Strange Academy

Origin

Doctor Strange and Doctor Voodoo started the Strange Academy to teach the next generation of sorcerers how to deal with the growing number of forces and mystical chaos that threaten all time and existence. Their job is to teach them to know who they are, what they are capable of, and to trust themselves to make the right choices with that knowledge.

However, because magic has a cost, Strange made a deal with the Vishanti. They agreed to allow Strange to run the school, and Hoggoth volunteered to absorb the cost to spare the children.

Creation

Strange Academy debuted in a series of the same name by Skottie Young and Humberto Ramos.

Major Story Arcs

The Hollow

The academy students were off to a great start. Relationships were forming, lessons were learned, and trouble was had. However, during a game of tag through the portal doors, one of the students, Calvin Morse, went missing. His magical sentient jacket was able to escape to warn Calvin’s fellow students. Rather than tell the adults, a number of students banded together and went looking for him on their own.

He was being held by The Hollow, a magical cut of tree people living in the Louisiana swamp near the academy. They had been keeping an eye on the students believing they were wasting and spoiling the Earth’s innate magical energy. Now that they had lured them to the swamp, they were able to attack and feed on them. The students put up a fight, but they were ultimately bailed out by their teachers. Unfortunately, they didn’t show up before Doyle Dormammu was killed.

Strange did his best to save Doyle’s life, but it was a kiss from his crush, Emily Bright, that brought him back to life.

Calvin’s Jacket

Weirdworld native, Toth, was up late studying in the library one night. When walking back to his dorm, he is attacked by an unseen assailant. In the process, the majority of his body is shattered. The staff is able to collect most of the pieces. With the aid of Toth’s parents, they should be able to reassemble and resurrect him. Unfortunately, they are missing the shard that would be his heart. It is the only shard required to cast the resurrection spell. It must have been stolen, proving that this was a purposeful attack, not an accident. As a result, the school hires a private eye, Howard the Duck.

Howard interviewed all of the students and accounted for everyone’s whereabouts during the attack. While investigating the crime scene, he found an enamel pin stuck in the wall that Toth was smashed against. He recognized it as being similar to a number of pins Calvin wearson his magic jacket.

At that very moment, the students were told about the heart shard being missing. As people were volunteering to find it, Calvin pulled it from his pocket, not knowing it was there. Suddenly, his jacket revealed itself to be Mister Misery, a being Doctor Strange had created in the past to absorb the price of his magic. Doctor Voodoo tried to lead the students in a fight against it, but Misery was too powerful. They contemplated starving Misery by not fighting, but Dessy had a better idea. She would feed Misery despair until he bursts. Misery eventually had enough. Calvin was expelled from his void with the heart shard, and Misery begged Dessy to end his suffering. So, she ate him.

With Toth revived, he was welcomed back with open arms but gave his biggest hug to Calvin, forgiving him for whatever role he may have played in his attack.

The Death of Doctor Strange

When Doctor Strange was mysteriously murdered, Doctor Voodoo was forced to close the school, which meant all the students needed to be sent home. Thankfully, it wasn't for too long. Clea was named the new Sorcerer Supreme, ensuring the safety of this dimension, allowing the school to open its doors yet again.

Gaslamp

To lift Calvin’s spirits, the gang decide to take him on a haunted walking tour of a graveyard in New Orleans. There, Zoe Laveau explains her origins and her family lineage, including a pusher of dark magic, named Gaslamp, that she once used to try and enhance her own magic. Calvin, who is now without magic, is tempted to reach out to this Gaslamp.

Against all instructions, Calvin does anyway, and Gaslamp gives him his first wish for free. He wishes to be competent at magic, and during a sparring session the next day, he gets too aggressive with Alvi. Eventually, Calvin needs more wishes, but he has no way to pay for it. So, Gaslamp turns him into a dealer at the school.

Doctor Voodoo finds him out almost immediately and is forced to expel him. On her way to the dance, Emily finds Calvin packing. Feeling bad for him, she stays and comforts him. This causes her to leave Doyle alone at the dance, which he takes pretty hard.

Finals

In the next few days, Emily organizes a walkout protest, not just for Calvin, but for the casual way in which the faculty has treated the student body's place in the cosmic game they have been playing. They teleported themselves to New York City and hid in the Sanctum Sanctorum, under Clea's nose. When Zelma and Voodoo finally catch up with them, Emily, in a fit of rage, opens a portal to the Dark Dimension, calling it their new home. Unfortunately, once they are there, Emily's behavior becomes more and more erratic and was starting to scare some of the students who had sided with her, many of which returned to the school, sincerely apologetic.

