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You’ve heard of Alcoholic, now get ready for Amuletholic.

Published 1963

And now, we take a handbrake turn from the modern-retellings-of-origins, right back into the 60s. For a lot of the 60s comics I’m not going to have much to say because, in terms of plot, they don’t really have one. For all the “first appearances,” though, I’ll take some extra time to see how strongly they characterize initially. Oh, and I’m only reading the Doc Strange stories from these issues, for now.

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Design and Personality

The good Doctor has some odd things going on in his early era. Let’s just get this out of the way up top: They gave him pretty racist Asian eyes and he has them throughout these issues.

His design gets a little more solidified a few issues from now, but they clearly had a different idea for his race at the time. We were extremely close to having an Asian Doctor Strange.

Stan also clearly wanted to stylize the way this character operates. He feels much more established than all the other heroes of this era, like he’s already been doing this awhile. And he really doesn’t put up with people. Gives off the vibe of a guy that’s been working a service job too long, and has become really jaded about the whole thing.

I think establishing this really formal, stick-in-the-mud behavior is what has always made him such a fun contrast during Spider-Man teamups. I kinda wish they had made him more grumpy and less quippy in the MCU for that reason.

Oh, and he never explains a damn thing to people around him. Half a town will be possessed by interdimensional beings before he turns up and sends them all packing. Then Doc just turns around and says “welp, good luck figuring out what happened there, idiots.”

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Abilities

Initially this man can do exactly 1 thing by himself: go into “ectoplasmic form.” Its just astral projection, but I guess they didn’t have the term yet. Now, you might think he can do more things once he’s in Astral mode, and he can! He can THROW HANDS.

Now if you’re obsessed with knowing things about comics, or you’re an oldhead, you might say “hey he could do more than that!”
Incorrect.
His enchanted amulet could do more than that:

And, my personal favorite:

So, this must just be the Eye of Agamotto already, right? They never call it that. Just “Glowing Amulet,” “Enchanted Amulet,” “Magical Amulet,” etc. It’s unclear what its limits are currently, appears to just be a catch-all to get Doc out of situations.

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Villains

We get Nightmare in issue 1, then Mordo in issue 2, and then… well I think Stan might have run out of ideas after that. Out of 11 Doctor Strange stories in this set of issues, Nightmare is the villain of three and Mordo is the villain of five whole stories.

Early Mordo was very quaint because he had the same powerset as the Doc, but he doesn’t have an amulet. So what can he do, class? That’s right! He can go Ectoplasmic mode!
They give him more powers a little quicker than they do Strange, but his first appearance he just astral projects, takes over a servant, and poisons the Ancient One’s food. That’s the extent of the magic he’s using. Oh, and the spell “THROWING HANDS“

And early Nightmare? Really well done. Ditko doesn’t let you see his whole face initially and it makes him way more menacing.

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Some bonus thoughts:

• The Vishanti and Hogoth show up as names Strange invokes when doing magic, already.
• Doc does get an extra power during this run: Mindreading.
• Oh and the art (at least for the Nightmare realm) starts getting very abstract and interesting as these issues go on:

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Of course, being old comics, these are all pretty goofy in retrospect. But now having read a decent amount of the different books Stan himself worked on, it’s clear he’s very capable of striking the right tone for each book. Whether it be Spider-Man’s highschool troubles, the Fantastic Four’s family teasing, or Doctor Strange’s sheer exasperation.

Oh, and I still can’t get enough of the wild ways Stan plays the hypeman for Marvel. He really had a knack for making it sound charming: