It may be the middle of winter, but Marvel is getting fans ready to go back to school with a new trailer for writer Skottie Young and artist Humberto Ramos’ Strange Academy #1. It’s back to class, True Believers, like you’ve never seen it before!
The Strange Academy series will be a new addition to pop culture’s fascination with schools for kids with extra abilities. The first iconic name that jumps to mind might be Hogwarts, but for Marvel fans, Strange Academy might seem more like a sister concept to Xavier’s School for Gifted Youngsters. Unlike the mutant academy, though, this school was created to combat a specific threat rather than offer a safe haven for persecuted children. Dr. Strange founded this new academy for sorcerers not out of idealism but as a last resort against a mysterious rising tide of danger. Something has the Sorcerer Supreme running scared, and he’s investing his fortune in maybe the world’s only hope.
The new Strange Academy trailer gives fans a more in-depth look into what they can expect from this new chapter for the next generation of Marvel’s magic users. Executive Editor Nick Lowe sums up the excited of the new series best when he says, “In Strange Academy, you have something that is rare in Marvel Comics: a perfect entry point.” Young follows this up by adding, “It’s the first day of school. It’s the first year of a new school – it’s going to be a coming of age story with a bunch of kind of misfit kids from all around the Marvel Universe who have a proclivity for magic and sorcery and the mystic arts.” Young and Ramos will be carving out what will hopefully become an iconic place in the Marvel Universe in the years to come.
Lowe also points out in the trailer that this will be a new comics adventure for Young as both a “team book” and a “school book.” It will also be something new for the Marvel Universe. (As Doctor Voodoo points out, these kids aren’t superheroes, they are something else entirely.) The kids coming to the school will be forging whole new paths for themselves even as they originate from some of Marvel’s most well-known stories. (Take Doyle Dormammu, the illegitimate son of that Dormammu for a great example). Young is ready to breathe these new characters to life, but he credits much of his excitement for the comic to Humberto Ramos’ talent depicting younger characters. He even went so far as to say “I really don’t know if there is more perfect person to do this book.”
The trailer also appears to reveal a few more looks into the first issue itself. In previously released preview pages, Strange Academy’s new students got an exciting welcome to say the least. After meeting their main teachers, the students are treated to a rare visit by their benefactor, Dr. Strange… and the Throzil that he is fighting. If you watch the new trailer carefully, not only are there more images from the ensuing melee but also an exciting look inside the academy itself. Otherwise the scenes are fairly out of context. Who is bowing to Doctor Voodoo? Could that library be anymore gorgeous? What is happening to that child??
Young and Ramos will be joining a grand tradition of magic schools, and it will be interesting to see how they make the tradition their own. The new trailer fairly crackled with excitement from Lowe and Young, so fans should be expecting something very special. Without a doubt, though, Marvel’s Universe is about to get a lot stranger.
Strange Adventures #1 will be available at your local comics shop and online March 4, 2020.
More: When Doctor Strange’s Magic Fails… His Story Will END
