At a young age, Stephen Strange had dreams of becoming a doctor. The eldest child of three, Strange was born in 1930 while his parents Eugene and Beverly Strange were vacationing in Philadelphia. At the age of eleven he aided his younger sister Donna when she was injured, which proved to be a formative experience for him, and he was inspired to attend med school after high school. Ironically, it was his inability to later save her from drowning when he was nineteen and on leave from college that undermined his belief in life’s meaning and the value of idealism. Nevertheless, he rapidly finished med school at a young age and became a successful neurosurgeon.

Strange displayed phenomenal talent in his chosen field, and quickly attained wealth and notoriety. The more successful he became, the more arrogant he grew. Eventually this led to estrangement from his family and the undoing of his relationship with a United Nations translator named Madeline Revell to whom he had proposed marriage. So distant and self-absorbed did he become that he refused to visit his father on his deathbed. His enraged younger brother Victor Strange berated him for this, and then was killed as he ran into traffic. Stephen then placed the body of his brother into cryogenic storage. At a much later stage Stephen attempted to restore his brother through magical means, but instead imbued him with the curse of vampirism.

A car accident that damaged the nerves in his hands changed everything for Stephen Strange. He was no longer able to be a surgeon, yet he refused to become an assistant or consultant, instead squandering his money traveling the world and searching for a cure. One day he heard a rumor of a mystical personage known as the Ancient One in Tibet. Marshaling the last of his inner and outer resources, Strange diligently searched until the fortress of the Ancient One was revealed to him. Though initially outraged that the aged mystic refused to cure his hands, Strange’s anger was quickly replaced by amazement when the reality of magical forces was demonstrated before his eyes as he witnessed an attack on the Ancient One.

Circumstances revealed to Strange that it was none other than Baron Mordo, the Ancient One’s chief disciple, who was the perpetrator of the attack, and who continued to plot the destruction of the antediluvian mystic in an attempt to gain power. To his horror, Strange learned he was unable to reveal this after Mordo easily ensorcelled him. Realizing the Ancient One was a force for good; Stephen selflessly abandoned his quest to restore his hands and committed himself to magical tutelage with the intention of foiling Mordo’s insidious scheme. By this act Strange proved himself to the Ancient One, to whom the entire melodrama had been transparent. Thus Doctor Strange put himself on the path to become the new Sorcerer Supreme of the Earth dimension, yet gained a deadly enemy in Baron Mordo.