Doctor Strange is a 2015 comic book series published by Marvel Comics as part of the All-New, All-Different Marvel initiative. The series is written by Jason Aaron with art by Chris Bachalo. The series is the fourth volume of Doctor Strange.
Doctor Strange must face off against a magic-hating alien race who despise all magic users.
The first issue was released October 7, 2015. The series lasted for 37 issues, with the final issue released May 23, 2018.
Doctor Strange provides examples of the following tropes:
- A Master Makes Their Own Tools: After the Last Days of Magic event, Doctor Strange was looking for ways to reignite magic on Earth, and restore his own sorcerous strength. His quest led him to the rescue of a dwarf blacksmith, who questioned why all the artifacts of power he used were named for other people. This led to Strange leveling up by taking an apprenticeship under the dwarf to forge his own mystical artifacts, getting an entirely new look in the process as well as a Cool Sword that could cut rifts in space to cross interstellar distances.
- Anti-Magic: The technology of the Empirikul, a religiously fanatical Anti-Magical Faction with a reach spanning numerous realities, is somehow able to erase magic wherever they invade.
- Anti-Magical Faction: The Empirikul, an alien inquisition that views magic as a "corruption" and have some way of counteracting it. They've already killed several of Strange's counterparts in other dimensions, and are coming for him next. They accomplish this through the use of Anti-Magic technology which leaves the realities they 'purge' grey and sterile.
- Cast from Lifespan: The Sorcerer Supreme teaches a lesson that a normal punch inevitably takes a toll on the one who threw it, and so does casting a spell. In the present, the story shows Stephen dealing with a destroyed digestive tract from all the spellcasting, and Wong has to prepare food that looks like rejects from a tentacle hentai story (and doesn't taste any better) because it's all that his system will accept.
- Fantastic Diet Requirement: It's revealed that Strange's usual meals are made up of horribly disgusting, indescribable stuff that barely qualifies as food. Unlike most examples, he utterly hates it, but his body has warped so much from a combination of his spell casting and all the dimensions he's been through that it's all he can eat. All the same, on several occasions before and after, he is shown eating normally. Like most of the events from Aaron's run, it has been later ignored.
- Horror Hunger: It's revealed that Doctor Strange's biology is so changed by other dimensional energies, that normal food can't sustain him, and it all tastes like ash now. Instead, he needs to eat the cooked body parts from Eldritch Abomination, dead souls and alien animals. They taste horrible but provide him with the energy to cast his spells. This will be the fate of any sorcerer over a long period of time. Note that nobody has paid attention to that since Aaron left the book.
- Magic Versus Science: The entire premise of the "Last Days of Magic" arc, where Strange and Earth's other magic-users come under siege from the Empirikul, an army led by the Imperator that worships science and seeks to purge out all magic in the universe.