“Dan Adkins just drew it that way, and I wrote it,” Roy Thomas recalled. “Somehow, it seemed right to me that Stephen Strange was a smoker... and it wasn’t as reviled in society then as it is now.
“Actually, it chagrins me that such a scene probably couldn’t be drawn in today’s supposedly more ‘adult’ comics at Marvel or DC. In fact, I know it couldn’t, having tried to write scenes with cigarettes a time or two in recent years.”
That scene came during the great Marvel expansion of 1968 in Dr. Strange 169, the first issue of the sorcerer’s own title (with numbering continuing from Strange Tales, where he’d been appearing since issue 110).
I remember being a little surprised by it at the time. Superheroes so rarely smoked. Dr. Strange had just been awakened by a nightmare, so this is a scene of quiet vulnerability in a superhero, another thing that was rare then.
“I remember Adkins showing him smoking more than once,” recalled Nils Osmar. “It humanized the character for me; he was so perfect otherwise, it was hard to relate to him.”
But the scene didn’t work for other readers. “Sure, before he became Sorcerer Supreme, Strange was a smoker,” wrote Jef Willemsen. “But after studying with the Ancient One and learning how to hone and care for his body, I really can't see him indulging in drugs or narcotics of any kind. He has to stay alert and vigilant, in constant tune with the magicks of the universe. The highest he gets is when he inhales the Vapors of Valtorr.”
“Given the character’s somewhat peculiar adventures, I’d ask whether that’s really a ‘cigarette’ he’s smoking,” quipped Matthew Grossman.
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