It’s unlikely that Doctor Strange would have developed the fan following it did without Ditko’s unique artistic direction for the stories. These journeys into other dimensions, along with the bizarre beings that Doctor Strange encountered, gave the series a surrealist quality that spoke to ‘60s counterculture and seemed to predict the interest in mysticism and other planes of reality that swept through America’s youth soon afterward. Starting with Strange Tales #116, Ditko turned up the volume and provided dream-like, kaleidoscopic landscapes whenever the sorcerer hero journeyed to unearthly realms such as 'the Dream Dimension' and 'the Dark Dimension.' The comic became famous for these unique environs, and many artists who followed Ditko on Doctor Strange have done their best to follow Ditko’s style and often been criticized when they haven’t.
The early stories had Ditko experimenting with how to display Doctor Strange’s odd, mystical abilities. Steve Ditko’s woodcut-esque illustrations gave the characters and settings a sense of weight, grit and age, a stark contrast to the futuristic designs of Jack Kirby’s work in other Marvel Comics. But while the hero himself seemed a little generic at first, his world definitely wasn’t.
