Issue(s): Doctor Strange #64
Cover Date: Apr 84
Title: "Art rage"
Credits:
Ann Nocenti - Writer
Tony Salmons - Penciler
Tony Salmons - Inker
Carl Potts - Editor

Review/plot:
Assistant Editor Ann Nocenti fills in on an issue of Doctor Strange, and this is like such an Ann Nocenti comic, and regular readers will know my mixed feelings about Nocenti. But this issue just works out really well. Dr. Strange is probably a perfect fit for her stilted, somewhat poetic style of writing. And it's matched by the surreal artwork of Tony Salmons

The story here is pretty straightforward. A minor sorceress attempts to beguile Dr. Strange into helping her with a haunted house problem. She fails...

...but when Strange learns that her father is Claude Von Moor, a famous artist, he agrees to go along anyway. And he finds the house infected by little imps and things that turn out to be more dangerous than they initially look...

...and then it turns out the real haunting spirit is the sorceress' dead step-mother, who has been inhabiting Von Moor's body and causing his paintings to come to life.

Von Moor's wife wasn't an evil person, but we learn in this issue that "a spirit has no morality", at least for the purposes of this story.

Quality Rating: B+

Historical Significance Rating: 1

Chronological Placement Considerations: N/A

References:

• No footnotes, but there's a reference to Clea leaving Earth in Doctor Strange #53 and Strange's battle with Dracula, which ended in Doctor Strange #62.

Crossover: N/A

Continuity Insert? N

My Reprint: N/A