Historically, I’ve geeked a bit about my love for Mavel B-listers quite a bit in this space, but if I haven’t mentioned it before, Doctor Strange is one of my absolute favorites. He’s a bit atypical of your given 60s Marvel output, but the weird trippy visuals and psychedelica really made the book stand out – Strange isn’t actually much of a superhero, but rather the guy who stays in the shadows protecting the universe from interdimensional otherworldly threats that nobody even notices. Plus, I kind of loved the weird 70s counter-culture attitude that Steve Englehart brought to the character once he took over for Ditko; it was very different from the other hero books Marvel was putting out at the time, which made it pretty special.

You would not be surprised then that I’m pretty damned excited about the Doctor Strange film coming our way in November. I’m also kind of apprehensive, as I really don’t want them to screw this one up. I’m generally liking what I’m seeing so far; the characters look right, and the visual palate looks mostly great (love the few spell effects I’ve seen, am slightly concerned that they’re going too Inception with the reality-bending, but I’m reserving judgement). We still haven’t gotten much of Strange himself (I like Cumberbatch, though I worry about his American accent; they seem to be keeping his actual dialogue close to the vest other than a few phrases as if they’re hiding something), but this is a bit of an origin story; I don’t know how much confident Sorcerer Supreme we’re going to get this first time out.

Anyway, they let slip a new TV spot yesterday, which gives some new context, particularly about Strange’s apparent adversary:

Still cool. You all know I’m going to be there day 1.