The Marriage of True Minds

So far I have approached transcendence in Doctor Strange as an entirely individual issue, which, given the series’ emphasis on moving beyond the ego, is rather ironic.  On the other hand, it is a solo book, so one could reasonably expect its attention to be focused almost entirely on the eponymous hero.  But there is one aspect of Englehart’s Doctor Strange stories that widens the focus: Stephen Strange’s relationship with Clea.

This would seem to be an unlikely avenue for exploration, given that the immense power differential between the two of them is both figurative and literal. Clea is both lover and disciple, an arrangement whose potential pitfalls are obvious enough.  Yet despite the disturbing gendered implications, it was a step forward for the character. Clea had been introduced years ago by Lee and Ditko as the mysterious “girl” in Dormammu’s Dark Dimension, who went from aiding Strange to becoming a perennial damsel in distress. Once she moved to his Sanctum Santorum, the only role available to her was that of girlfriend. To make matters worse, leaving her homeworld deprived her of most of the magic she previously wielded.  

But one of the first things Englehart did was to kill off the Ancient One and promote Stephen Strange to Sorcerer Supreme, thereby opening a vacancy for a disciple. Clea had aptitude but little training—just what a senior wizard might be looking for in a student.  Now Clea had more of a reason to be prominent in Strange’s adventures, and if the first few issues of his new series had hero once again play the hostage, at least she was targeted by the Silver Dagger more as the magician’s apprentice than as his girlfriend.

In fact, her captivity at Silver Dagger’s hands proved to be the first step in a reconfiguration of her relationship with her mentor and love. When Stephen returns to reality after his confrontation with Death, he is a disembodied spirit, who in the throes of panic, mistakes a wax mannequin for his own abandoned body.  When Clea touches the mannequin, she makes contact with Dr. Strange:

“She sense it! She knew!  And as she touches the torso, Doctor Strange senses her!

“Clea gives him a point of reference—something to build his reality around! Instantaneously—

“—he surges gratefully into her willing mind!

“Once there, his excess energy is shared between them—

“—so that he can recover coherency—

“—and she can recover her strength.

“The reunion that follows is completely unparalleled.

“The two are one—and the one is whole!”

The sexual implications are a bit obvious, if not retrograde, with Clea as a receptive vessel waiting for Strange to fill her; but they are also consistent with the essentialist cosmologies that animate so many occult traditions, not to mention Englehart’s own comfort level with generalizations about men’s and women’s “nature.”  [1]

Clea is now stronger (“The power is more easily mine!"), and it is only when the two of them work together that the defeat the Silver Dagger decisively.  Though still her teacher, Strange now takes for granted that they are a team.  In Issue 6, when he resolves to go fight Umar in the Dark Dimension, Clea shocks him when she refuses to accompany him to her former home.  He agrees not to press her for more information, but laments to himself that ”I shall be that much more sorely best in the Dark Dimension without her.” 

There is no need to go into detail about the convoluted, but clever, four-part story.  Suffice to say that Clea ends up confronting Dormammu in the center of the Earth while Doctor Strange fights Umar in the Dark Dimension, and that Clea is obliged to return to her home in order to save Stephen from certain death.  Dr. Strange has lost his powers, and it is only by working together that they can restore his might—but to Clea, not to Dr. Strange (if only temporarily).  Again and again, we are told that Stephen and Clea are more than the sum of their parts:  Strange cannot accept other magicians’ help in the fight against Dormammu, a god-like being whose essence is “too alien for any of us to know him exactly  as he is,” making it impossible for their spells to work in concert.  But this is not the case for Stephen and Clea; as he himself affirms, “you and I are in perfect harmony.” 

Within the confines of a book called “Doctor Strange,” not “Doctor Strange and Clea,” Englehart implicitly argues for the power and utility of a love that submerges the individual ego.  But it can never be a merge of equals, both because of their status as teacher and novice and because of the patriarchal values that structure their relationship. Still, Strange and Clea are only one example of a dyad that simultaneously erodes the barriers of selfhood while reinforcing the strengths if the self.  The multiple, overlapping connections between Stephen and Clea make them a poor test case. But what if the bond were between two men?

Note

[1] Footnote TBA with examples from Englehart’s writing.