how would you handle an Ultimate Dr. Strange Title?

The Overlord

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Some people have expressed the desire for their to be a Ultimate Dr. Strange
title. My question is, how would you handle it? How would you make a title about magic realstic? How would you Ultimize Strange's villains (mainly made up of evil wizards and demon lords)?
 
I wouldn't. I think Dr. Strange works best as an Oh **** character! Someone who when they show up van be used to clue the reader in on whats happening without giving everything away and be used to show the scope of things. Hes really not an ongoing sort of guy.
 
I wouldn't. I think Dr. Strange works best as an Oh **** character! Someone who when they show up van be used to clue the reader in on whats happening without giving everything away and be used to show the scope of things. Hes really not an ongoing sort of guy.

Agreed. He is being really overused at 616 and I don't know but I don't like the Ultimate Dr. Strange, how many times did he appeared?
 
There are stories you can tell, but 616 Strange seems more interesting of a character.

Ultimate Strange writing would be easy. He's new to magic, he can't do things as easy, spells go wrong, he looks for his father (whose really 616 Strange in origin). 616 Strange takes more talent and thinking to make interesting stories since at any given time he can be a deus ex machina. This weaker, new to magic Ultimate Strange would be more feeble and less of a plot device.

The only problem with writing it would be not reducing it to comedy. It could be very laughable if you don't treat it right. It's not Spider-Man meets Harry Potter. He has to find his own path.

Due to the lack of magic in the Ultimate Universe a great many early stories can be Strange trying to find a purpose in this world. He's no detective, he's too young to be an Ultimate, he's not a mutant, he's not a policeman...he can do cheap tricks...when they work.

Of course Mordo should come in as his father's enemy.

There can be early stories about what happened to Strange Sr. but he can never return for two reasons.

1- He's basically 616 Dr. Strange with the same power levels. His appearance in the book would turn his son into a useless sidekick.

2- Finding his father, finding what's happened to him, and who his father even was will be a major theme for quite a few arcs. If you bring him back...then Strange can go back to college, he's not needed.

After a while you could do more magical, more mystic stories. Maybe even introduce Mephisto and Ghost Rider, explain vampires better and give Ultimate Blade some character. But really that doesn't fit in with the Ultimate Universe, and Bendis should have never brought in vampires or Strange.

But if the writer makes magic rare, and mystical things even rarer, it could work. We already have a Gem of Cyttorak, Blade, Strange, Dr. Strange, Vampires, Thor, Loki, and Moon Knight (although I don't know if Moon Knight has a mystical origin, or powers other than being a wack-job in a hood throwing daggers).

So we know there ARE mystical things in the Ultimate Universe, so if they play it low key, it might just work. Especially if the mystical/magical people and items are in the universe through a mistake, and that THAT'S Strange's job in this universe. Protecting it from outside mystical influence and keeping the universe non-magical. (Who wouldn't pay to see a teenaged under-powered Strange telling Thor his presence in this realm is not allowed and he must return to his home dimension)

An ongoing could be done right, and if it's in the right hands I would pick it up. But it's going to be a hard job for any writer to do this right, the perfect balance of action, magic, teenage issues, and dealing with the mystical elements in an almost completely scientific universe.

Also note, that Ultimate Strange is not a Doctor, he has no MD. So, it's just Ultimate Strange, or just Strange. His father is Ultimate Dr. Strange.
 
I would have Ultimate Strange use his magic to make more lesbian action between Jessica Drew and Mary Jane.
 
The magic has to remain mysterious and not so silly. Not to be so overdramatic.

More of darker themes and really scary creepy villains.

No way at all a campy Strange.
 
The magic has to remain mysterious and not so silly. Not to be so overdramatic.

More of darker themes and really scary creepy villains.

No way at all a campy Strange.

Any details on how you would do that?

For example let's look at Strange's villains: some of the evil wizard villains can be toned down, like Baron Mordo. You can drop the Baron and make him Karl Mordo, an insane cult leader.

But how do make demon lords like Dormammu and Shuma-Gorath more realstic?
 
Any details on how you would do that?

For example let's look at Strange's villains: some of the evil wizard villains can be toned down, like Baron Mordo. You can drop the Baron and make him Karl Mordo, an insane cult leader.

But how do make demon lords like Dormammu and Shuma-Gorath more realstic?

Make them real demons.

