Where goes Marvel in the multiverse Blitz review

Word has it that a new Marvel movie is heading our way, The Eternals, representing a fine cross-section of superheroes never before seen on the big or little screen, with accent on inclusiveness. South Asian, gay, Chinese, among others, get to wield their superpowers in an age of political correctness and Netflix controversy involving a black comedian aligning with TERFs (trans exclusionary radical feminists).

Not to get us started on endless debate and polemics, but months ago the long missing Big Bad Wolf book sale finally surfaced, this time online like most other things, and among the books in catalogue was Marvel heroes’ Doctor Strange, the Prelude (Corona Pilgrim-Fornes-Ablutov), featuring one of the lesser-known entities of that universe. Prior to this, our idea of Doctor Strange was an absent-minded professor emeritus in Silliman University, who has lost his cellphone countless times in pedicabs.

The Marvel version at least in the prologue is not of such tragicomic proportions, but drift is clear in opening chapters that this master of the mystic arts is no pushover, even has a small platoon of like-minded students trained in the supernatural craft steeped in arcana handed down by the so-called ancient one.

They have quite memorable names and monikers, too, such as Wong, Tina Minoru, Daniel Drumm and Baron Mordo, who fight alongside Strange else choose the path of betrayal, anything is possible in the black arts and balance of power is forever tricky. The doctor himself was actually a surgeon, although not exactly a subscriber of the Hippocratic oath, and a car accident that renders his hands useless in delicate operations pushes him in search of the ancient one to try and alleviate his situation.

What follows are roller-coaster battles and subplots diverging into the third eye of Strange that can actually see other dimensional monsters on New York City pavements, as if meta gone awry and it wouldn’t be at all surprising if a squirt named Zuckerberg makes a cameo in the movie due for release in May next year, vs the multiverse of madness, with Benedict Cumberbatch essaying the role of the doctor.

In the comics acquired through Big Bad, it is evident that the Marvel illustrators are again in fine form, visual splash in lavish detail, makes you almost want to inspect the corners of panels for small clues or tips to the forthcoming winning lotto combination. References can be made to the old Heavy Metal issues stashed somewhere in the strange apartment, although admittedly not as sexist or prone to gaslighting, or even recent drawings by the resurgent bohemian Roxlee posted on meta that depict Sisyphus pushing the ball of multiverse.

A final episode in the comics version that runs four chapters of mind-boggling inks and letterings has Strange and arch enemy Mordo taken back to the beginning of the universe by a master neutral entity named Sise-neg, whose awesome powers invoke no chopped liver. Again, one might recall past great scenes of cinema, Marvel universe version, such as Magneto raising a whole stadium into the air, unnaturally empty considering that this was pre-pandemic, or Spiderman and his sticky webs saving a train from hurtling off elevated tracks and its passengers into certain death, or even the spectacular demise of Jean Grey in one X-Men installment, which made everyone wonder in the midst of spurred romance, did she really?

Here Strange and Mordo come to a kind of rapprochement, though not in any way final else pre-empt any possibility for yet another sequel, rather the baron seems shell-shocked having been taken back to the start of creation by Genesis turned backwards, and the doctor being doctor of the mystic arts is able to handle it better.

Special effects galore and then some, which can only be seen on the big or little screen if not on the excellently drawn comics panel, the cosmic throwback that foretells the multiverse. What is this madness called, and isn’t it just the ailment that Doctor Strange can cure?

The comics could also mean trying to rescue an irretrievable past, not only get back to where we once belonged, but to see clearly wherever it is we’re going. Strange days move on in a world without end.