Battling bodies careering into and right through arcane architecture — this new superhero feature was clearly something different.
In his first recorded exploit, Dr. Stephen Strange fought one of those conceptual, extradimensional entities who’d secretly harry our plane of existence throughout his career.
In his second adventure (Strange Tales 111, Aug. 1963), the Master of the Mystic Arts battled one of the mirror-image foes so common to superheroes — in this case, a treacherous, power-hungry sorcerer of equal ability who’d also been trained by the Ancient One. While Strange is pledged to use his power to protect people, his enemy intends to enslave them.
“Among Marvel’s most unusual superheroes, the appropriately named Dr. Strange used mystical spells, astral travel and occult lore to combat bizarre extradimensional villains with names like the Dread Dormammu,” wrote Bradford W. Wright in his book Comic Book Nation: The Transformation of Youth Culture in America. “Unintentionally predicting the 1960s’ fascination with psychedelia, artist Steve Ditko rendered Dr. Strange’s adventures in a surrealistic Dali-like style.”
The villain introduced here had a name that fairly rumbled from the lips, “Baron Mordo” (with its suggestions of “morbid,” “morose” and “mordant”). JRR Tolkien also recognized the ominousness of the sound (“Mordor”), and so did Jim Shooter (“Mordru”).
“Mordo is the most persistent foe of Dr. Strange, although Dormammu is more dangerous by far,” observed comics historian Jeff Rovin. “Among the countless dark powers he has at his command are astral projection … altering his physical appearance; mesmerizing others while he’s in corporeal or spiritual form; summoning up a paralytic vapor and creating another vapor which can remove an entire apartment building from this realm and drop it into limbo.”
From his European castle, Mordo projects his astral form to Tibet, where he telepathically commands the Ancient One’s servant to poison his meal. Sensing the danger in his Greenwich Village sanctum, Dr. Strange sends his own spirit soaring to the scene, where he engages Mordo in battle while arguing their philosophical differences. Strange defeats Mordo not with spells, but with shrewdness.
And Dr. Strange’s run might have ended there. In a note at the end of the story, Stan Lee says vaguely: “More of the occult adventures of Dr. Strange will appear in a future issue of Strange Tales…”
The sorcerer is absent from issues 112 and 113, but reappears in 114 with The Return of the Omnipotent Baron Mordo!
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