Not melodramatic, special-effects loving demons, but simply beings who devote all of their existence to destroying humanity. None of those stupid, obvious tricks with "Oh, I get X from you and in exchange I give you your fondest wish twisted in some horrible way. By the way, you need X to save Stupid Damsel." Their every move is carefully calculated to destroy and torture human lives. They want Strange to be a force for evil and will stop at nothing to chnage him to evil.

In the hands of the right person, they could be utterly horrifying.
 
I really don't agree with the assertion that the Ultimate Universe is supposed to be "more realistic" and devoid of the supernatural. I just think there's two aspects of the UU that cause this belief. One is the fact that each of the titles is supposed to be boiled down to the core essence of their character. The reason we haven't seen much mysticism in the present books is that the mystical doesn't really have a place in those particular books. Vampires and demons and all that really aren't a thematic blip in Spider-Man, Ultimates, or FF. That doesn't mean that magic doesn't exist in that universe, but it does mean that if you tried to do a Doc Strange book without the fantastically supernatural, you'd be running contrary to what the line is supposed to be all about. The other point of the imprint is to be making books that get to the roots of the character without looking silly. Although that means being more realistic in certain aspects o the book, it doesn't mean that the UU NEEDS to be hyper-realistic. It just means we need to put the mystical in a context that present day readers can enjoy.

If I were putting Doc Strange back in comics, I'd do an Ultimate Strange Tales. It would have a rotating cast of ultimized mystical characters, with whole issues not even involving Doc Strange, but which eventually tied back into him by the end. As for Strange, I'd go one of two routes. One would be to make him a celebrity figure like John Edwards or David Blaine, who fights paranormal threats on the side, or make him a street-level, bohemian investigator of the paranormal. The demons I'd make more Lovecraftian, the sorcerers I'd tie more into real life conspiracies like the Illuminati and the Masons. Vampirism would remain supernatural, rather than some sort of virus. An the demons would be real demons, instead of alien creatures from space or some other dimension.
 
Zombipanda, you do know they've introduced Strange in UU before right?

Kind of a big jump from being the son of Clea who hates magic and has tried to keep him away from it, and being taught magic by his teacher Wong...to David Blaine.

And I know the UU isn't without it's mystical elements. Like I said before:

We already have a Gem of Cyttorak, Blade, Strange, Dr. Strange, Vampires, Thor, Loki, and Moon Knight (although I don't know if Moon Knight has a mystical origin, or powers other than being a wack-job in a hood throwing daggers).
 
Any details on how you would do that?

For example let's look at Strange's villains: some of the evil wizard villains can be toned down, like Baron Mordo. You can drop the Baron and make him Karl Mordo, an insane cult leader.

But how do make demon lords like Dormammu and Shuma-Gorath more realstic?

Not really more realisic but a lot more disturbing and scary.
 
Zombipanda, you do know they've introduced Strange in UU before right?

Kind of a big jump from being the son of Clea who hates magic and has tried to keep him away from it, and being taught magic by his teacher Wong...to David Blaine.

I don't see it as that big of a jump. We'd pick up Dr. Strange further along in his career by maybe a year or two. He seemed like a pretty average twenty-something dude. I'd think it was pretty probable that if he already threw in his chips with the whole magic thing, and he sees an opportunity to be a celebrity to boot, most people wouldn't pass that up. Hell, he could even be a reluctant celebrity, but I'm sort of tired of all these reluctant heroes.

The book would definitely have to maintain psychedelica and Lovecraftian horror as the two main influences. We can't forget that the original Dr. Strange was born out of acid culture.

FoolsFolly said:
And I know the UU isn't without it's mystical elements.

I wasn't talking about you specifically. But a lot of people seem to think those kinds of things don't fit in the UU.
 
Allow me to paraphrase from the Ourchair Archives:

The Ultimate Universe is less about being 'realistic' than it is about contextualizing the outlandish, the superhuman and the fantastic within a twenty-first century setting. It does not necessarily 'fix' what has been done forty years ago, because what Stan, Jack, Steve and the rest of the crew did was never broken in the first place.

In the 60s, these effects were seen with how mutants were seen as an insidious social menace not unlike the red scare, and what the impact of a living legend would be on a society that has had 15 years to get over the patriotic unification that defined the 40s and how a masked do-gooder would be viewed with suspicion by the press.

However, in the Ultimate Universe, mutants breed more than just street-level prejudice but an insecurity that would make mankind feel the urge to develop a protectorate force against the threat of the superhuman. This time, that peacekeeping force would be subject to both celebrity worship and left-wing suspicion.

