FILE 41: DOCTOR STRANGE

Towards the end of the 1980s, the arrival of the Fantastic Four heralded a new wave of Super-Heroes across the globe, and with this wave came a corresponding increase in the number of so-called Super-Villains. Of particular interest to this biographer are those who fall into the category of criminal masterminds. There were several particularly notorious masterminds from that era such as Latverian dictator Dr. Doom, the mutant Master of Magnetism Magneto, Nazi war criminals such as the Red Skull, Baron Strucker and both Baron Zemos [see file 4: Baron Zemo], Maggia leader Count Nefaria [see file 13: Count Nefaria], AIM creation and leader MODOK [see file 93: MODOK], and oriental potentates such as the Mandarin, Fu Manchu and the Yellow Claw [see file 1: The Yellow Claw]. Included in this group, there were a variety of criminal scientists who sought to use their intellects for the furtherance of their own wealth and power, and this group included such infamous names as Doctor Octopus, the Mad Thinker, the Wizard, and Egghead [see file 38: Egghead]. One such scientific genius is a man who's career is almost entirely unrecorded and whom we know of only from a single document which records an encounter between himself and the armoured Super-Hero Iron Man. This criminal scientist was Doctor Strange.

We know little of Strange's past, and we do not even know if that was his real name. It is worth noting at this juncture that there are a variety of documents from that era that describe a Doctor Strange, but that this is an entirely different man. That other Doctor Strange was Doctor Stephen Strange, the Earth's Sorcerer Supreme who defended Earth from extra-dimensional and occult threats and fought on the side of the angels. As far as we know, there is no familial connection between the villainous Doctor Strange and this Sorcerer Supreme and his brother Victor and there are no surviving documents that suggest that they ever met. The Doctor Strange who concerns us here had apparently already gained a reputation for himself by the time our records begin, since he apparently made an attempt at world domination six months prior to his meeting with Iron Man, when he had been captured by the U.S. Military at his mountain base. He was called the Master of Evil by the press, and he appears to have spent many years gaining this reputation. We can speculate that he might even have fought the Super-Hero group known as the First Line during the 1980s, which is distinctly possible given that records of their activities are equally scarce. What we do know is that he must have been very wealthy, since he owned a well-equipped private island base in the Atlantic Ocean, and that he had a daughter named Carla whom he had neglected for most of her life, presumably because he was preoccupied with his criminal activities. As we join Doctor Strange, he is incarcerated in a prison, but as we are about to see, he would not remain there long...

Six months early, a ray gun that Doctor Strange had been wielding had been struck by lightening. It was this event that had enabled the Military to apprehend him, since he had been rendered unconscious by the massive electrical shock. Fortunately, he had not been badly injured, and in fact he had been able to turn this event to his advantage in two ways. Firstly, he had pretended to have lasting side effects from this in the form of fainting spells, which meant that he was not incarcerated in a maximum-security prison, as he otherwise would have been. Secondly, the electrical discharge had increased the electrical activity of his brain, which appears to have given him the ability to hypnotise people. Both of these factors would have important consequences, since they would facilitate his escape. Finally, after six months of imprisonment, the time was right to escape due to the presence nearby of an unlikely ally - Iron Man.

