Doctor Strange, Marvel Comics’ perennial Sorcerer Supreme, is getting a direct-to-DVD, direct-to-Blu-ray release on August 14, 2007. The movie is the last of the four movies Marvel Comics allowed to be based on their popular characters. Two of the other Marvel Comics movies have also gotten the Blu-ray treatment.

Doctor Strange was created in 1963 by Marvel Comics legend Stan Lee and Steve Ditko. Stan Lee literally gave birth to the Marvel Comics line in 1963 when he brought out The Fantastic Four, The Amazing Spider-Man, The Incredible Hulk, Iron Man, The Mighty Thor, Daredevil, and The X-Men.

Richly imagined by Steve Ditko, the world of Doctor Strange drew readers into mysterious and dangerous places filled with action and magic. He gave the world Baron Mordo, Dormammu, the Mindless Ones, Nightmare, and Mephisto. The weird dimensions Doctor Strange wandered through often felt like those of Dutch artist M. C. Escher, with stairways and roads that led to impossible places.

Doctor Strange started out as Doctor Stephen Vincent Strange, a gifted surgeon with a definite God complex and arrogance beyond belief. Then he ended up having a tragic car accident that left him permanently disabled and never able to perform surgery again.

Strange ended up homeless and alone. The good life he’d been living slipped right through his palsied fingers and he found himself living on the streets. But he pursued every opportunity he could think of to correct his physical disability. Nothing worked.

After exhausting conventional wisdom regarding healing himself, Strange journeys to the Himalayas to find a cure that might be possessed by a man known only as the Ancient One. Instead of aiding him, though, the Ancient One offers to train Strange in the magical arts. Strange doesn’t want to be trained as a sorcerer, though. On his way out he discovers Baron Mordo plans to kill the Ancient One and take his magical secrets.

Strange can’t let the assassination plans go through and tries to stand against Mordo. But the evil Mordo binds Strange magically. Having no other choice, Strange agrees to be trained in the magical arts. The Ancient One reveals that he’s known of Mordo’s treachery and frees Strange. Then training begins and all the strange worlds, quests, and dangers pull Doctor Strange into them. Fans got to see how Strange used the All-Seeing Eye of Agamotto and the Cloak of Levitation that looked so distinctive the way Ditko drew it. Furthermore, they got to see him practice astral projection at a time when most people had not heard of that.