Aaron/Bachalo Doctor Strange

Doctor Strange 1-14, Last Days of Magic 1

Lots of pictures today.  This title is just about as perfect a fit as you can find for Chris Bachalo - A chance to draw absolutely fantastical creatures with page layouts to match.  Gorgeous.

His depiction of the magic world is spectacular as well - a universe of color in an otherwise bleak existence.  

And the visual of Doctor Strange wielding weapons is awesome in its incongruity.

Jason Aaron shines just as brightly.  He’s a word painter, and the images he creates are no less vivid than Bachalo’s.  "Once your soulmeat has been blessed by Spurrgog the Hell-Breather, you will be a candle that lights the way through the winding darkness." Delicious.

His ideas are just as batshit crazy as those of someone like Jonathan Hickman, but he employs them in a way that enhances, rather than confuses, the story.  Take, for example, the panels below.  There’s no shortage of whacked out concepts, but he uses them as throwaway one-offs.  This way, the reader isn’t forced to parse everything in order to follow the plot, but can absorb as much of the insanity as they please, and move on.  

Similarly here with Zelma’s secrets, Aaron has a particular skill when it comes to creating little nuggets of verbal gold.  It’s something that he displays throughout the run.  

Books can die.  There’s something deeply sad about those words.  

Aaron also introduces the concept that Doctor Strange’s use of magic has a price.  A literally gut-wrenching price.  It adds a whole new dimension to Doctor Strange’s heroism - What used to appear as an effortless wiggling of fingers can never been treated so cavalierly again.  The consequences of his endeavors are rather horrifying, and they’re compounded by the solutions Wong and Strange come up with to alleviate the Doctor’s pain.  Both Wong’s secret disciples and the thing that becomes Mister Misery are truly dark means that barely justify the ends.

Getting to the actual Last Days of Magic arc: Aaron builds up to it slowly and effectively over the five preceding issues.  By the time the Empirikul finally show up, there’s a truly foreboding sense that the magicians of Earth are completely outclassed.  The ensuing battles bear this out, and it’s got an impressive last stand vibe to it.  The ending’s a little too easy after Aaron writes himself into a bit of a corner.  (That and the “we can’t call the Avengers because this is our problem” excuse are my two nitpicks with the arc.)  But overall, a lot of fun.

The arc after that lost me - Aaron makes the weird the main part of the story, and like with Hickman’s stories, I lost my patience with it.  Stopped buying with issue 14.  

I end with a final Aaron word poem:

Regret buying? No

Would buy again? Yes

Would read again? Yes

Rating: Good (Nice for 12-14)