Comic Book / Strange (2022)

There's a new Strange in town.

"There is still a Strange on Bleeker Street. And that Strange is still the Sorcerer Supreme."

— Clea, Strange #1

Strange (2022) is a comic by Marvel Comics, starring Clea (the widow of Doctor Stephen Strange), the new Sorcerer Supreme of the Marvel Universe. It’s written by Jed MacKay, with art by Marcelo Ferreira.

Following The Death of Doctor Strange, Stephen Strange is dead and the universe lacks a Sorcerer Supreme. For the good of the world, Clea - a very accomplished sorcerer in her own right - quickly steps into the role before any of Doctor Strange’s old rivals (such as Doctor Doom) can declare themselves his successor.

Supported by Stephen’s friend Wong, she seeks to fulfil her new duties and protect the universe from occult threats. And also, perhaps, to find a way to resurrect her husband.

The first issue was released on March 02, 2022 and ran for ten issues before concluding in January 2023. It's followed by a relaunch, also helmed by MacKay.

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Strange provides the following tropes:

• Abusive Parents: Umar is a warlord of the Dark Dimension in the same league as her brother, the Dread Dormammu. But you don't become an Evil Overlord by being a good parent, and Clea remarks that there was a time when Umar's approval would have meant more than anything in the world to her. The first and only time Umar considered the possibilty of loving Clea as her daughter is when she believed that Clea had manipulated Stephen into making her Sorcerer Supreme as a stepping stone to conquering Earth.
• A Day in the Limelight: Issue #6's focus is entirely on Wong as he reaches out to his contacts and tries to unravel the mysteries of the Blasphemy Cartel.
• Affirmative-Action Legacy: Clea, as the female successor to her husband Stephen Strange.
• A Glass of Chianti: Card-Carrying Villain Umar demands wine when she stops by the Sanctum Sanctorum for dinner and is disappointed in the quality of wine that Wong serves her. But when the Blasphemy Cartel busts down the door, Umar decides that blood would be a much more fitting vintage and fills her glass with it after tearing apart the cartel members with magic and bare hands.
• All Your Powers Combined: To stop the Revenant Prime, Strange and Clea literally merge into one being, augmenting their magic to the point that they quickly dispatch the Sentry and restore most of the Blasphemy Cartel to normal (apart from Director None, who did such a thorough job of erasing himself that even they can't identify who he was).
• Apologetic Attacker: Clea apologizes to Thunderstrike after seeing what he's become before severing his arms with a Portal Cut to disarm him of his magical weapon.
• Anti-Hero Substitute: While Clea is compassionate like Stephen, she hails from the Dark Dimension, meaning that she doesn't abide by the typical Thou Shalt Not Kill rule (and death is preferable to whatever she would've subjected her foes to at home). Wong is horrified when she murders the gangsters who invade the Shrouded Bazaar, angrily telling her that Stephen would have never done what she did. Clea retorts that she is not Stephen.
• Anti-Magic:
  • In their second confrontation, the Blasphemy Cartel attempts to disarm Clea with the Sands of Nisanti to deprive her of her magic. It works... but only on Earth magic. As a sorceress of the Dark Dimension, she still has all of her other spells, which she unleashes on the hapless cartel members to turn them all to stone.
  • The Shadowknight revenant slices through Clea's and Umar's sorcerous defenses with ease, forcing Clea to come up with an entirely new magical formula to defeat the monster by exorcising all the ghosts controlling it.
• The Archmage: Clea was already an enormously powerful sorceress as Sorcerer Supreme of the Dark Dimension and the niece of Dormmamu. But becoming Sorcerer Supreme of Earth hasn't added to her powers, as the energies of Earth and the Dark Dimensions are like oil and water. Instead, it takes immense control to keep these powers from destroying her or turning her into a monster, but her performance doesn't seem to suffer for it. That said, she mentions that it's a constant struggle to keep them in check.
• Badass Boast: When the Harvestman tells Clea that resurrecting Stephen is impossible, she retorts with this:
  Clea: I am the Sorcerer Supreme. "Impossible" is not a word I recognize.
• Badass Cape: Clea inherited Stephen's Cloak of Levitation following his death, wearing it whenever she appears as the Sorcerer Supreme.
• Bad to the Last Drop: Clea’s view on Earth’s coffee supply. It’s impossible to get the good stuff on this planet (and possibly in this dimension). Fortunately, she has other options.
• Bait-and-Switch:
  • The Flash Forward at the start of the first issue shows Clea confronting the Harvestman, who is determined that she won’t resurrect Stephen Strange. The end of the issue seems to bring us back to that point, and there’s a magical resurrection underway but it’s for Thunderstrike, not Stephen.
  • Clea is speechless when her mother Umar says that she's So Proud of You... right before Umar congratulates Clea on becoming Sorcerer Supreme as part of a fiendishly clever plan to take over Earth. Clea's surprise quickly turns to anger as she realizes that her mother has no concept of true love.
