Nothing To Fear But Fear And Nightmares Themselves: Reviewing ‘Doctor Strange’ #2

There is something truly amiss in the magical realms. Luckily, for some, there are two Sorcerers Supreme on the case. Unfortunately, the figure or force behind these occurrences remains unknown…or does it?

Comic book issues that are somewhat stand-alone with plenty of great action and character moments, but are also part of the overall ongoing narrative plotline are such a welcome thing. These were the types of issues that we had in many comics before the rise of perfect for trade story arcs. To be fair, there are many great series that use the arc format that also does tons with character development/emotional moments alongside all the big story arc happenings. It’s just nice to see the return of a series like this where arcs are not ironclad defined, and the issues have room to do some things both for the overall plot and also beyond it.

Truly it’s not a surprise since that is thematically right in the wheelhouse of Jed MacKay, who has brought us numerous titles that do this type of perfect balance. Elevating characters to levels where they either have never been or at least haven’t been in a while, mining Marvel history to tell great stories that have overall connections without feeling chained to that past. It’s no wonder he’ll soon be the new writer for Avengers, a gig that seems so destined after looking back at how often some of the Avengers or members have played parts in his past books.

Okay, I should talk about this precise issue. Pitting them against the nightmare realm, where Nightmare is indisposed (where he claims that it was done by Strange…hmmmm), is some fun supernatural-level stuff that is also conceptually easy for the reader to get into. Nightmares and fears are of course pretty darn common in real life but also narratively. Again, this allows MacKay to tell a sort of seemingly stand-alone story, but we see through it that it most definitely has ties to what happened in the first issue and where the series is headed.

This, of course, is the third series in the overall story MacKay has been telling, with The Death Of Doctor Strange and Strange preceding it. Within the pages of Strange, we were chiefly following Clea Strange, a very welcome situation for those like myself that were less familiar with her as a character, but Stephen fit in once the reveal came of who he was in death. While this title bears his name it is still very much a duo comic, and I love that the way of doing that is having Clea be the narrator here and the one telling us the reader things as they go about their business. As it keeps her voice as a prominent one and not losing any of the previous series’ momentum.

The character stuff is paramount to this series just as much as all the supernatural magical stuff, and if one needs to find an artist that is perfect for those two worlds well, they have but to look to one Pasqual Ferry who was born for creating books of this nature. That’s not to say that what Ferry does in any book isn’t spectacular, but these sorts of stories where lots of irregular places, figures, or moments pop up are truly his jam. Everything Ferry draws has a very whimsical light feeling to it but on a dime, it can turn truly deep and serious with an edge to it, sometimes balancing between both of those extremes at the same time.

Every single character, setting, or item that comes into focus has its own distinctive energy and placement that gives the world a deeper more detailed life. We can not only see the emotions upon their faces (even the fully masked Moon Knight) but we can inherently feel it on the page thanks to their spot-on facial expressions, body language, and the wonderful way that Ferry lays out a page panel wise. These panels are not just a way to contain the various scenes but have their own wild varied energy as the panels shift in shape and size to become almost characters of their own.

Taking that foundation and adding to it would be colorist Matt Hollingsworth who is perfectly paired with Ferry. I mentioned that there is a light but also very heavy feeling to the work Ferry does and Hollingsworth highlights and even elevates that with the color palette choices. A large part of that is the stellar choice to go with a bit more subdued natural/toned-down sort of color scheme for more of the elements on the page. Even with the supernatural at work here it makes these irregular situations feel far more regular because they are in more subtle colors that we might find all around ourselves instead of being some wildly vivid otherworldly colors.

Colors of that nature can be found for sure, reserved for some of the powers and magical elements on the page, but they are usually on a much smaller scale than the other colors at work. Nightmare’s realm is almost beyond our comprehension with how it’s set up and how it looks yet at the same time nightmares are something we can understand so the color choice plays into that quite a bit. Also, being set in a nightmare realm, a place of darkness in some respects and fear, the colors being pulled back makes so much logical sense, especially when we see quite a shift once the characters move into deeper astral realms (more vivid colors come into play).

A few paragraphs or so ago I made a mention of really liking the dual voices we get here through Clea’s caption narration and Doctor Strange through dialogue and action sort of taking the lead outside of those narrations. Part of what makes both work so well beyond the great writing and artwork would be the lettering work of Cory Petit. Little changes here or there give some personality to the different lettering for characters, including things like the great use of a purplish pink color for Clea’s boxes/font matching her costume so we instantly associate it with her upon sight. Petit is always so good at making the various bits of lettering just flow so smoothly around the page, almost like they are doing a dance of their own around the rest of the artwork so that all the dialogue can be delivered without ever overwhelming the page or the reader.

Doctor Strange #2 is now available from Marvel Comics.