Thursday, December 3, 2009

1981 - Whatever happened to … Frank Miller on Doctor Strange?

In February 1981, the following house ad ran through several Marvel comics that month:

Following up after Chris Claremont and Gene Colan, Frank Miller was set to join Roger Stern on Doctor Strange with issue #48.

However, from Roger Stern:
I’m afraid that the story of why Frank never drew Doctor Strange isn’t very interesting. As I recall, Frank was under consideration for some sort of James Bond project, so he bowed out of drawing Doc — temporarily, we thought at the time — to get ahead on his other deadlines. Luckily, Marshall Rogers came along and delivered six very tasty issues. And after that…well, by that time Frank was really caught up in writing and drawing Daredevil (and later, Ronin), so we never did get to work together on Doctor Strange.


File the Stern/Miller Doctor Strange with the Stern/Miller Nick Fury, Agent of S.H.I.E.L.D. – under "Things That Might Have Been"…



What?! A Stern/Miller Nick Fury, Agent of S.H.I.E.L.D.? That would have been amazing…

7 comments:

  1. I just about did a spit-take. There was once a Stern/Miller Nick Fury book under consideration?

    It makes me wish the Sandman's library of never-written books really existed so we could read this one.

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  2. that's a shame. the spider-man annual miller did that guest starred dr strange was fantastic, his art style really fit the material.

    how are the marshal rogers issues? i've seen him do some fantastic work (ie the detective run with englehart) and some stuff that looked like he really phoned it in. where does his dr strange fall?

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  3. The Marshall Rogers issues are quite good actually, the Vampire storyline he did was solid. However, Paul Smith replaces him after a about a year and has an amazing run. So ranking him, I'd put him just after Smith.

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  4. Thank you for posting. I just found this ad in a comic and set off to hunt down these Stern/Miller issues. You saved me the trouble!

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  5. Thanks for the comment Mars Will Send No More. You're more than welcome, glad I was able to help.

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  6. I know it's heresy in comics fandom, but I find Miller vastly overrated and am glad he didn't stick his one-note, one-trick ideas into other series. He ruined Daredevil for me and apparently for all time as subsequent writers tried to imitate what he had done. To be fair, compared to his imitators he was a genius. But honestly, Elektra the lost love never ever mentioned previously and all that ninja junk? Ugh.

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  7. Matt, I agree with you about Miller. I am here because I just saw that house ad in Marvel Spotlight #10 and I was like "when did this happen?" Turned out it didn't, as this blog shows.

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