Doctor Strange by Mark Waid vol. 3: Herald

Waid has been writing superhero comics long enough that he knows their fans always need to see something new in their series.  So when this story implies with its title that he’s going to start working as the latest Herald of Galactus, I was willing to see where the writer would be going with this.  The catch being that Waid isn’t completely in the driver’s seat here. He’s joined by frequent artistic collaborator Barry Kitson who also provides the breakdowns for the art in this volume.

The finished product, however, makes me wish that Waid had kept the writing duties for himself.  To its credit, the storyline only teases Strange as a Herald. It’s really about how an alien, whose planet is about to be eaten by Galactus, blindsides the sorcerer to steal the magic he needs to send the Devourer to the Mystic Realms.  While it seems like a good way to get Galactus out of this universe’s hair, giving an all-consuming being of science free reign in a dimension of magic is not good for the universe’s health. That leaves it up to Strange to team up with all of the friends and foes he can to save all of existence from itself.  Again.

What cleverness this story has (liked seeing how Dormammu was dealt with) is outweighed by its familiarness (we just saw Dormammu in the last volume) and needless ways to spike the drama.  The scope of this conflict starts big and then keeps getting bigger until there’s nowhere else for it to go but hit the reset button — after half of the Marvel Universe has been killed off.  All of this looks alright, though I was left wishing that finisher Scott Koblish had done all of the art himself and gone Full Ditko in the process to give this story the craziness it really needed.  What we’re left with isn’t a bad volume of “Doctor Strange,” just one that ultimately comes off as a bit of glorified filler.