While all Marvel superheroes were outré, Dr. Strange struck a special note of eeriness.
For one thing, artist Steve Ditko seemed attuned to the same wavelength that had inspired the squamous scribblings of H.P. Lovecraft. Stories like The Possessed! (Strange Tales 118, March 1964) — which saw the good doctor freeing Bavarian villagers from invisible alien body snatchers — were satisfyingly creepy.
“For all the magical trappings of the previous stories, this one, The Possessed, is essentially a science fiction tale … and has the plotting fingerprints of Stan (Lee) all over it,” wrote comics historian Alan McKenzie. “When Doctor Strange shows up to investigate, he finds that green aliens from another dimension are controlling the townspeople as part of their quest to take control of Earth. It’s uncannily similar to the fantasy tales Stan was filling the anthology titles with just a couple of years prior.”
The unsettling theme of possession, whether supernatural or political, was in the popular cultural atmosphere at the time. The idea of having one’s personality dominated and supplanted was central to such films as 1956’s Invasion of the Body Snatchers and 1962’s Manchurian Candidate. And demonic possession was deemed real enough to scare millions nine years later in 1973’s The Exorcist.
At the climax of Ditko’s little seven-page gem, Lee’s dialogue includes a paean to comics’ stock in trade — the power of imagination itself.
Repelling the invaders, the sorcerer says, “There is no greater power than that which I possess … for mine is the basic power of imagination… the gossamer thread of which dreams are woven!”
Clearly Dr. Strange was familiar with Shakespeare’s The Tempest, in which the magic turns out to be art’s imaginative power over the audience.
Prospero tells his audience, “Now my charms are all o’erthrown,
…Now ’tis true
I must be here confined by you,
Or sent to Naples. Let me not,
Since I have my dukedom got
And pardoned the deceiver, dwell
In this bare island by your spell,
But release me from my bands
With the help of your good hands.”
Applause breaks the spell of the theatrical magic, and frees him.
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