Strange #10 // Review
Clea and her late husband are facing a very serious threat. It’s an undead being of great power that’s being thrown at them. They’re going to need to work together if they’re going to overcome their final threat in Strange #10. Writer Jed MacKay closes out the final issue of the series in a less-than-satisfying magical combat sequence that comes to an end all too abruptly. Penciller Marcelo Ferreira and inker Roberto Poggi give life to the magical combat. Java Tartaglia’s colors add an eldritch radiance to the page that feels suitably mystical. It’s not much, but it’s an ending.
Clea and the Harvestman have reached a showdown with Director None and the Blasphemy Cartel. The current Sorcerer Supreme of Earth’s Dimension teams up with the being who was once her husband...the late Doctor Strange. The two of them SHOULD be enough to battle any threat, but they’re staring down the most powerful revenant imaginable: the Sentry. One of Marvel’s very own Superman analogues is dead and being used as a weapon against two of the most powerful sorcerers in the whole of the Marvel Universe. The effort to defeat him is going to involve an intense fusion of forces.
MacKay wraps things up in a hurry. The conflict between Clea, Stephen, the dead Sentry, and Director None shoots across the page, but it at least seems to follow some kind of a coherent pattern. The aftermath of the story is a hurried attempt to set up for the series that is to come after this one. MacKay clearly knows where this issue needs to go, but he’s rushing to get there at issue’s end. Once the conflict has wrapped up, everything needs to fall into place in a couple of pages, and it doesn’t really feel all that justified.
Ferreira and Poggi tackle the magical world of the Marvel Universe in a way that pays homage to the foundations laid back in the 1960s by Steve Ditko. Ferreira and Poggi do this while giving the conflict a contemporary visual feel. It’s what the art team has done such a good job with all series, and it really feels like it reaches a crescendo with this issue...particularly in the depiction of a very poetic fusion between forces that brings about the big climax. It’s sharp stuff visually, even if MacKay is rolling over it with great haste.
The ending that anyone could have predicted...happens. It’s disappointing. Had MacKay done a better job of making the ending justified, it might have felt a bit more impressive. The emotional end of the series DOES have a rather nice resonance by the end of the final issue. It’s just not very satisfying. Clea has been such a fascinating character throughout the series. It’s been a lot of fun having her at the center of her own adventures. Too bad things had to return to normal quite as quickly as it has.
