An abysmal conclusion that's not a surprise considering the duo were the absolute worst team to write Doctor Strange ever. To be fair the first 3 issues showed great promise, but then they completely and totally lost. So the Empirickul is still in the basement? What happened to their city sized ships and all the androids? Oh wait explanations for those sorts of things only happen in a competently written story. I guess any explanation for how they destroyed all magic was rendered unnecessary as the whole story arc fell apart culminating in this complete joke of a last issue. Ironically as a stand alone issue, it's ok. The problem is it was marketed as the issues where all the loose strings would be tied together redeeming the entire story arc, but nope. So we are left in a Marvel world where the only one whose powers seem to be affected by the end of magic is Doctor Strange. Everyone else seems at full power.Even the Beast of the X-men is competently using magic without consequence. His fellow x-person Magic just had an epic tale all about extremely powerful magic spanning many dimensions. I Yeah I know Aaron didn't write the other books, but the fact that no one else followed the lead is a good indication Marvel realized they made a huge mistake. If that's true, I hope they ditch his changes soon and return to normal for Doctor Strange after the secret empire storyline winds up. If not, it will likely be cancelled as its sales fell through the floor after the first few issues, and haven't shown any signs of recovery. Bachalo's artwork was repetitive and unoriginal throughout. That was kind of a surprise considering how well he does the X-men.

The worst Doctor Strange Annual I ever read. Though I'm probably being unduly harsh, because I had oped it would be a return to form for the character. Instead Kathryn Immomen makes even less effort than the current scattered, unfocused make it up as you go along and ignore the history of the character writing style of Jason Aaron. The excitement about his taking over collapsed a few issues ago as Doctor Strange's sales collapsed. They have yet to recover. An annual as stupid as this one definitely increased the likelihood that Doctor Strange comic won't survive much past the movie. The above synopsis is almost totally false. It doesn't even meet the loose standards of comic books for having a synopsis match up somewhat with the actual story. It sounds a lot better than the truly tragic story that was told. The story it hinted at isn't possible with a basically depowered Dr. Strange. Most disappointing is that it seems to double down on the result of the last days of magic storyline, which is Doctor Strange seems powerless for the most part. Too powerless to defeat a garden variety demon. Clea for unexplained reasons was on Earth instead of the Dark Dimension where she was the last time we saw her and was present for the last days of magic and survived thanks to magic, hmmmm. Her explanation for having more than Doctor strange is silly. The effort to "humanize" the characters fails. Instead it turns them into pointless characters that simply are not interesting. A Doctor Strange without serious magic is like Iron Man without his suit or Professor X without any telepathy. All in all the ability to tell a good comic book story in the Marvel universe seems to have been the real fatality of the last days of magic. Jason Aaron's story arc ultimately was anti-climatic and leaves very little room for any other writer to expand on. It left the comic book in ruins. Kathryn Immonen's story is the result. Doctor Strange has alw