Sunday, August 3, 2014

THE 100 GREATEST CROSSOVERS OF ALL TIME #23



I mentioned here that there were only two Stan Lee-Steve Ditko crossovers that I deemed among the best, and this is the other one: the crossover of the most noteworthy heroes regularly being drawn by Ditko, Spider-Man and Doctor Strange.

This was a Big Deal when I first read it, and I still appreciate the ways Ditko successfully melds the very different art-styles he used on the two features. However, on recently re-reading it, it doesn't work nearly as well as a story. It works better as a Spider-Man story in which Doc Strange happens to appear, rather than as a tale designed to communicate all the special joys of the magician's mythos.  The main deficit of the story is that the villain Xandu is an uninteresting throwaway type.

The above scene in which Spidey encounters a mind-blowing cosmoscape from the good doctor's world remains the tale's high point.

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