Doctor Strange conjures a whole new chapter in his life as the lives of a sorcerer and a surgeon fuse in the first issue of a new series for the long-lived character. Writer Mark Waid opens the new series in a sharp fusion between superhero magic and hospital drama that’s brought to the page by Kev Walker. Color is handled by Java Tartaglia. Dr. Strange: Surgeon Supreme has a great potential to breathe new life into a character who has been around for over half a century. The long-ignored possibilities of the ever-popular hospital drama genre is looking quite good in the Marvel Universe thanks to Waid and Walker. 

Doctor Strange had been a surgeon long before he ever cast his first spell. He was one of the best in the world...talent matched only by arrogance and ego until an injury made it impossible for him to hold a scalpel. Recent events have healed his hands, granting the sorcerer supreme the pains of twin responsibilities: protecting Earth’s dimension from magical threats and also performing surgery on patients with conditions beyond the capacity of any other surgeon. Strange is dealing with the challenges of surgery in a modern hospital setting when a sudden influx of patients in the ER prompts him to investigate matters as sorcerer. 

Walker deftly fuses hospital drama elements with magic in the realm of superheroes. It’s a distinctly clever hybrid. Walker gives Strange an interesting mix of different problems to have to deal with as he handles traditional superhero concerns. At the same time, the Surgeon Supreme also deals with the challenges of re-learning the life of a surgeon decades after he had last been in the operating room. There’s are some very amusing moments in Strange’s narration. “I devoted last weekend to finding a spell that would create a 30-hour day,” Strange says at the beginning of the issue. “Doesn’t exist.” With great responsibility comes great exhaustion. 

Walker gives the twin worlds of magic and healthcare a really sharp look from the very beginning of the series. The hospital is teeming with demonic life...magical organisms that feed on human misery and disease. The sharp contrast between suffering people and the demons that they unwittingly coexist with is very clever stuff that delivers quite an impact. A busy hospital in Marvel Manhattan is given the kind of overworked congestion that one would expect thanks to a brilliant earthbound reality brought to the page by Walker and Tartaglia, who gives magic a dazzling sense of darkness about it. The contrast between the grays and greens of the hospital and the vivid reds and greens and purples of the magical world feel particularly sharp thanks to well-modulated work by Tartaglia. 

This is a very enticing opening for Doctor Strange’s new life. Between Strange and Night Nurse and the new life of Jane Foster in HER new series, Marvel Medical holds a great deal of promise. Medical dramas have an enduring popularity on television. Marvel could potentially lead in an exciting direction by opening a whole new sub-genre of superhero story with this title. 

Grade: B+