Iron Man was Billionaire Industrialist Anthony Stark, who had recently been kidnapped by Vietnamese Crime Lord Wong-Chu. Wong-Chu had ordered Stark and fellow captive Professor Yinsen to work for him, but the pair had soon devised a means of escape in the form of an armoured suit which would serve two purposes - in addition to allowing Stark to defeat Wong-Chu, it also incorporated a breast-plate that kept him alive, since his heart had been damaged by shrapnel. The armour had allowed Stark to defeat Wong-Chu, who he left for dead, but Yinsen was also mortally wounded and he died, although unknown to Tony, a dimension-hopping megalomaniac named Midas kept his brain alive. Returning to America, Stark had decided to keep his double life secret, and decided to present his armoured alter ego to the world as Stark's bodyguard, a pretence that he would maintain successfully for years. As Iron Man, he played the role of Super-Hero and was an effective player in the fight against crime. Strange knew of Iron Man and his abilities, and learned that he was soon to put on a display of his powers for some children at a hospital close to the prison. Strange quickly began to devise a way of using this to his own ends. Using his technological genius, he constructed a device from common radio and television parts, which he intended to use to control Iron Man. Soon enough, Iron Man arrived at the hospital, and Strange feigned another dizzy spell so that he was taken back to his cell to rest. Alone, he activated the device, which sent a blanket of ultra-frequency waves out of the prison and towards Strange's unwitting target. It appears that this device served a duel purpose, for on hitting Iron Man the waves seem to have interacted with the cybernetic circuitry in his helmet and brought him into a hypnotic trance. Yet at the same time, Strange was able to make Iron Man hear his voice and obey his instructions, and given his intention to use the increased electrical activity of his brain to aid his escape, I hypothesise that he also used the device to boost his mental powers and contact Iron Man. Either way, Iron Man was soon under his remote control and on his way to the prison. Smashing through the guards and the walls, the armoured hero soon broke into Doctor Strange's cell and the mastermind climbed onto his back and let him fly them both to safety. Once they were at a safe distance, he ordered Iron Man to land, and then he took his leave of his rescuer and fled. By the time the U.S. Marshals found Iron Man and explained to him what he had done, Strange was long gone. Furious at being manipulated, Stark swore that he would recapture him.

For several weeks, the world heard nothing from Doctor Strange. Free once more, he turned his attention to something that had been bothering him for sometime now, which was his daughter Carla. She was now in her twenties and he knew that he had failed her as a father. Seeking her love and admiration he intended to obtain it in the only way he knew how, which was through crime. Contacting her, he took her to his private island and made his plans. Had he listened to her, he would have known that all she actually wanted was a normal life and a normal father and that she did in fact love him, but he did not listen. Instead, he decided to literally offer her the world, by taking it for himself. Using his reputation, he gathered to his island a large group of criminal scientists and would-be military dictators from all over the globe and formed an alliance with them. Once he had conquered the world, he would divide it amongst them and together they would rule the entire sphere. All he needed was a means of domination and in time-honoured tradition he settled on extortion through terrorism. Using his considerable resources and genius, he constructed several 200 megaton nuclear bombs and managed to launch one into orbit around the Earth. He then detonated it.

The detonation of such a bomb above the Earth was immediately noticed by the world powers, which was exactly what Doctor Strange had intended. Having grabbed the planet's attention, he went in front of a camera, resplendent in his high-collared robes, and broadcast his demands to the world. These demands were simple; unless every nation on Earth surrendered to him within twenty-four hours, he would detonate more such bombs at ground level, which would be enough to destroy all life on Earth. He then settled back to wait for the United Nations' response. We do not know for certain whether he was truly ruthless enough to have carried out his threat, particularly since this would have not only have amounted to suicide, but would have also resulted in the death of Carla. His daughter however certainly believed that he was serious, and since she knew him well, it seems likely that he was insane enough to carry out his mad threat. We shall never know with absolute certainty however, since his plans were about to be undone. The United Nations' response to Doctor Strange's threat was to attack his island fortress with atomic bombs, but they quickly discovered that it was more than adequately protected by a powerful force field. However, one man had deduced that there was a weakness in this defence that he could exploit to defeat Doctor Strange. That man was Tony Stark. He would have attempted to stop Strange anyway, but he felt especially responsible for the situation due to his part in the megalomaniac's escape from prison. He suspected that Strange's force field did not extend below sea level and so as Iron Man he contacted the U.S. Navy and requested that they take him by submarine to island. Once there, he climbed into a torpedo tube and was fired under the force field. Remaining underwater, he reached the rock base of the island and used his armoured strength to burrow up through the foundations of Strange's technological citadel. His coordination was perfect - he surfaced through the floor of Doctor Strange's laboratory, where the mastermind was having an uncomfortably confrontation with Carla, who was appalled by her father's despotic scheme. Iron Man's entrance interrupted this and the hero soon had the Doctor's undivided attention. With wasting time, Iron Man announced that he intended to cripple Strange's base of operations by short-circuiting his generators and thus all of his equipment, including his payload of nuclear missiles. Scoffing, Strange dismissed this threat, since knew that it would result in Iron Man's death, but he had grossly miscalculated Stark's capacity for heroism. Iron Man smashed the generators.

