Rolling Hard For Intiative: Reviewing ‘Doctor Strange’ #13

They say that life’s just a game. What happens though when a tabletop fantasy roleplay game becomes the real world? Well, one has to go gather their party of course.

Familiar faces heed the call as the sorcerer supreme must follow the rules to save the city in Doctor Strange #13. It’s a hack & slash of a good time in this story from Jed MacKay, Pasqual Ferry, Heather Moore, and Cory Petit.

It goes without saying (yet I keep saying it) that MacKay is a tremendous writer of characters. We’ve seen that time and time again over the years from the likes of the thieving Black Cat to the shady Taskmaster to all the struggles of Moon Knight and his compatriots. While some of those characters and books are mostly in his past, there is never a bad time to return to what you know and love.

If the cover didn’t give it away, yeah, he did it.

MacKay found a way to take one of his current books (that would be Doctor Strange of course) and use it in a fun way to return to characters he made his mark on. A book that is riffing on Dungeons & Dragons and all other tabletop roleplaying games to boot.

Like a child walking through a candy store (or any shop full of things they love), I can’t help but carry a giant grin on my face with this issue. My eyes darting every which way, finding new things to delight my senses and send me into gleeful comic book-reading heaven.

Go and read any of my reviews and you’ll know how much I loved the various Black Cat series from Mackay. The same as how he found a way to make me kind of like that jerk Taskmaster (just a bit) in his miniseries. Get me started and I’ll gush all day about the Moon Knight series, and Hunter’s Moon has been a wonderful addition. Wrap them all up in the workings of this Strange series I’ve been loving, and baby we got a stew going.

Team gathering issues are a hit-and-miss situation. Unless it’s these characters and this writer, then it’s a hoot and a holler. All of their dynamics bounce off each other in the most delightful sorts of ways, both good and bad. There is time spent explaining the Cobolorum (the game in question) and the rules of these types of games in a breezy yet informative way. Most of the issue is talk about the game situation through dialogue/captions over a montage of fantasy-style moments and battles.

This is the perfect time to have the regular artistic duo of Ferry and Moore back on things.

I’ve mentioned it many times, but Ferry is perfect for this book. There is a magical essence to his style of art, which fits any type of story. Yet, putting it with magic stories that tend to skew towards the fantasy aspect anyway is one of the smoothest fits. All the realms and battles look epic while keeping the audience and characters in a tight focus. Panels shift and slide around, following the so-called “rules” or norms while also bursting past them as necessary.

Characters are expressive with true weight to them. At times the backgrounds will become sparse, and drawn back, allowing the character or story moment to take full control. Others are so dense, that your eyes keep moving to take in every artifact or element on the page, even the most mundane seeming.

One thing I’ve returned to in previous issues by Ferry is talking about how well he’s able to create out-of-this-world yet grounded work. This still applies. With the fantasy element at play there is even more room to play up the out-of-this-world feeling. In a way that still has that anchor of grounding, which plays into Strange’s reminders to his team that this altered world is quite real (and dangerous).

Vibrant. That’s a keyword to use when speaking about Moore’s coloring work. Colors that are striking, spanning the visible spectrum. Paired with them are colors of a more subtle nature, preferring to exist in a more natural toned-down state. Many of the backdrops employ these colors which gives the feeling of reality to the overall space. Allowing the world at large in this story to feel as close to our own as it should.

All of the magical and super beats are where the colors take things up a notch. Greens, pinks, purples, and blues of all intensities. Bringing a lot of that out-of-this-world flavor I’ve mentioned quite a few times. These contrasting palates create the illusion of a world like our own that is not our own since a lot of supernatural things are going down here. Magic and super stuff are supposed to stand out from the mundane, and they make that work perfectly here.

Lettering is such a beautiful art when one actually takes the time to appreciate and learn what makes it tick. All of the voices are created in this moment, helping the reader to accurately hear things as we move through the story. Petit is so good at this, letting the fonts shift in style or size to get the point across even better.

Throwing in balloons of differing sizes or colors, gorgeous caption boxes and different types of SFX takes it even higher.

Just like how Ferry places the panels so intricately, framing the story in powerful ways, Petit does the same with the dialogue. Allowing it to have a deep powerful presence that bolsters the rest of the art, rather than overwhelming or detracting in any way. Each piece of the story here is well-tuned and humming. Making for a tremendous reading experience.

Doctor Strange #13 is now available from Marvel Comics.