Doctor Strange Channels Fiery Energy From His Hand — Print & Oil Painting

One line of fire crosses the entire width of this picture and everything else has been arranged to let it through. It enters at the left edge, gathers at his open left hand, braids into three or four twisting strands as it passes in front of his chest, opens out again at the right hand and leaves the frame there, throwing hundreds of small orange sparks off the whole of its length as it goes.

He is cut at the waist, seen slightly from below, the shoulders turned and the head brought back round so that the face is nearly frontal. The expression is not effort but attention: mouth closed, brows slightly drawn, the eyes tracking the line rather than us. He is holding something open rather than pushing something out.

The cloak has come up behind both shoulders in a dark red mass, and beneath the fire the tunic, the belt and the round amulet with its green stone are all lit from the side by the stream itself. Everything past the figure is a flat grey brown smoke with no depth in it, which is what lets the light read at full strength. Red leads the measurement with orange second.

Binding rather than burning is what this profession is usually for. The best known spell in the character's vocabulary arrives as loops of red light thrown around an opponent and then tightened, named for the entity whose strength it borrows, and it has been used on some of the largest things in the catalogue, including the green one. A ribbon of fire drawn all the way across a canvas is that idea before it closes. From our Marvel collection, beside the same cloak thrown open against a starfield and the green one in question, charging with a raised fist.