Doctor Strange’s Darkest Foe Just Became an Evil Version of His Cloak

Warning: contains spoilers for Strange Academy #11!

Doctor Strange‘s Mr. Misery makes its return as the multi-eyed entity threatens the students of Strange Academy, this time as an evil version of the Sorcerer Supreme’s iconic cloak. One of Stephen Strange’s greatest sins, this manifestation of the price paid in order to perform the magic necessary to protect his world hasn’t been seen for a while, but Strange Academy #11 reveals it’s been hiding in plain sight as the coat of Calvin Morse, one of the students learning at the school named after its hated creator and enemy.

Created by Jason Aaron and Chris Bachalo, Mister Misery was introduced in Doctor Strange #8 as a repository for all the pain and suffering that come as the price of Strange’s power. Imprisoned in the basement of the Sanctum Sanctorum, it grew in secret until it was freed by the Empirikul during their purge of all magic, and temporarily worked alongside its despised creator and his allies against their common enemy. It resumed its efforts to destroy Doctor Strange by targeting people who he cared about, feeding off their pain and even possessing his faithful compatriot Wong in an effort to learn the best way to crush Stephen Strange. Mister Misery was thought to have been destroyed in Doctor Strange #20 when Stephen used the entity’s reliance on his pain against it, reabsorbing it into him while accepting his responsibility for its creation, but a small part was later revealed to be alive and still hungry for vengeance.

In Strange Academy #11 by Skottie Young and Humberto Ramos, the near death of one of the students has Strange Academy on high alert, with Strange hiring Howard the Duck to question all of the students and possible suspects. When they’re told the victim can’t be resuscitated until his heart has been returned, Calvin surprisingly finds it in his coat pocket, causing everyone to suspect that he is the killer. Calvin’s jacket has so far appeared to be a dark version of Doctor Strange’s cloak, possessing a rudimentary intelligence that acts on Calvin’s secret desires. While Calvin claims he is innocent, his jacket lashes out against Headmaster Jericho Drumm, who claims to know what’s really going on. While the Strange Academy students recoil in horror and ask what’s happening to him, his response is the perfect revealing cliffhanger: “Misery.”

What makes Mister Misery different from any Doctor Strange villain is that it isn’t some interdimensional evil entity or a sinister warlock or witch out for power; it truly is Stephen Strange’s responsibility as the living consequence of being Earth’s Sorcerer Supreme. Strange Academy‘s creative team has hinted that not all is right with Calvin Morse, as a nightmare showed his jacket killing a pair of foster parents, and his battle alongside Doyle Dormammu against the Mindless Ones showed the enthusiastic, nerdy magician has a dark side. Calvin’s dream suggested that the coat simply appeared in his closet one day, giving Mister Misery a convenient way of infiltrating the school. What better way to make Stephen Strange suffer than hurting the children who trusted him to teach them about the very magic that helped create it?

Strange Academy has seen a wide range of obstacles in its first year or so, but its student body now faces a powerful enemy that has been biding its time since the first issue. Although Mister Misery faces a combination of seasoned and inexperienced magic-users, the issue is how to defeat it without sacrificing Calvin’s life in the process. With Doctor Strange likely to intervene, it’s disturbing to realize that in its pursuit of causing pain, Mister Misery fashioned itself into an echo of one of its creator’s most iconic accessories because it was incapable of moving on.

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