I was just leafing through a Spider-Man comic book, an ethnographic foray into lowpop and an instructive transit into the more colorful regions of the cultural code. Two pages in, New York City is trembling on the verge of chaos owing to the sudden apparition of the evil sorcerer Baron Mordo, hovering in the sky and about to unleash his wraiths and goblins to wreak devastation, first upon the city and then upon the entire globe. Spidey seeks help from his old friend Doctor Strange, “Earth’s policeman against occult bad guys,” who explains: “Mordo is always seeking for more power”...
