10 Things Marvel Wants You To Forget About Doctor Strange
4. He Turned Blue
During the late 60's, the Doctor Strange comic was selling pretty badly. To try and counter this, writer Roy Thomas and artist Gene Colan came up with a new design for the character that gave him a mask like a more traditional superhero.
The new design was pretty universally hated and was soon changed back. However, as bad as the costume may have been, the reason Doctor Strange put it on was even worse.
While Strange was in a different dimension, the villain Asmodeus stole his identity. When Strange tried to return, he found that there was a magic barrier stopping him from entering our dimension because there was somebody else with his face (and you thought airport customs were harsh). He then got around this highly advanced spell... by putting on a mask.
Things got more stupid after Asmodeus was defeated and died. Strange decided to keep wearing the mask to keep his identity a secret. It took Thomas several issues to realise the problem of having a secret identity that is the same as your actual name. He then had Doctor Strange take up a new alias as Stephen Sanders.
Eventually Doctor Strange got sick of the whole thing and went back to just having the one identity.