Marvel Comics has abruptly cut short Mark Waid’s current run on the main Doctor Strange title. Renamed Doctor Strange: Surgeon Supreme in December of last year; Waid had been writing the character for a year-and-a-half. The series has been suspended at issue #416, only the 6th since the comic was retitled. It’s clear the book ending at this point wasn’t by choice because Waid mentioned a subplot he’d been building, with a promise he had a resolution planned, in a farewell message announcing the cancellation in the back of the most recent issue.
Waid celebrated bringing the character to its 400th issue in January of 2019 but the most extraordinary thing in his time writing the series was certainly using magic to return the main character to the profession from which he, and the comic itself, get their names: a medical doctor. Hence, the new additional subtitle: Surgeon Supreme.
This week’s issue of the comic-book simply concluded with Strange saying “Let’s figure out where we go from here.” — a typical ending… soon followed by an unexpected message from the creative team of the book saying goodbye to the fans, as well as to the Sorcerer Supreme himself. However, Marvel Editorial carefully worded their part of the final message to assure long-time fans they were not shelving the character by making a mention of “his next chapter.” You can read the entire letter below:
Doctor Stephen Strange was a wealthy surgeon, highly regarded for his skill with a scalpel who could no longer practice after a car accident crippled his hands. It was a deep desire to see his hands healed that, in desperation, lead him to the mystic arts and a new-found deep appreciation for life that led him to use those skills to protect humanity. That was the status quo of the character as established by writer/artist Steve Ditko in 1963, when he first appeared in Strange Tales #110 and when his origin story was told in Strange Tales #115, a full 5 months later. Stan Lee wrote the final script for both issues and was commonly credited as the sorcerer’s creator or co-creator until a letter resurfaced that was sent to fan and academic Jerry Bails before the release of Strange Tales #110, in which Lee mentions the upcoming character and says: “‘Twas Steve’s idea.”
Just as the exact nature of the collaboration from the ’60s is a partial mystery, fans may never know why Waid’s run has ended early as the usual various pressures on an ongoing comic-book series have been compounded in 2020 by the COVID-19 pandemic. Sadly, Black Panther and the Agents of Wakanda was canceled along with Strikeforce immediately following last month and finally Ghost Rider also ended this week, so a pattern is emerging. All these titles were below 30,000 units sold in March and this month marked their return to shelves after the pause in publishing the entire industry took in April. As the artist Kev Walker said in his section of the goodbye missive to the title’s readers at the end of the final issue, “Stories are a bit like lives. Sometimes they end when you least expect it.”
