Doctor Strange Teams with The Sentry to Defeat Loki

As Sorcerer Supreme of the Marvel Universe, Stephen Strange has tangled with all manner of dangerous foes, but in Doctor Strange #381, writer Donny Cates and artist Gabriel Hernandez Walta kicked off their run by pitting their protagonist against a literal god who’s known for both his skill at sorcery and his unparalleled cunning; Loki.

The conflict began slowly, with the trickster god first stealing Strange's mystical title. Their antagonism exploded when Strange uncovered Loki's plans to take control of all magic; a confrontation that led to the death of one of the Sorcerer Supreme's friends. Now, Strange has escalated the conflict by seeking aid from a hero who killed Loki in one of his past lives: the Sentry.

With vast physical power and a monstrous dark side (known as the Void), the Sentry is one of the most dangerous beings in the Marvel Universe. He also has a rather complex history which begs the question: What does his return mean for Doctor Strange? For the answers to those questions and more, we spoke with Cates about his plans for the Sentry. We also touched upon his love for Loki, the personal reason he had Stephen Strange become a veterinarian, and the short life of Strange's canine best friend, Bats.

CBR: At the end of issue #382, we saw that the Sentry had returned to the Marvel Universe. What made you want to bring him back?

Donny Cates: I love that character! As soon as I got to Marvel, I started asking my editorial teams about him. I was like, “Does anybody have dibs?” [Laughs]

Speaking very personally, I've been sober for about three years now. Sentry was a character who always really spoke to and touched me because it's this idea of trying to be a good person, but having this dark half where it can seem like for every good action you do, your dark half destroys things ten-fold -- to me that's what the Sentry and the Void was.

EXCLUSIVE: Art from Doctor Strange #384 by Gabriel Hernandez Walta and Jordie Bellaire

When I started on Strange I started playing with the ideas Jason Aaron had put in his run of magic always having a consequence and price. So you had the idea of Stephen Strange wanting to do good, but ultimately having to balance out how much these things cost and having to deal with the darker half of his good intentions. That led me very naturally towards the Sentry. The Sentry and Stephen have that in common. They both have massive prices to pay for just wanting to be good people and to help.

Also, the Sentry is so cool. He gets a lot of flack sometimes for being “overpowered,” or basically Superman. He's so not, though. You can do things with the Sentry that you could never do with Superman.

I think that there's something really beautiful about this idea of a DC character finding themselves in a Marvel world and having to deal with these real life consequences. He's such a Marvel character, so to that end I always thought he was a very natural fit.

Stephen obviously has a plan for the Sentry, and there's a very good reason why he chose him. That will play out over the remainder of this arc.

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The Sentry is a character that has quite a bit of history attached to him. Will that be part of your story?

Yes, we'll be dealing with a lot of it. Bringing the Sentry back is not something you do lightly. There's a lot of facets there from when he was introduced, to Siege, to when he was brought back by Apocalypse. All these things are all very dense and they all play a big role. So the character's history is not something we're going to drive by. We'll be exploring all of that in the months to come.

One of the things that I've seen people say about our Doctor Strange run so far was that, weirdly, there's not a lot of big Ditko-style crazy magic realms and elements. I think when a lot of people saw the announcement of the book, they were expecting a big sorcerer duel between Loki and Stephen and a lot of fantastical things.

I hope that when people saw that last page of issue #382 and they see the place that Stephen is in both physically and emotionally they realize that stuff is coming in a big, bad way. When you guys see what Gabriel Walta has done on issues #383-385 it's unreal. I would be shocked if he didn't earn awards for the things that he pulled off in #384. It's incredible.

Issue #382 also revealed more about the centerpiece of the conflict between Loki and Doctor Strange; a spell called The Exile of Singhsoon. We know this is a spell that allows the caster to seize control of all magical power in the world. Can you talk about Loki's reason for seeking it out?

I can't turn all my cards over yet, but I will say I find Loki to be one of, if not the, most interesting characters at Marvel as far as how layered he is. He's no longer a mustache twirling bad guy. He has motivations of his own that surprise me. He was resurrected after the Sentry killed him, which is not something I'm unaware of by the way. That's why there's that line where Stephen says, “I may have over reacted a little bit.” [Laughs] Because it is a massively disproportionate reaction and something that could scare the shit out of Loki, obviously.

Loki is really interesting now because when he was resurrected by Thor and brought back as a child he really was a new character with new objectives and motivations. He's a character that genuinely does want to do better than his previous self, but ultimately what does “do better” mean? Does it mean be a better person? Or a better bad guy? And he's a really interesting character because he's seemingly genuine, but no one believes him. So you kind of fall into a false sense of security.

