Think you could possibly imagine the late Rodney Dangerfeld decked out in a long red flowing cape, making funny gestures with his fingers?

That pretty much describes Dr. Strange back in the earliest days of Marvel’s sixties revolution. Because, in the forty-five issues featuring the work of his visual creator, Steve Ditko, within the pages of Strange Tales 110-146 (editor Stan Lee was apparently so unsure of the character’s initial appeal that after a mere two episodes, he held the Master of the Mystic Arts out of the next two issues in a rare instance of wait-and-see judgment), the good Doctor was afforded little respect and but a single cover all to his – and Ditko’s – own.

One.

Uno.

And not only was it the enigmatic illustrator’s last foray into Doc’s dark dimensions, he didn’t even actually draw it!

Well, yeah, okay, he did – but he clearly never INTENDED what was ultimately fronting the July 1966 issue of Strange Tales to be the book’s cover.

Here – take a look…

Nice, huh?

So was the interior story’s art – some of which might’ve looked mighty familiar to readers who’d immediately flipped open to Ditko’s baldly titled swan song after falling under the spell of that powerful cover.

Like this panel on page four…

And then, a page later, the sight of the Doctor on this impressive full-page tableau no doubt caused many a fan to experience an immediate sense of deja vu…

Take another, closer look at the masterful bit of production that is the cover of Strange Tales #146. Our hero was flipped, tilted and slightly enlarged (most noticeable on the leg shadings), while the ever inscrutable Eternity had his right arm flawlessly extended by some long forgotten Bullpenner (who also added some big black blobs of ink to flesh out the composition). A nice job, aided immensely by its rich color scheme .

I noticed all this recently when I decided to cobble up my own version of this Marvel Age classic…

Dig this – Dr. Strange made it onto only eighteen of the Strange Tales‘ covers published during the Ditko era! Eighteen out of forty-five opportunities! Yeesh! The first one wasn’t until eight months in, either, on Strange Tales #118, and of that meager total, nine (including the big finale) consisted of small, smaller, and really teeny-tiny Ditko vignettes pasted up (check especially 137 – and all of the rest – over on this page at the Grand Comics Database). Eight of the others fell to the responsibility of lead feature Human Torch/Nick Fury cover artist, Jack Kirby – and as for the lone remaining one, well, we’ll get to THAT one later. More than once, Stan plastered a lamely apologetic blurb like the one found on the front of number 134: “Of course Dr. Strange is in this issue too – but we couldn’t find any place to put him on the cover!”.

Yeah? Well, I’m thinking maybe you coulda tried a little bit harder, Stan.

As it was, even with Kirby at the helm, Doc only managed to score equal or better pictorial billing on two of the King’s covers: 123 and 130. I’ve already drawn my own versions of both, writing them up to boot. (You can see for yourself by checking out these links to my gushing over the sublime delights of Strange Tales #123 #123 – and bitterly complaining about the Sorcerer Supreme upstaging the Beatles on the cover of Strange Tales #130 #130!)

No, Doc was afforded very little respect during the Ditko days, but after recently looking over all these covers, I think I’ve FINALLY figured out a mystery that’s been bothering comics fans for forty years now – why exactly DID Steve Ditko pack up and leave Marvel with no clear cut explanation back in mid ’66?

I’m thinking maybe it was THIS cover than pushed him over the brink…

C’mon, how lame was THAT? Yeah, yeah – there must’ve been some sorta monumentally insurmountable deadline crunch for Stan to stat the splash page of that issues S.H.I.E.L.D. story into the hands of a less-than-enraptured seeming Dr. Strange (drawn by future Doc artist, Marie Severin) – but even as big a fan of the Fury feature as I was at the time, it still just looked silly to me. Imagine then how Mr. Ditko, with his very specific views, reacted when he first spied this image:

“‘Almost everybody reads S.H.I.E.L.D.!”? I don’t think so, I don’t think so at all! Trying to suggest that we unmask the Green Goblin as Norman Osborn was bad enough, but THIS time, Lee has gone way, WAY too far! That’s it – I’m leaving!”

Well, y’know, it MIGHT’VE gone down like that – who can truly say?…

And as for this episode of “The Fred Hembeck Show”, in the words of that final Ditko Doc entry, yes friends, you’ve reached the end at last!

(If you haven’t already zipped on over there, check out Hembeck.com when you get the chance!)

Copyright 2006 Fred Hembeck

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