Doctor Strange Epic Collection: A Separate Reality by Roy ThomasMy rating: 4 of 5 stars
Doctor Strange takes on Nightmare, the Undying Ones, Baron Mordo, and Lovecraftian beasties in a New England town, all leading to the unearthly menace of Shuma-Gorath. Should he survive, Silver Dagger and others wait in the wings...
A Separate Reality is a collection of several Doctor Strange stories from the 1970s. I initially bought it after reading about the craziness during Steve Englehart's run on the title in Marvel Comics: The Untold Story. It's kind of a mixed bag.
The first couple stories saw Doctor Strange, wearing his super-hero costume, complete with mask, take on the Undying Ones, Nightmare, Night-crawler (aka Dark Crawler), and Baron Mordo. The Undying Ones storyline was pretty good and I enjoyed Doctor Strange in the mask.
The story of Starkesboro and Shuma-Gorath seemed like it would never end at times but was eventually pretty good, once they stopped shuffling the creative team and Englehart and Brunner took over. Starkesboro was like HP Lovecraft's Innsmouth with a lick of paint and Serpent-men instead of Deep Ones. It had a pretty shocking ending. It was also interesting that some of Robert E. Howard's mythos material was used.
Once Shuma-Gorath is dealt with, Englehart and Brunner really get down to business. Strange takes on Sise-Neg and witnesses the creation of the universe and battles Silver Dagger. It's not every day that the Eye of Agamotto gets stolen and Strange gets stabbed in the back in the span of five pages. There were also cameos by Green Lantern and Captain Midnight!
Overall, I liked the book quite a bit. Steve Englehart writes a great Doctor Strange. While Steve Ditko will always be synonymous with Doctor Strange to me, Gene Colan and Frank Brunner are both very high in the hierarchy. It's a shame Brunner wasn't fast enough to do a monthly book. The man definitely had chops.
Like I said, I liked it quite a bit but I wish more of Englehart's run on the character was included. Hell, we didn't even get to see the universe get destroyed and recreated by Eternity yet.
Four out of five Wands of Watoomb, adjusted by the passage of time.
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