Sunday Splash Page #161

 

"Failed Their Stealth Check," in Doctor Strange and Doctor Doom: Triumph and Torment, by Roger Stern (writer), Mike Mignola (pencil artist), Mark Badger (inker/color artist), Jim Novak (letterer)

The premise of the story is that Strange passes a test of several mystics engineered by the Vishanti, but Doom is the only other person standing at the end, and by the bizarre rules of the test, he's owed one favor from Strange. To Strange's surprise, Doom requests his help rescuing his mother's soul from Mephisto. That proves as difficult you'd expect stealing a soul away from the Devil to be.

I know we're in Master of the Mystic Arts March (and April), but this is one of my favorite Dr. Doom stories. Doom is arrogant, but not oblivious to Strange being vastly better at magic than him, and more than willing to learn from him. Strange expects Doom to demand help enslaving the world, while Mephisto offers to give him the world, and Doom rejects them both, stating basically that he can take the world whenever he chooses. He doesn't need help.

He keeps his word, but exactly to the letter of it. During the mystic challenge, when one of the others argues Doom has no business there, as reliant as he is on technology, Doom states he will remove his gauntlets and deactivate all his offensive weaponry. That does not, however, prevent him from using his armor's sensors to analyze and help him mimic the other mystics' gestures and spells as they're using them. Doom is willing to do whatever it takes to free his mother, and able to use that to play others' expectations of him. He's determined to succeed, but not so blind as to trust Mephisto to keep a bargain.

He's not a good man, but he still has a certain level of honor he plays by. Mignola's Doom is a big, boxy thing, with the cape giving the appearance of broad shoulders and the oversized joints of the armor working together to give him a looming, imposing presence. It makes the moments where he's slumped over in exhaustion or despair, like a toy that's run out of power, more effective. Every so often, the art moves in close enough to offer the glimpse of the eyes and the scars around them that remind the reader there is a person in there.

Strange is definitely the confident (but not over-confident) veteran Sorcerer Supreme Stern wrote during his stint on the ongoing series. Mephisto's demons attempt to beat him by attacking his inner self, insisting he's only the selfish jerk he was as a surgeon, and it doesn't work. He consistently recognizes when a frontal attack isn't the right approach, and finds a way around. Whether it's unraveling the Vishanti's challenge, or figuring out how to beat Mephisto. Strange has been through too much to be suckered into thinking raw power and flinging spells around is always the answer.

Badger's inks and shadows aren't nearly what we'd see from Mignola's art once he started Hellboy (although I'd say the difference between his art here and what he did for the Rocket Raccoon mini-series just a few years earlier is pretty stark), and his inking makes things a bit fussier than that later blocky, solid, almost minimalist style Mignola adopted. But there are effective moments in there. The mystics who fail the Vishanti's tests become less distinct green outlines of what they were. Mephisto is depicted as this looming, shadowed form. His eyes are yellow voids, and his face is usually hidden so no expression can be seen. Especially when he's making someone an offer. It's only when he thinks he's won, or the tables have been turned on him, that the shadows fall away and whatever he's really feeling becomes readily visible.