The new take on this character that Kieron [Gillen] developed is that he lulls you into a false sense of security where you as the reader believe Loki. So sometimes what ends up happening now is he ends up lying to you, and betraying you the reader. He becomes much more personal as opposed to this grand bad guy who has all these schemes about superheroes and stuff. So you fall into that same trap that Thor and everyone else has fallen into of forgiving, trusting, and being betrayed over, and over again. To me, that's who Loki is.

On a slightly personal note sometimes it can be hard to tie yourself into these big Marvel characters. And Loki is a character that is so big and has such a grand history not only in comics, but since Nordic times. So when I was researching this book I tried to find my entry point into these characters.

With Loki it took me a lot longer to find my entry, but I eventually found it. It's that he is a younger brother. I am as well. He's kind of the black sheep of his family and for a long time I was as well. My brother is older and is very accomplished. He's blue eyed and has blonde hair. He's the perfect guy, and my hero. I look up to him to a lot. That's where Loki is, and every time he tries to do better people just assume he's up to no good. So Loki lashes back out in these ways of, “If you expect me to be the bad guy, then I will be. Let me show you how bad I can be.” To me, a lot of that is him lashing out because of the shadow of Thor that he lives under.

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You talked about Loki betraying the readers. For me his ultimate betrayal came in Doctor Strange #382 where his actions lead to the death of an adorable talking dog named Bats. I blame him for what happened to Bats, and want him taken down for that. It broke my heart.

[Laughs] Yeah, that was rough, right? It's funny, too, because I felt so terrible when the previews came out for issue #382. They were just of that scene where Strange is trying to perform his job as a veterinarian and Bats walks in. People instantly fell in love with Bats. And I, being a monster, tweeted out, “Issue #382 is the first appearance of your favorite new character, Bats!” I was like, “You're a monster! What are you doing?

When I got the Doctor Strange gig, my cat, Autumn, died. She was my best buddy and she was always there. She would sleep on my lap everyday when I wrote. My wife works as much as I do, and her job has late hours. When I had Autumn, though, it was very nice. I had a companion. Then, like a week before I got Strange, she passed away. So I was in a pretty dark place and at the time the people at the veterinarian office were my heroes. They were so awesome about it and they really helped us through it and took care of everything. So I considered them heroes. That's why Strange is a vet.

I was in love with the idea that even though Stephen has lost everything he's found a way to be someone's hero on even the smallest scale that he can. Something beautiful about Stephen that's not really prevalent in a lot of other Marvel characters is that he was a hero before he was ever a sorcerer. He was saving lives everyday as a surgeon. Then he became a Marvel hero. So I wanted to dig into and explore that. In issue #381 he says, “I didn't fix my hands to become a superhero. I fixed them to save peoples' lives and help them. Now I am.”

Other people look down on him for this, and certainly the superhero community gives him flack, but if you're that couple there with their cat, he's your hero. He's exactly who you need him to be in that moment, and that to me is very beautiful.

So yeah, the death of Bats was tough. But it's me trying to inject some of my personal life into this; of dealing with the heartache of losing an animal. It was really tough for me to write that. His final words were, “Don't ever let anybody hurt your friends.” That messed me up man. It's not something that I did lightly.

What I really liked about it is that it was a massive dose of real in an otherwise completely fantastical book. You've got the God of Lies and Stories, a sorcerer, a floating house, and the Sentry. Then in the middle of it you have something that's probably happened to a lot of people who read this book. You have a very real thing; a dog dying. The loss of a pet is really tough. It's something that can lead you down a path that might be a little extreme.

You talked a little bit about Gabriel's work already, but part of the reason Bats' death was so resonant for me and a lot of other readers was, of course, the work done by him and colorist Jordie Bellaire.

When you have someone like Gabriel on the team, it allows me to write moments and scenes that maybe I wouldn't do with someone else. Because in the wrong hands these scenes came seem easy or unearned. It is a testament to Gabriel and Jordie that the death of Bats resonated in the way that it did. Especially considering at that point you had only known Bats for maybe eight pages. His first appearance was on one page in #381, and then he's in like six pages in #382. His death was still profound for a lot of people though. That's crazy! It shouldn't have worked! It did work though because of Jordie and the acting that Gabriel was able to pull off... on a dog! That's bananas!

And Jordie is maybe one of my favorite human beings inside or outside of comics. She and I had lots of conversations about color palettes and how to pull this off. Something that no one has picked up on is that her color palettes for each issue correspond to the season and the month that the issue comes out in.

That's something that wasn't in my script, and wasn't something that we really talked about. You'll notice in issue #383 that the palette is snowy with Christmas lights and things like that. We wanted to do that to try to ground this book as much as possible. Because a lot of times these magic books, especially when there are gods involved, can kind of get away from you as far as how to relate to them. That's always been what's set Marvel apart; this idea that it's the world outside. It's all these crazy and fantastic characters, but it is your world. So to that end, a lot of what grounds this book and makes it so relatable and real is the work Jordie is doing.