Strange Days Indeed for Disney-Marvel ... and Pixar, Too?

Ever since Disney bought Marvel last year, there's been buzz (in comic book hives, anyway) about which Marvel character would get the Disney film treatment first. Perhaps with Pixar's help.

Lately, a lesser-known character called Iron Fist (see my hullabaloo from August 26) seems to have punched his way into the lead, but other pundits still chant the name Strange, Dr Strange, one of Marvel's earliest characters and seemingly a natural for the big screen.

One such pundit, Brendan Bettinger, reports on Collider today that another pundit, comic-book artist Brendan McCarthy, had a meeting with Disney recently and the talk got 'round to Pixar animating a Dr. Strange movie. But another pundit, in lightning-fast response to the first (and second) pundits, promptly posted the opposite - that Iron Fist will be first. So far, no pundit has posited a 'reboot' of Howard the Duck (whom Donald has sworn to kill on sight).

For those unfamiliar with Dr. Strange, he was created by Stan Lee back in the early 1960s and drawn with surreal style by Steve Ditko, the artist better-known for co-creating Spiderman, drawing that character's early issues, and then becoming a hermit.

Dr. Strange was, in fact, a physician: an arrogant surgeon who learned the mystic arts after he injured his hands and could no longer operate. Stan Lee loved to write scripts for Dr. Strange because he enjoyed wordplay and coining over-the-top phrases like the Dread Dormammu or the Crimson Bands of Cyttorak or the All-Seeing Eye of Agamotto. ('Nuff said.)

I'd prefer a Dr. Strange movie over an Iron Fist movie, though I'm not pundit enough to prognosticate the producer's predilections, true believer. Which, then, will film first?

Not even the All-Seeing Eye of Agamotto knows. (Excelsior!)