Noted magician Stephen Strange had been inadvertently tempting fate when he found himself bored with the same challenges he’d been facing for decades. A problem comes in a sorcerer from a distant star summons him to aid in defeating one of the most powerful entities in the Marvel Universe as writer Mark Waid opens his multi-part “Herald Supreme” story with artist Barry Kitson and inker Scott Koblish. Pulpy, Kirby-inspired cosmic conflict fuses with trippy Ditko-inspired magic adventure in a seldom-invoked fusion that suggests something promising on the horizon for the Master of the Mystic Arts.

The story opens with Dr. Strange deep in reflection. From his earliest adulthood, he has aspired to be a surgeon healing the wounded. As Earth’s magical protector he’s become more of a fireman putting out fires whenever they’ve arisen. It’s necessary to work, but it’s scarcely rewarding for someone who longs for a challenge. Challenge comes in the form of an extraterrestrial mage who demands Strange’s aid in defending against the world-devourer Galactus. Unable to defend himself against a mage who has the combined powers of all magic users on his planet, Strange is abducted. His abductor is hell-bent on banishing Galactus, but at what cost to the fundamental integrity of the universe?

Waid’s opening to the issue is an interesting way of addressing the many, many adventures of a hero who has been around for decades in story after story all molded around the same group of plots. Dr. Strange is bored. Rarely is the repetitious life of a long-suffering superhero given a moment like this of reflection. That introduction grounds the story that follows in the sense of freshness even though both Strange and Galactus have been trudging through comics panels for well over half a century. The inevitable meeting between sorcerer and world-devouring force of nature feels suitably ominous in a story the flows quite naturally from its beginning on Bleecker St. to its cliffhanger ending in some distant, tumultuous realm unfamiliar to even Dr. Strange.

All the drama, power and anger of a battle between two magicians is brought to the page by Kitson and Koblish with a respectable flair, but none of it feels as intense as their rendering of Strange’s solemn moments of stoic heroism. The art team does a really respectable job of making Strange look like a towering hero just...standing there nearly inert. In one panel, he’s preparing to seek-out Galactus. In another, he’s being engulfed in fleeing extra-dimensional entities. Earlier he’s levitating through a tableau of his memories. Through it all, he looks impossibly heroic. By contrast, the actual action feels a bit flat. This is perfectly fine in an intro to a meeting between Galactus and Strange, but if the “Herald Supreme” story continues on like this, it’s going to be a bit silly to have a sorcerer and world devourer simply doing a pose-down to see who can look cooler in the issues to come.

Strange and Galactus are two of the more ridiculously powerful beings in the Marvel Universe. A meeting between the two of them could prove to be interesting so long as Waid respects the dizzying complexity of the Marvel Universe as the two of them interact. There’s enough complexity in this first chapter to suggest that Waid knows what he’s doing here. The initial issue of the “Herald Supreme” story is a suitably ominous intro to an account of great potential.   

Grade: A-