United and forgiven, some of the students learned that Calvin never returned home but instead stayed behind in New Orleans to deal magic for Gaslamp. These students decided to sneak off campus to rescue Calvin, who had fallen deeper into debt with Gaslamp and was being tortured for more wishes to sell. A group of students decided to raid Gaslamp's wish lab, causing a giant explosion. Ever since, these students have been doing community service for the local magic community for the damage.

While helping out during a massive storm, Iric had returned to the group to ask forgiveness for staying with Emily. He explained to them that Emily had made an agreement with Dormammu, and the two assembled an army of Mindless Ones and demons to lay siege on the school. Doyle and the others decided to protect the school. When Emily and her forces show up, Doyle receives most of her attention. A fatal blow was shielded by Iric. Upon losing his friend, Doyle embraced his true nature and absorbed the Dormammu power from Emily, causing her to retreat. He began feeling the power corrupting him and demanded his fellow students and faculty run away. Instead, Hoggoth appears and saps him of his power, returning him to normal.

In memorial, the academy commissioned a statue in his honor.

Midnight Suns

Zoe Laveau was looking forward to the guest lecture from Blade, when she was overcome with a vision of an apocalypse that she had a hand in creating. When it was over, she panicked upon learning that the entire faculty and student body also experienced the vision, and many were treating her like a monster. While Doctor Voodoo attempted to calm her down she was targeted by vapor minions of Valtorr. Agatha Harkness was able to whisk her away to safety while a newly assembled Midnight Suns stayed behind to defend the academy.

Unfortunately, Clea, acting Sorcerer Supreme, saw this new team as a threat as they were in the vision. Clea believed removing them would alter the vision, so she sent them to the Dark Dimension. There, the team worked with a Sorcerer Supreme variant of Tony Stark, who outfitted them with special armor and sent them to Valtorr's realm. They find Valtorr dead and replaced by a vengeful former member of Agatha's coven, now going by Korrosion.

With help from a magic mirror, Zoe and Agatha connected to Midnight Sun member, Kushala, trapped in Valtorr's realm. Kushala used her Spirit Rider abilities to connect them to Midnight Suns from other realities fighting Korrosion. With the help of Zoe and a variant Nico Minoru, Agatha used the sorceresses to create the apocalyptic vision that started everything. This created an anchor in the present for the Midnight Suns to jump to from Valtorr's realm and protect Zoe and Agatha from the vapor minions. This gave Agatha the opportunity to create a magical dagger and stab Korrosion, causing them both to disappear. With the danger seemingly gone, Kushala and her other teammates returned Zoe to the Strange Academy.

Solve for X

Zelma surprises a group of students with a field trip to New York City where they will compete in the Multiversal Math Bowl. This year, it was being held at Brooklyn Visions Academy. The team consisted of: Doyle, Germān, Shaylee, Toth, and Guslaug (now using pym particles to manage his size difference). Once there, they get to meet Dr. Erasmus Dawnbright, aka Equation, the leading expert on "enchantimatics," the math of magic, and fairyworld exile. Between defending him from a fairy posse with the help of Spider-Man and both Earth schools getting first and second in the math bowl, Strange Academy made quite the impression on Equation. He has an important project he was looking to recruit for, and he believed Doyle and Shaylee were the two for the job.

Unfortunately, Zelma thought that was a bad idea, so Equation decided to trap her in his mathematics book. Same with Toth, Germān, and Guslaug who had figured out that Equation faked the fairy raid to test the participants. Doyle and Shaylee were none the wiser, but thankfully, Germān was able to get as astral projection to Spider-Man to ask for help. He led Spidey back to the book where he released Zelma and the other students. Germān decided to stay inside the book, safe as a projection, until they were ready to release the other captives. Using his literal heart to track his girlfriend, Shaylee, Toth located them at The Midnight Mission, where Equation was mind-controlling them to "derealize" the Egyptian pantheon.

Using a teleportation spell, the students were able to snag Shaylee. After they freed Shaylee, their strategy was for Shaylee to pretend to still be in Equation's thrall, so that they could get close to him. When they found him, he had already derealized Doyle and was about to do the same to all of magic. He immediately figured her out and overwhelmed the group, stealing the Book of Enchantimatics. However, German remained inside the book and pulled both Equation and all his classmates in with him, where they were able to overwhelm Equation with their own math formulas.

Afterward, with the help of a recently resurrected Doctor Strange, they were able to re-realize Doyle.

Variants

Doyle's Time Hop

While Doctor Voodoo teaches the class how to time hop, Doyle finds himself at the academy in the far future. It was run down and falling apart, but he sees many of his classmates as their older selves, specifically Emily, Iric, Zoe, and Calvin. They were commanding a group of sorcerers against the one that was prophesized to be the end.

That is when they are interrupted by another group led by Doyle's own adult variant, leading Gus, Alvi, Dessy, and Shayla. This concerned Doyle about his own uncertain future.