Doctor Strange

Born in 1930, Stephen Strange was the eldest child of Eugene and Beverly Strange, then vacationing in Philadelphia. Two years later, Stephen's sister Donna was born at the family's Nebraska farm. At age eight, Strange was beset by demons controlled by apprentice sorcerer Karl Mordo, but was rescued by Mordo's mentor, the Ancient One, a millennia-old sorcerer who protected the Earth dimension as its Sorcerer Supreme, a role Strange was destined to inherit. At age eleven, a year or two after his brother Victor's birth, Strange aided an injured Donna, the experience inspiring him to pursue a medical career.

After high school, Strange entered pre-med at a New York college. Later, home on vacation for his nineteenth birthday, Strange went swimming with Donna, who suffered a cramp and drowned. Finding her body after a desperate search, Strange felt a sense of personal failure that eroded his medical idealism. After earning his medical degree in record time, he entered a five-year residency at New York Hospital, where his rapid success made him arrogant. When his mother Beverly died near the end of his residency, a bereaved Strange grew distant from his work. His talent was unaffected, though, and he became a wealthy, celebrated neurosurgeon before he turned thirty. His egotism made him cold and callous, interested only in high fees. He saved the life of injured United Nations translator, Madeleine Revell; following a romance and proposal, she left him due to his increasingly materialist nature. Two years after Beverly's death, her husband Eugene fell ill; unable to face another family death, Stephen refused to visit his deathbed. A few days later, an outraged Victor berated Stephen for his apparent lack of grief, then rushed from Strange's apartment into the path of an oncoming car. Blaming himself, Strange placed Victor's body in cold storage, half-hoping that future breakthroughs could revive him.

Circa 1963, Strange was in a car accident that severely damaged the nerves in his hands, ending his surgical career. Too vain to accept positions as a consultant or assistant, Strange sought a cure and pursued every available treatment, legitimate or not, soon depleting his fortune; in months he was reduced to a derelict, performing shady medical procedures that barely paid his bar tabs. After hearing rumors of the mystical Ancient One, a desperate Strange pawned his last possessions for a ticket to the East and found the Ancient One's Tibetan palace. At first annoyed when the Ancient One refused to cure him, Strange was later astonished to see the sorcerer attacked by mystic forces. Upon learning that the Ancient One was Earth's magical defender and that the attack on him came from his pupil Mordo, Strange tried to warn him, but Mordo mystically prevented Strange from doing so. For the sake of the Ancient One and the world, Strange acted unselfishly for the first time in years, vowing to learn magic himself so he could counter Mordo and his ilk. He offered himself as a disciple to the Ancient One, who accepted, having known of Mordo's treachery all along. The Ancient One spent years instructing Strange in the art of sorcery, teaching him how to tap the innate mystic powers of both himself and the world around him, as well as how to invoke the power of awesome entities, or Principalities, who resided in their own realms, most notably the three benign beings known as the Vishanti. A few years after Strange's arrival, Mordo left to seek greater power, and would often clash with Strange in the future. Strange's guilt over his earlier mistakes weighed heavily upon him over the years, and not all of his early recollections can be trusted.