The generators exploded. The force field dissolved and all of Strange's technology fused and burnt out. The massive power surge caused had also damaged Iron Man's armour however, and he lay prone on the ground, electricity draining from his transistors and into the floor. He had sabotaged Strange's plan, but unable to move, he posed no further threat and was at the Doctor's mercy. Moreover, unbeknownst to Doctor Strange, he would soon die since his life-preserving chest-plate depended on electricity in order to function. But then he was granted a reprieve as Doctor Strange suffered the ultimate betrayal. Carla threw Iron Man a flashlight and he used the batteries inside it to halt the power drain and revive himself. Defeated and now facing capture, Strange looked in hurt bewilderment at his daughter. She had betrayed him to his enemy, although all he had done had been for her. Tearfully, she explained that she never wanted the lifestyle he offered and wanted no part in his dreams of conquest. In anguish, Doctor Strange moved over to a cubicle containing a hidden door leading to an escape route, even as Iron Man's strength continued to increase. He turned for one last look at Carla, and as he did so, she begged him to forgive her. Heartbrokenly, he replied:

"Of course I forgive you, you little fool! You're still my daughter, aren't you? Maybe someday you'll understand...and even help me! But I must go now...farewell Carla!"

With that, he departed. Despite the best efforts of Iron Man ands the U.S. Military, he was nowhere to be found on the island. Carla bid farewell to Iron Man, swearing to find her father and stop him from threatening mankind again. And at that point, our records of Doctor Strange end.

We do not know what became of Doctor Strange. Unless he made other, unrecorded attempts at world domination later on, he seems to have vanished without a trace. It is possible that he died of some natural cause, or that, on the run from the law for the rest of his life, he changed his name and went into hiding. It is even possible, although highly unlikely considering his megalomania and ego, that with the rise to prominence of the Sorcerer Supreme Doctor Stephen Strange, despite the latter's reputation as a charlatan amongst a public largely cynical about the existence of magic, Doctor Strange kept a low-profile rather than risk a clash with the awesomely powerful mage who shared his name. But I do not think that any of these are the case. Rather I think that his daughter's rejection prompted him to reassess his life and to question his desire for world conquest. Perhaps Carla tracked him down and persuaded him to retire from his career as a criminal. We simply do not know. Regardless of this, from the one record we do have we know that Doctor Strange was a genius capable of ruthlessness and compassion whose modus operandi was in part influenced by his love for his daughter, and this alone makes his story interesting enough to be included here, amongst the great Super-Villains of the late twentieth century.

References: Doctor Strange's one and only appearance occurred in Tales of Suspense issue 41. And here's the real reason he never appeared again, from Fred Hembeck writing in Marvel Age 119 (thanks to Prime Eternal Michael Hoskin for sending me this quote):

"For instance, Dr. Strange-- how's that for a big name? Unfortunately, it wasn't Stephen Strange, the Master of the Mystic Arts, but instead some crackpot scientist bent on world domination as a ploy to win his teenage daughter's love!! Hey, fella, you should've just bought her a fancy sportscar like my folks did for me! After beating this sorry speciment in Tales of Suspense #41, May 1963, neither he nor his daughter was ever heard from again, a a mere two months later, the sorcerer supreme made his debut. Coincidence? You be the judge."