Who are the Agents of W.A.N.D.? Doctor Strange #4

What is up? Welcome back to the Volcano Base. I’m novus Let’s talk some comics.

The Death of Doctor Strange

So I think it’s been long enough. We can talk about this. It’s not really spoilers. Doctor Strange died a little while back and he sort of came back. And now we’ve got a brand new Dr. Strange series, sort of exploring what it’s like now that he’s back. Let’s dig into Doctor Strange 4.

Something that’s been happening in the background has been really intriguing. It’s a callback to a 2013 Thunderbolts annual. S.H.I.E.L.D.’s Magical Division called W.A.N.D. (Wizard Alchemy Necromancy Department), Goofy Comics shit…It’s great.

They have been telling some stories about W.A.N.D. and introducing W.A.N.D. in the background of the current Doctor Strange book, and that all sort of comes to a head in Issue four, where we get an entire book and an entire storyline with W.A.N.D. They are to the magic world, what S.H.I.E.L.D. is to the physical world.

It’s a lot of spycraft, it’s a lot of behind the scenes stuff, but they come in and solve problems. We could unpack a whole, you know, series of videos on a paramilitary magic organization, and I get that. But this book is really fun. Just getting to see sort of like the spy craft side of magic has been really great.

Introducing the Agents of W.A.N.D.

Right now, the agents of W.A.N.D. are three people, they’re Pandora, who’s like the director, the Nick Fury, if you will, there’s Wong, Dr. Strange, his right-hand man. He’s worked for Doctor Strange for years, but he is an amazing magician and combat tactician in his own right. And we’ve got the freaky Dr. Zee.

Now the freaky Dr. Zee is someone they initially went up against, but Wong realized we have the same end goals. We should really be working together. And Dr. Zee went for it and he’s now on the team and he has some of my favorite moments in this book.

Doing the Work

At one point they are trying to help out some ghosts that are under contract to some demons, and Dr. Zee looks at the contract is kind of like this really isn’t enforceable. Let’s engage in some collective action. And in this case, what collective action means is form a giant construct and wreck the demons that tried to hold you. Just wonderful.

There’s a shopping center of some sort that’s kind of being haunted or harassed by a group of beings. And we see Dr. Zee with a smoke pack and a glider just creating a rune in the air over the place that will banish all of the evil beings that are causing the problem. And it works. And again, it’s amazing.

The Agents Get Surgical

There’s a point in time where they’re sitting and talking, Pandora and Wong specifically. And Wong says, I have worked for a surgeon for so much of my life and I want to make things better. I don’t want to just put a Band-Aid over it. I want to be a doctor, and I want to solve the magical problems of the universe of the multiverse.
And they sort of decide to change the direction of W.A.N.D. to sort of be like being surgical and fixing the problem rather than just putting a Band-Aid over it and walking away, calling it a day.

I really hope that this is like a backdoor pilot, if you will, and that they’re gauging if people are interested in W.A.N.D. and if we should have a whole like Agents of W.A.N.D. series.

I’m voting yes.

They’re going to be featuring pretty prominently here. I think we’re going to see sort of like a dovetail of the storylines. The big thing that’s happening with W.A.N.D. right now is it looks like someone is going through and killing like mid-level, low-level evil magicians and evil practitioners and nobody knows why and nobody knows what’s going on. And just because they’re bad doesn’t mean they deserve to die.

Why You Need This Book

I’m really looking forward to where this is going. I’m telling you, pick up this book, give Agents of W.A.N.D. some love. Honestly, you could probably pick up issue four, the issue that just came out today and get started. It will end without knowing anything else that’s going on in Doctor Strange. And then you can decide from there if you want to go pick Dr. Strange up or not. But yeah, go check it out. Show Agents of W.A.N.D. some love.