Strange #1

Opening the four-issue limited series with a quietly unsettling mood, this first chapter — "A Whole New Ballgame" — arrives with a cover by Tomm Coker that frames a brooding, darkly cloaked figure with hands raised amid overlapping arcane diagrams and mystical sigils on a burnt-orange field. The tagline "The Doctor Is Out!" suggests a Stephen Strange stripped of familiar trappings, and the stark, shadowy portraiture gives the whole image a grounded, almost noir weight. With Mark Waid writing and Emma Ríos on art, colored by Christina Strain, this 2010 series promises a fresh and thoughtful take on Marvel's master of the mystic arts.