“’Twas Steve’s Idea”

Dr. Strange is a character wholly of Ditko’s invention, which other writers later contributed to and altered. This chapter addresses the issue of Dr. Strange’s racial identity as well as the complicated politics of cosmic intraspace on display throughout Ditko’s tenure on the character. This chapter considers one of Ditko’s most knotty and sophisticated narrative arcs as it addresses the creation of the self, how occult and mystical ideas infiltrate (and are infiltrated) by individualist thought, and how the two operate together to create a mystic liberal imagination of self-creation through an internal excavation of the mind.