This time, scientific research is an endeavor no longer viewed with the idealist notions of 'progress for its own sake' and the humanist vision of the explorer as hero, but rather, scientific research is purpose-driven and fully realized as part of a military-industrial complex.

Thus in the modern Ultimate Universe, 'realism' is not necessarily maintained by CURTAILING the fantastic, but by merely taking the same philosophy to a new era. In fact, this is precisely what makes it so 'down to earth' --- it adopts the classic Marvel attitude of what would happen if the strange and the bizarre happened in our world and how would we react to it realistically? What the Ultimate Universe does is place create NEW context but same attitude.

So what is it about goblins, wizards, and demon shamans that crosses the imaginary line of 'realistically fantastic' and 'overly outlandish'? How do we define that line? And for that matter, how hard should it be enforced in proportion to the ends of the Ultimate Universe? Dr. Strange has great potential because it presents elements of the fantastic that are ultimately inexplicable.

Ultimate America reacts to scientific mystery and post-human scare by attempting to create measures of defense and control. Ultimate Strange presents the possibility of seeing this fictional America react to the very things it cannot comprehend, that it cannot reasonably contain.

So in my opinion, Dr. Strange should expand the Ultimate consciousness into new frontiers --- beyond the geopolitical superpowers and the urban politics of crime, beyond the endeavors of reason and invention and beyond the sociopolitic of evolution. Ultimate Dr. Strange is where the Ultimate Universe should contextualize metaphysics to our time.
 
So in my opinion, Dr. Strange should expand the Ultimate consciousness into new frontiers --- beyond the geopolitical superpowers and the urban politics of crime, beyond the endeavors of reason and invention and beyond the sociopolitic of evolution. Ultimate Dr. Strange is where the Ultimate Universe should contextualize metaphysics to our time.

And you JUST convinced me that the UU NEEDS a Strange ongoing.
 
Allow me to paraphrase from the Ourchair Archives:

The Ultimate Universe is less about being 'realistic' than it is about contextualizing the outlandish, the superhuman and the fantastic within a twenty-first century setting. It does not necessarily 'fix' what has been done forty years ago, because what Stan, Jack, Steve and the rest of the crew did was never broken in the first place.

In the 60s, these effects were seen with how mutants were seen as an insidious social menace not unlike the red scare, and what the impact of a living legend would be on a society that has had 15 years to get over the patriotic unification that defined the 40s and how a masked do-gooder would be viewed with suspicion by the press.

However, in the Ultimate Universe, mutants breed more than just street-level prejudice but an insecurity that would make mankind feel the urge to develop a protectorate force against the threat of the superhuman. This time, that peacekeeping force would be subject to both celebrity worship and left-wing suspicion.

This time, scientific research is an endeavor no longer viewed with the idealist notions of 'progress for its own sake' and the humanist vision of the explorer as hero, but rather, scientific research is purpose-driven and fully realized as part of a military-industrial complex.

Thus in the modern Ultimate Universe, 'realism' is not necessarily maintained by CURTAILING the fantastic, but by merely taking the same philosophy to a new era. In fact, this is precisely what makes it so 'down to earth' --- it adopts the classic Marvel attitude of what would happen if the strange and the bizarre happened in our world and how would we react to it realistically? What the Ultimate Universe does is place create NEW context but same attitude.

So what is it about goblins, wizards, and demon shamans that crosses the imaginary line of 'realistically fantastic' and 'overly outlandish'? How do we define that line? And for that matter, how hard should it be enforced in proportion to the ends of the Ultimate Universe? Dr. Strange has great potential because it presents elements of the fantastic that are ultimately inexplicable.

Ultimate America reacts to scientific mystery and post-human scare by attempting to create measures of defense and control. Ultimate Strange presents the possibility of seeing this fictional America react to the very things it cannot comprehend, that it cannot reasonably contain.

So in my opinion, Dr. Strange should expand the Ultimate consciousness into new frontiers --- beyond the geopolitical superpowers and the urban politics of crime, beyond the endeavors of reason and invention and beyond the sociopolitic of evolution. Ultimate Dr. Strange is where the Ultimate Universe should contextualize metaphysics to our time.

I wish I was smart like Ourchair.
 
man that was good, even more so because it's right. shoot yeah they need to give it a shot.
 

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