This isn’t the Strange we know.
Creative Staff:
Story: Jed MacKay
Art: Marcelo Ferreira, Don Ho
Colors: Jana Cartaglia
Letterer: VC’s Cory Petit
What They Say:
Clea comes face-to-face with the mysterious Harvestman, as they both face off against an undead foe! Though just as Clea begins to uncover ways to bring Stephen Strange back, another attack upon the magical realm is at hand! But Clea is not just any Sorcerer Supreme, she is a Warlord…and this second attack will not stand under her rule!
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers):
Coming into this book having not read a Doctor Strange book in about a decade is probably not the best thing, but, well, I’ve been a fan of Clea since first reading issues with her in the late 70s and early 80s. The opening issue did a solid job of introducing the core basics and making it clear who this version of Clea is and I really think Jed MacKay hit it out of the park in setting the tone and establishing the basics. MacKay is joined by artist Marcel Ferreira and Don Ho while Jana Cartaglia handles the color design. It’s a solid-looking book that has some really great expressiveness elements to it and a strong sense of design and power that a title like this really needs.
With the second issue, it’s really not until toward the end that the book gets interesting. What it wants to focus on in the beginning is picking up where it left off with the new mystery man, who is revealed to be called The Harvestman, who is kind of a dark alternate of the Sorceror Supreme and focused on dealing with a different kind of issue. We see Clea going up against him at first but there’s also a twist as the reanimated corpse of Eric Masterson is causing trouble and there’s a kind of dual-approach to dealing with that. It doesn’t make Clea friends with the Harvestman at all, but she sees this new iron-masked person someone that will provide the proper kind of distraction she needs for her own goals, namely that of bringing Stephen back to life. Of course, that will draw him eventually, but it lets her operate in the now well enough.
When things do end in that particular match, it’s fun to see Clea in a bathrobe and just shooting the breeze with Wong about things and how she views events. There’s even a fun Tony Stark joke that lands well and made me grin. But we also get Wong trying to redirect her toward the things that she does need to focus on as the Sorcerer Supreme but she’s just not all that interested in that kind of stuff, which will make things difficult between her and Wong as time goes on. Of course, we do get things coming to distract here as it progresses as she learns that the Blasphemy Cartel has utterly destroyed the bazaar we visited in the opening issue and that sets her into full Dark Dimension dark mode. Which is part of the appeal with this Clea in that she is these two very different things that aren’t trying to work together but are constantly fighting within her.
In Summary:
Strange continues to be an enjoyable book but it’s definitely a Marvel book. Action is the way forward and that’s often without any real reveals or information until the very end of the fight. The action that we do get is fun and busy here and the artwork is strong for it. But I had more fun watching Clea and Wong on the couch talking and joking than I did anything else here. That delivered good character material and made for some fun. The bigger picture has a lot of things at play here but its initial focus really seems like it’s going to be on this Blasphemy Cartel group and I’m not sure that it’s really going to land well as an engaging story yet for a character like Clea.
Grade: B+
Age Rating: 13+
Released By: Marvel Comics
Release Date: April 6th, 2022
MSRP: $4.99