Doctor Strange Deserves Deadpool’s Crown as Marvel’s Most Meta Hero

In Marvel Comics, Doctor Strange has been on some intensely trippy adventures throughout his nearly 60 year tenure as the Sorcerer Supreme, but throughout that time he’s never been known for his sense of humor. The thing a lot of fans and even some writers fail to realize about Stephen Strange’s haughty self-seriousness is that it makes him one of the greatest comedic straight men in all of Marvel comics. Pair Doctor Strange with the Submariner and suddenly you’ve got Frasier and Niles Crane with superpowers, the classic pairing of Strange and Spider-Man is like Marvel’s version of Mr. Peabody & Sherman, the more frustrated you make him, the funnier he gets. But pair Doctor Strange with Spidey’s talking funny animal variant, Peter Porker, aka Spider-Ham, and you’ve got a meta comedy that rivals the likes of Deadpool.

Ultimate Civil War: Spider-Ham (featuring Wolverham) from 2007 written by J. Michael Straczynski with art by Mike Wernigo and various others, is complete insanity from the title to the final page. The book is a ruthless satire of crossover tie-in comics, and if that isn’t clear enough, the cover features Spider-Ham holding a bloodstained dollar sign in a send-up of Captain America holding his shield from Michael Turner’s now iconic Civil War art. The story begins with Spider-Ham bemoaning the loss of his thought balloons, which have been replaced with narrative text boxes, and now he’s out of ideas. Spider-Ham pulls the text boxes from the panels, following the trail straight into Marvel’s Civil War event, where he comes across Doctor Strange, who somehow manages to make things even weirder.

Related: Marvel Teases a Mephisto Version of Spider-Ham

The punchline of a loss of ideas leading to Civil War, one of many excuses for superheroes to fight each over the years, is the perfect time to introduce Spider-Ham to Doctor Strange, who is appropriately surrounded by the Mindless Ones. Once it’s established that the main Marvel continuity is getting a little stale, it’s time to introduce the guy who can travel the multiverse, and that’s exactly what Strange and Spider-Ham do. Overwhelmed by the Mindless Ones, Strange opens up an inter-dimensional doorway, completely oblivious to the cartoon pig asking for his thought balloons back until it’s too late. Spider-Ham causes the spell to destabilize because, according to Doctor Strange, he isn’t kosher. From there the book does swine-based parodies of Apocalypse Now, 2001: A Space Odyssey, and countless Marvel properties.

Strange eventually catches back up with Spider-Ham by following the path of damaged trademarks throughout the known multiverse, and sends him back to the beginning of the comic. This time Spider-Ham accepts that comics have changed and the thought balloons aren’t coming back, only to find two rats in Spider-Man and Venom costumes using thought balloons freely. He once again follows the trail of thought balloons into a comic crossover, but this time it’s Marvel Zombies, one last shot at the House of Ideas’ occasional lack of ideas.

 Marvel has multiple characters who are well aware they’re living in a comic book fantasy world. She-Hulk, Loki, Rick Jones, and even Squirrel Girl’s squirrels, Tippy-Toe, Monkey Joe, and Deadpool have all displayed an awareness that they exist for the entertainment of others, but Doctor Strange’s level of awareness goes beyond even that. When you know of every universe, one where you’re a product is just one of many, and as a result he’s resigned to just about everything, including a talking cartoon pig. Now that Doctor Strange and others have brought the multiverse to multiple Marvel Studios projects, a silly one-off like Ultimate Civil War is suddenly well ahead of its time.

Next: Marvel’s Spider-Ham Recreates Endgame’s Final Battle

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Author: Nickolas Williams