When Tony Stark and Stephen Strange First Met in the Comics

In "When We First Met", we spotlight the various characters, phrases, objects or events that eventually became notable parts of comic lore, like the first time someone said, "Avengers Assemble!" or the first appearance of Batman's giant penny or the first appearance of Alfred Pennyworth or the first time Spider-Man's face was shown half-Spidey/half-Peter. Stuff like that.

Pal Jason B. asked me on Facebook, "Has the first meeting between Tony Stark and Stephen Strange ever been cataloged? Even before the whole "awesome facial hair bros" thing, they were almost the same guy: loose morals, huge accident, obtaining development and powers in the Far East..."

It's fair to say that Stephen Strange and Tony Stark sure were pretty similar when they began in the comics. Here is Tony's first appearance in Tales of Suspense #39...

Now, here's Doctor Strange in his origin issue, Strange Tales #115...

They really are pretty much both kind of rich jerks who turn their lives around in Asia. That's a good call, Jason.

Of course, in recent years, Brian Michael Bendis has done a lot more with the characters in his Iron Man series. Not just this hilarious early meeting with the introduction of the "Awesome Facial Hair Bros" idea...

But obviously, later on as Tony Stark gets more involved in magic in the series, the connection to Doctor Strange gets even deeper (even with Doctor Strange actually around).

The reason that this is coming up in particular, though, is that the early trailers and commercials for Avengers: Infinity War reveal that Doctor Strange and Tony Stark spend a lot of time together in the film (as the movie clearly splits the characters up a bit, so that you don't just have 20 people in a scene together throughout the movie. Sort of like trying to get in a word edgewise in one of those big superhero gatherings, like the comic book version of Infinity War when they were all collected in Four Freedoms Plaza together and a bunch of the heroes were weirdly prejudice against mutants).

In fact, one of the recent TV ads specifically spotlight Doctor Strange showing up to get Tony's help...

But when did they first meet in the comic books?

Here's a tricky one - pretty much every Marvel hero showed up at the wedding of Reed Richards and Sue Storm in Fantastic Four Annual #3, including Doctor Strange and Iron Man...

However, we never actually see them share a scene together in the issue, so that seems like it is bit of a stretch, even though clearly they DID likely meet at some point in the issue.

Doctor Strange, by the way, had a hilariously odd little cameo in Iron Man #56 that had nothing to do with really anything at all, he just sort of popped up there out of nowhere...

He didn't meet Iron Man in that issue, though. It was just one of those great "Hey, guess what? This is all one big universe" deals that people always love to see in their Marvel Comics.

Okay, so when did Iron Man first meet Doctor Strange?

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Interestingly enough, it was at ANOTHER wedding, the wedding of Yellowjacket and Wasp in Avengers #60...

There they are, chatting away, likely plotting some sort of future Illuminati or something like that.

Okay, so here's the thing, for the life of me, I could NOT find any instances where Doctor Strange and TONY STARK met each other. They met each other a number of times when Tony was dressed up as Iron Man, but not with just plain old Tony Stark. Doctor Strange never popped up as a guest star in Tony's book and Tony never popped up as a guest star in Strange's book, at least not full-fledged guest star roles where you would expect to see them interacting with other in their secret identities.

They're both at Alicia Masters' opening in Marvels #2, but they don't appear in a panel together...

Therefore, as hard as this is for me to believe, and please, feel free to e-mail me at brianc@cbr.com to let me know if you can think of an earlier meeting, but I think that their first real meeting as Tony Stark and Stephen Strange was shockingly enough when the Illuminati were introduced in New Avengers #7...