Enjoyed your analysis of these early Doctor Strange stories. Movie buff that I am, I never noticed the Vincent Price/Ronald Colman comparisons until you mentioned them. Good catch.
I'd been wondering about it for years, and then about 10 years back I suddenly started watching Ronald Colman movies on TCM. But it was someone else online who pointed out Vincent Price in the early ("crude") stories. Truthfully, as I look over the episodes in the book, the transition is not so cut and dry. It's very obvious the origin was done after a certain number of stories, but then George Roussos comes along and totally obscures the art evolution for several months. When Ditko gets back to inking, there's a major JUMP in quality. I can't escape the feeling he was VERY inspired when he did those-- from "
The Domain of the Dread Dormammu" on up. But once past "
Face-to-Face At Last With Baron Mordo", there's a slight drop-off and it never reaches those heights again. Perhaps Ditko NEVER did again. I understand something similar happened with Jack Kirby during the last year at Marvel before he went to DC. He lost his enthusiasm for working for Lee & Goodman.
Anyway, Strange still does look somewhat like Price in the origin, but it seems a more "realistic" depiction, less "cartoony". But Ditko's art is cartoony by nature, so we're not excactly getting Paul Gulacy-style "realism". There are panels where I'd swear he looked like David Niven (who Stan once suggested he waas based on). I still recall what a laugh I got out of finaly getting to watch
THE PRISONER OF ZENDA on
TCM. Both ronald Colman AND David Niven are in that film together, and it allows you to really compare and contrast them, especially their personalities. (I wish I'd taped that film, it really is a classic. I've seen the
DOCTOR WHO version at least a dozen times-- and then of course there's the
GET SMART tribute, where Don Adams does a Colman impression.)
I sometimes wonder who later artists may have based their versions on, as so often the later guys (and fans) seemed to have NO idea who the original artists had in mind, especially when you're dealing with "cartoon" styles (Kirby, Ditko, Heck). What amazed me back in the late 70's was when they did the
DR. STRANGE tv-movie, and Peter Hooten was a DEAD RINGER for Frank Brunner's version of the character. (The very peculiar thing about that film, of course, was that it features an ENGLISH "Ancient One" (John MIlls), and as the villain, Morgan Le Fay (Jessica Walter)-- both of whom, a year earlier, had been regulars in the brand-new
SPIDER-WOMAN comic-book! How's that for mixing up source materials? NOBODY in Hollywood in the 70's had any respect for comics-- especially the people doing films based on them.)
