Doctor Strange The Last Days of Magic written by Jason Aaron with art by Chris Bachalo and others
In this continuation of The Way of the Weird, Stephen Strange faces off against the Empirikul, a group of dimension-traveling warriors set on wiping out magic everywhere. The Empirikul is led by the Imperator, a being whose parents were killed to satisfy a false god. Now he is all about science and how great and powerful it is--powerful enough to destroy magic in every dimension he travels to. Now he's in Earth's dimension and is rapidly eliminating all magical items and people. Doctor Strange is in a fight where he has no mystic powers, how will he ever win?
The premise is interesting (science vs. magic) but the execution is not engaging. The storytellers give a sense of the epic scale by referencing other magic users who are killed or lose powers. But those people don't elicit my sympathy--their powers are used mostly for selfish aggrandizement and so the loss doesn't seem so bad (except when they are killed, of course). The Empirikul, on the other hand, are almost too sympathetic. Making science fundamentalists an enemy is interesting but they come off like a Monty Python Spanish Inquisition rip-off. I found it hard to take them seriously.
Not recommended.
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