Not that I didn't enjoy the
Doctor Strange movie...but there was
another direction that they could have gone:
Anthony Stark, Master Of The Mystic Arts!!
See, in this particular universe,
Tony Stark and
Stephen Strange met on the New York party circuit before their respective origins...
So it was Tony Stark's drunken driving that caused the car accident...
Man, I would have paid a
lot of money to see
Cumberbatch and
Downy perform that scene!
So in this timeline, Stark's guilt is the driving force of their search for a cure...
...and Tony ignores weapons dealing and trips to Vietnam/Afghanistan/wherever, so there's no
Iron Man!
And while Strange becomes increasingly passive and bitter, Tony's the one who takes them to meet the
Ancient One...
Stark is the one who discovers
Mordo's plotting, and volunteers to become the Ancient One's disciple...
Leaving Stephen in the role of smart-alecky manservant, while Stark become Mr. Magic Guy.
But he is
still Tony Stark, and he does still love to tinker with gadgets to make him a better hero:
Wait, what?
Yeah, Tony has
a computer display to help him identify enemies and pick out the best spells!!
Plus his computer
automatically aligns his hands and stance for optimum spell-casting!!
No, that's
not cheating.
And when it comes time to fight
Dormammu, well, it's time to go
full armor:
And what does the armor do?
And he kicks Dormammu's ass!!
That is, until Strange
betrays Stark!! He got tired of Tony postponing a search for the cure for his hands to save the universe and stuff, and Dormammu promised to restore his hands:
But, man,
don't make deals with Dormammu!
Anyhoo, Strange meets
Clea, she inspires him to see that Dormammu is really kinda evil, Stark manages to exile Dormammu from the Dark Dimension for an indeterminate number of years. So...
You know, comics really need post-credits scenes, don't they? Because this comic really lacks a scene where [REDACTED] shows up and...
From What If? #113 (1998)