Volume 49: Doctor Strange: The Oath

Doctor Strange: The Oath

Author: Brian K Vaughan | Illustrator: Marcos Martin

"…[H]e stayed at my side right up to the bitter end of my former life."

The best thing about Doctor Stephen Strange is that he resembles Vincent Price in his prime, in a cloak. But the best thing about Brian K Vaughan's Stephen Strange is how well he's written, which is something that applies to the book as a whole.

Vaughan even manages to wrangle a situation that calls for a recap of the Sorcerer Supreme's origin, getting new readers up to speed quickly and effortlessly. He creates further situations that actually call for exposition, and when there's a reason for such it can even mask its use, like it does herein. In terms of enjoyment had, I was grinning like the proverbial cream-covered cat by the halfway mark.

Like it states in the book's introduction, the 'Doctor' side of Strange is often forgotten about, but here it plays a key role in the narrative. He may not be a world-class surgeon any longer, but the Hippocratic Oath is still something that Strange believes in. His desire to heal someone close to him sparks off a kind of supernatural murder mystery that has the Doctor in the Sherlock role - he even has a Watson, and a great addition to the book the person is!

The comparison made between Strange's past and present, a connecting line from his days as an arrogant surgeon to a less arrogant but still brutally direct in speech and tone Master of the Arts, is the anchor that keeps him somewhat relatable, despite his fantastical abilities and seemingly endless store of arcane knowledge; in short, the flawed human side of the self-important Strange is ever present, and even he sometimes leaps before he looks.

At first I felt that Martin's artwork was a little too cartoony for my tastes, but over time the complementary nature of his pictures and Vaughan's text worked their magic on me. And while many of the previous volumes in TUGNC are more hard-hitting and more elaborately illustrated, The Oath is one of my personal favourites so far because of how much fun I had reading it.

The book collects together Doctor Strange: The Oath #1-5.

Verdict: