These past couple of years, what with covid and all, I have fallen way behind on my movie-going.   Which is a shame, since I loved going to movies… in a movie theatre, ideally.   Hell, I own a movie theatre.   And we have the best popcorn in Santa Fe, still!

We did not have DR. STRANGE AND THE MULTIVERSE OF MADNESS, however.   Elsewise I might have seen it sooner.   Parris and I did finally catch it a few days ago, though, and…

I have to say, I loved it.

Sam Raimi has always been one of my favorite directors.   And Dr. Strange has always been one of my favorite Marvel characters.   And this version of Dr. Strange, slipping through portals into surreal dimensions full of floaty things and alternate realities, was the Doctor I fell in love with, way way way back when world was young (and so was I).   They even gave us CLEA!   I love Clea!

Seeing this movie brought back a cherished memory, of the day I attended the world’s first comicon, in 1964 in Greenwich Village.  I was fifteen years old.   The whole con was held in one small room in some sort of union hall, with hucksters selling old comics from cardboard boxes along one wall, and the speakers at a podium in the front.   Fabulous Flo Steinberg turned up.. and so did Steve Ditko.   It might well have been the only comicon he ever attended… but I got to talk to him, and tell him how much I loved his art.   Especially on Dr. Strange.   Ditko was reserved, maybe a bit shy, but genial enough.   He told me that Dr. Strange was his favorite as well.   Yes, even more than Spider-Man.

He’s still one of the best comic artists who ever picked up a pencil, in my not-so-humble opinion.

Anyway… MULTIVERSE woke the sleeping Marvel fanboy in me, and that was a joy.

So says a former member of the Merry Marvel Marching Society.

 

 

 

Current Mood: nerdy