After watching Doctor Strange and the Multiverse of Madness, Stephen Strange became my third favourite Marvel character…replacing Steve, who dropped down after the events of Endgame. And after one of my brothers got me this comic book for Christmas last year, I definitely wanted to read this. It just took me a little while to start reading.

Much like Iron Man and Captain America, I’m very familiar with Stephen Strange’s origin story. An arrogant surgeon who loses the use of his hands, he ends up learning magic during his quest to somehow restore the use of his hands.

Unlike the MCU, in the comics, Stephen and Mordo are rivals pretty much from the start. Though none of the comics in this collection show their initial meeting, Mordo is well established as someone who hates Stephen and wants to kill him and the Ancient One, so that he’s the strongest magic user left. I will say that this hatred for both his fellow apprentice and his mentor does confuse me a little, as why did he even become the Ancient One’s apprentice if his only goal is to kill the older man?

The first two comics didn’t really feel as tense as the later ones did, as Mordo felt very much like a minor annoyance rather than an outright threat. Stephen seems to find it really easy to outwit Mordo and beat him in both of the storylines.

The third comic in this collection definitely ups the stakes a bit. Compared to Mordo, Shuma-Gorath is a much bigger threat…especially as it’s revealed that it needs to get to Earth through the Ancient One. I found it interesting that Stephen was faced with the moral dilemma of having to take a life in order to save the rest of the world, especially as it went against his vow to never take a life. I would have liked to see a bit more of his feelings after doing so. While the Ancient One’s soul was free to become part of the bigger universe, I still feel like the act of taking a life should have had more of an impact on Stephen. Maybe it does in future comics. I don’t know.

Weep for the Soul of Man was definitely an intense read, where it actually seemed like Mordo’s nefarious scheme succeeded. While I didn’t really know the characters he was about to sacrifice, I still found myself empathising with their plight. It was interesting to see Man-Thing, who’s a character from the comics I’m not really familiar with. I definitely felt bad for the fact that he’d awoken Man-Thing’s human self…and that Stephen couldn’t reverse what had turned Sallis into Man-Thing. While he did return Man-Thing to a mindless state, I definitely felt like that was a poor way to repay Man-Thing for what he’d done…though Stephen seemed to feel that way as well.

I did find it a really intriguing storyline where Stephen had to give up his white magic, and pretty much everything about him, in order to fight Shuma-Gorath again. I thought that taking Victoria’s power from her was really wrong, though. While it was obvious why he felt the need to do so, given the threat Shuma-Gorath was to the Earth, I think he definitely went against a huge part of his nature. Victoria did tell him she wanted to help, but she didn’t agree to him taking her power from her…and that definitely made me dislike Stephen a bit in this storyline. In this instance, I really don’t think the ends justified the means…and I would have really liked to see some of the aftermath of what he did in order to fight Shuma-Gorath.

I always like redemption arc storylines, so seeing Mordo get one was really good. Originally, upon finding out that Mordo’s cancer had been transferred to Stephen, I assumed that Mordo’s apology and plea for forgiveness was nothing more than a trick. However, when Mordo took the cancer back into himself and revealed that it had been his daughter who’d been responsible for the transferrance. While the storyline did have a sad ending, I felt that there was some hope in it, given that Mordo was able to rejoin the Ancient One’s spirit and Stephen asked him to save a place for him.

The penultimate comic in this collection involved the Fantastic Four…although I was surprised, and a little bit disappointed, to see that the blurb gave away what happened in that comic. As soon as I started reading, it was exactly what had been summarised, so there was no surprise or tension when it turned out that Agatha Harkness was helping the Salem Seven, or that the spell was actually intended to unleash Shuma-Gorath. Reed Richards actually seemed to realise that something was wrong, but didn’t put a stop to the spell being read by Sue? Apart from that, though, I really enjoyed seeing the Fantastic Four…especially Johnny and Ben, as they’re two of my favourites. And I loved that Johnny was the only one who didn’t drink the tea, so was therefore the only one unaffected by losing his powers.

The final comic was the one I was looking forward to the most. The basic storyline involves a cosmic cube-twisted Steve Rogers, whose reality has been changed so that he’s been a HYDRA agent all along. I was a bit disappointed to see that Mordo was back as a bad guy, as I liked the way his storyline had been ended, but he did seem to give Stephen more of an enemy to fight than I’d really seen in the first two comics. I especially liked the DnD references in this comic, along with the fact that Wilson Fisk was helping Stephen, Jessica and Ben Urich. I loved seeing Ben Urich as an avenging angel and how he reacted to Wilson Fisk being willing to help them, despite still being a criminal/bad guy.

All told, I really enjoyed this collection. Reading these storylines made me want to seek out many of the other storylines, especially the final comic. I would definitely recommend reading this if you enjoy Marvel comics.