in one of his first adventures, and they’d crossed paths a few times since. Here, she immediately makes Clea feel jealous. Strange and Clea begin to make preparations as they await the delivery of the crate containing the Black Knight’s body to be delivered from the airfield. it arrives in short order, but nosy old Victoria can’t help herself but to pry the lid off the thing and taking a look at it herself.
From there, we cut back to Strange and Clea as Victoria’s scream pierces the night. The two sorcerers come running in response, only to find themselves confronted by the statue of the Black Knight, reanimated and standing upright. What’s more, its features are now those of Ningal, and it holds the limp form of Victoria Bentley in its massive arms. Clearly Doc is going to have to do some crafty spellcasting to combat this renewed menace. And that’s where this issue s To Be Continued. I can see now why I don’t really recall this issue, as it’s relatively light on story events that aren’t recaps of older, earlier comic books.
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- New note - On 1807.06, I ceased daily transmission of my Hey Mom feature after three years of daily conversations. I post Hey Mom blog entries on special occasions. I post the days since ("Days Ago") count on my blog each day, and now I have a second count for Days since my Dad died on August 28, 2024. I am now in the same time zone as Google! So, when I post at 10:10 a.m. PDT to coincide with the time of Mom's death, I am now actually posting late, so it's really 1:10 p.m. EDT. But I will continue to use the time stamp of 10:10 a.m. to remember the time of her death and sometimes 13:40 EDT for the time of Dad's death. The blog entry numbering in the title has changed to reflect total Sense of Doubt posts since I began the blog on 0705.04, which include Hey Mom posts, Daily Bowie posts, and Sense of Doubt posts. Hey Mom posts will still be numbered sequentially. New Hey Mom posts will use the same format as all the other Hey Mom posts; all other posts will feature this format seen here.
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