Doctor Strange and Self-Denial
Englehart’s successful career at Marvel (1971-1976) was a turning point in the redefinition of the superhero mainstream. On the one hand, we have the well-known stories of Englehart and his Doctor Strange collaborator dropping acid and wandering around Washington Square Park as they planned the Sorcerer Supreme's’ latest adventures. On the other hand, Englehart not only crafted exciting and complex superhero stories in The Avengers and The Defenders, he is also the writer who turned Captain America from a failing title with limited appeal to a best-selling and timely comic. Even more intriguing, he took the flag-wearing hero seriously as a symbol of American idealism while challenging his worldview in an extended Watergate-inspired storyline that ended at roughly the same time as Richard Nixon’s presidency.
Doctor Strange is a good place to start examining Englehart’s Marvel career. It is not his earliest contribution to the company’s titles, but his work on the character (in Marvel Premiere from 1973 to 1974, then in the Doctor’s own series until just before his departure from the company in 1976) coincides with his most productive Marvel years. More to the point, long before Englehart took over his adventures, Doctor Strange had been coded as the company’s most countercultural character. This is due primarily to the art by co-creator Steve Ditko, whose surreal depictions of alternate magical dimensions overlapped nicely with the psychedelic aesthetic of the burgeoning hippie movement (never mind the fact that Ditko’s own libertarian politics made him an unlikely idol for the new youth culture). A baby boomer, Englehart (b.1947) was part of the generation that had the chance to read the Lee/Ditko Doctor Strange stories in their teens and move on to Carlos Castaneda while in college. And perhaps even subsequently embark on a career making odd, occasionally trippy comics of their own.
By 1973, when he took over Doctor Strange’s adventures in Marvel Premiere, Englehart already had some experience with the character. In the first 11 issues of The Defenders, Strange was one of several characters Englehart juggled over the course of two years. But as Englehart himself puts in multiple interviews [SOURCE], he had treated the sorcerer as simply a superhero who could shoot rays from his hands. When he got the assignment to write Strange’s solo book, Englehart set out to determine exactly what kind of person a mystical superhero would be. Immersing himself in various esoteric traditions, Englehart also changed the course of his own life, or at leas his career; the modern occult would become an important part of some of his most significant writing, including the four-volume series of prose novels about Max August (starting with The Point Man in 1980).
In Doctor Strange, Englehart gave his readers a hero who undoubtedly “rose and advanced;” by his second issue, Strange had moved on from being merely “Master of the Mystic Arts” to “Sorceror Supreme,” and his knowledge, power, and perspective would continue to grow throughout Englehart’s tenure. But unlike Captain America or the members of the Avengers over whom he had the greatest creative control (Mantis, the Scarlet Witch, and the Vision), Stephen Strange’s journey was less explicitly about self-discovery and self-actualization than it was about understanding and accepting his place in the universe. Most of his Marvel characters followed paths that had a distinctly American feel to them: they learned who they were and tried to be all that they could be. Strange did that, too, but in a manner that is more Taoist. Stephen Strange sought the way of the universe; a way that, despite needing the occasional course correction, was a path for Strange to join more than to forge.
But first, Englehart had some housekeeping to do. As was fairly common at the time, his initial script for Marvel Premiere was part of a story that had been going on for some time— in this case, the penultimate installment in a plot that had begun exactly one year before he took over the book. To muddle matters further, the first chapter was written by Stan Lee and Barry Smith and the second by Roy Thomas and Archie Goodwin; only with the third (Marvel Premiere 5, November 1972) did the title get a “permanent” writer, Gardner Fox. Strange was battling a menagerie of enemies rooted in H.P. Lovecraft’s Cthulhu mythos, led by the mysterious Shuma-Gorath. In Englehart’s hands, the battle becomes as much about acceptance as conflict: Strange’s mentor, the Ancient One, had been starving himself to death in order to foil Shuma-Gorath’s plans, trying to resist being brought into the fray. But he casts a spell to save Stephen, giving the enemy the foothold for which he had been waiting. The last page of Marvel Premiere 9 revealed that Shuma-Gorath has taken up residence in the Ancient One’ psyche, and is now free to act.
In the final chapter of the story, we see that Shuma-Gorath has transformed himself into a “negative image of the Ancient One,” after burrowing into the old man’s soul. Now Stephen Strange’s fight against Shuma-Gorath accrues added layers of significance: since Shuma-Gorath is based within the Ancient One, Strange’s mentor becomes the battleground for the fate of the universe. Moreover, the very nature of the battle is self-referential: the Ancient One had almost defeated Shuma-Gorath through passive resistance and self-abnegation, but now Strange is forced to do active battle according to the typical heroic paradigm. Once inside the Ancient One’s mind, Shuma-Gorath, now in control of the man’s consciousness, forces Strange to fight simulacra of his familiar enemies, before finally revealing his true, Lovecraftian form. Strange realizes that all these battles have been a distraction, giving Shuma-Gorath time to carry out his plan and drain the Ancient One of all his strength. Strange must finish the job that his mentor had begun: he must kill the Ancient One.
It is not the act of ending the Ancient One’s life that is important here, but the nature of this particular mercy killing. Strange finally arrives at a glowing polyhedron he describes as “The Ancient One’s Ego!” Inside is mostly darkness, save for a small glowing light that turns out to be “the Ancient One’s conception of self!.” We see an image of the Ancient One in silent meditation, maintaining, as Strange notes, “an inner peace” in the face of death. Strange hesitates, but in a full-page spread we see him hurl a spell at this ego image, shouting “He saved my life so that I could end his!”
A despondent Strange leaves the crypt in which he had found his master’s mortal body, cursing himself as a murderer. But then he hears the Ancient One’s voice speaking from a tree. The Ancient One has “become one with the universe!”:
“Hear, Stephen Strange—until now, everyone’s universe has been divided into two parts:
“Himself…and everything else!
“But when you destroyed my ego, you destroyed my conception of self—and also my conception of what was not myself. “
For Stephen Strange, the result is an advancement in his station, from Master of the Mystic Arts to “this realm’s new Sorcerer Supreme!” For the Ancient One, it is an obliteration of his sense of individual self, but one that leads to a stage of enlightenment that he himself could never have anticipated. It is fitting that Strange is so passive and confused in these last few pages, even as the Ancient One informs him that he has bequeathed all his magical powers to his former pupil. The Ancient One has shown him that the path forward required that he take on a new and crucial role without exalting his own sense of self-worth.
Indeed, after the resolution of the Shuma-Gorath storyline, Strange spends much of the next four months of real time in a state of confusion and self-doubt. Issue eleven is mostly a reprint, but with a framing story about Stephen’s brief return to the Ancient One’s temple and his fears that he is not up to the demands of his new role. Issue 12 begins with Strange floating in the desert in the lotus position, as his lover Clea and servant Wong try to snap him out of his trance. Strange holds a lizard in his hand, and explains to Clea, with tears in his eyes, that he now feels a connection to (and responsibility for) all living things: “For a few seconds, I held the life of a sacred being in my hands. What an awesome responsibility.”
This short sequence is merely a transition from one storyline to another, but it serves as something of a mission statement for the new Sorcerer Supreme, as well as a reminder of the challenges of conveying Zen-style enlightenment within the trappings of a genre that privileges conflict above all else. He needs to combine enlightenment with action, and soul-searching with a self-denying humility. Strange ends his musings by saying, “I have dwelt inside myself long enough!” Yet this is not actually the case: for the remainder of Englehart’s tenure, Stephen Strange will “dwell inside himself” rather frequently, even if it is in the name of transcending ego.