Strange Tales #118: The Possessed!

 This is part of an ongoing series where I will be reviewing Stan Lee and Steve Ditko’s Doctor Strange, covering his appearances in Strange Tales #110-111 and #114-146. Returning after a brief hiatus, I once again strive to post weekly. 

The Possesed! is an Invasion of the Body-Snatchers-esque story about aliens attempting to infiltrate human society from within, though through possession rather than replacement. This was not the first story of its kind in Marvel Comics- the skrulls debuted in Lee & Kirby’s Fantastic Four #2 in 1962, 2 years earlier, but it is the first time Strange has encountered a foe outside of the world of sorcery. The possessors are said to have come from another dimension rather than from outer space, but functionally it makes little difference to the story, aside from making it easier to put them away at the end to restore the status quo. It’s a perfectly serviceable story, but it doesn’t do a ton with the premise and fighting aliens doesn’t quite fit with Strange’s tone and aesthetic.

Set in a small village in eastern Germany, the villagers don’t really get time to develop in such a short story. Strange’s telepathic abilities also mean that there’s never really any suspense as to who is or isn’t under alien influence, which is generally the main draw of this type of story (your neighbour could be an alien and you wouldn’t even know it!). In this period, these stories played off fears of communist infiltration, with communists imagined as a group of people who look and act just like us but whose ideology and values are entirely alien to the capitalist way of being. This line of thinking is often referred to as McCarthyism, after senator Joseph McCarthy, who spearheaded aggressive attacks on alleged soviet spies, a witch hunt which was highly destructive to many left wing thinkers and politicians, despite very few of them having a genuine connection to the soviets. The setting of this story reinforces these fears: Germany was very much in the middle of the East and West, with Berlin being divided in two and many of their neighboring nations being on opposing sides of the Cold War. It’s a backdrop that could be quite compelling if it wasn’t about an all-powerful sorcerer with no friends.