• Beat Them at Their Own Game: When the Blasphemy Cartel unleashes a demon to fight Clea, she simply binds said demon to her own will. She would later throw this demon at the Shadowknight revenant sent by the cartel to buy time while she creates a new magical formula to exorcise the undead monstrosity.
• The Blank: The leader of the Blasphemy Cartel is an entirely featureless white humanoid named Director None.
• Brainwashing for the Greater Good: At the end of the story, Stephen and Clea dismantle the Blasphemy Cartel by rewriting the memories of all its members to give them a fresh start as ordinary people.
• Brilliant, but Lazy: Clea is more than capable of taking on her husband's role as Sorcerer Supreme, but she's so fixated on trying to bring him back that she neglects many of the other responsibilities that Stephen left her, such as his obligations to the Avengers, constantly putting them off while she pursues her own ends.
• Bullying a Dragon: The Rose attempts to barter with Clea, who openly ponders ways of inflicting a Cruel and Unusual Death or a Fate Worse than Death upon him when he has no real way of threatening her or appeasing her aside from giving her what she wants. Even then, he tries to trick her into an ambush from the Blasphemy Cartel, which tells her that the Rose sends his regards. The only reason why the Rose is still alive is because Clea is more interested in figuring out how to resurrect Stephen and dealing with a visit from her mother Umar.
• The Bus Came Back:
  • Thunderstrike, who's been dead for many years, returns as one of the undead heroes.
  • Moon Knight's brother, Rand Spector (aka Shadow Knight) is another of the undead Clea faces. It's his first appearance since his death in a 2010 Shadowland story.
  • Dr. Thaddeus Paine, an old Morbius and Venom villain, reappears in Issue #5, and suffers Karma Houdini Warranty in the form of Clea banishing him to the Dark Dimension.
  • The start of the second arc reveals that The Blasphemy Cartel are the remnants of S.H.I.E.L.D.'s W.A.N.D. division, who've gone rogue and are hunting their old director, Pandora Peters. It's the first time Peters and W.A.N.D. have appeared since their debut in 2013.
  • The Sentry, who was killed off back during The King In Black is revealed to be the Revenant Prime that Strange needed to stop.
• …But He Sounds Handsome: Inverted. The Harvestman repeatedly tells Clea to give up on her quest to resurrect Stephen Strange, calling him unworthy of the esteem she holds him in. It's later revealed that the Harvestman is Stephen himself, and he's still in love with Clea despite being forced to serve Death.
• Cain and Abel: Clea admits to Moon Knight that she killed a revenant of his brother and expresses concern that it might damage attempts at cooperation between them. On the contrary, Moon Knight is delighted to hear that Randall has been killed again, saying that's an extra favor he owes her.
• Came Back Wrong: Thunderstrike is resurrected as a shambling mess of bone and rotting flesh. While he's still able to command his former powers, he has no will of his own, merely shouting his name while being controlled by the thousands of gestalt souls used to puppet his body.
• Contrasting Sequel Protagonist: While Clea is motivated to do good, it's clear that she's very different from her husband. She lacks much of his restraint, eschewing Thou Shalt Not Kill entirely and murdering those who would harm innocents in her presence. Whereas Strange handled things with clinical precision and layers of being Crazy-Prepared, Clea is controlled by her emotions and passion in defiance of conventional logic like accepting death.
• Death Is Cheap: Discussed. While talking about finding a way to resurrect Stephen, Wong complains that it's not as simple as Clea is making it out to be. Clea then asks how many of Stephen's superhero friends have returned from the dead. He replies, "All of them, it sometimes seems."
• Declaration of Protection: After slaughtering the Blasphemy Cartel, Clea leaves one man alive as he feebly begs to be summoned to safety all to relay that the Shrouded Bazaar that is under her protection. In a subversion of the usual outcome of this trope, the Bazaar is attacked again while Clea was busy fighting Thunderstrike and the Harvestman.
  Clea: Do not fear, worm. I will allow your magi to summon you to safety. Because I want you to tell whomever you report to... this place is under my protection. I am the Sorcerer Supreme, and I am warlord-born.`
• Deliberate Values Dissonance: Clea still enacts justice as though she were fighting in the Dark Dimension. This means repaying murderers in kind for their crimes and trying to use her bloodline as warlord-born to intimidate her foes into inaction. Wong repeatedly points out to her that this is not how things work on Earth and she can't expect them to play out as she expects them to. Her title as warlord-born apparently means nothing to the Blasphemy Cartel, who make another attack on the Shrouded Bazaar while she was away fighting the Harvestman.
• Didn't Think This Through: The Blasphemy Cartel try to weaponize Anti-Magic to render Clea powerless so they can riddle her with bullets. They neglected the fact that she's half-Faltine and thus has access to the dread energies of the Dark Dimension, which she promptly demonstrates by turning the mooks all to stone.
• Domain Holder: As the current Sorcerer Supreme of Earth, Clea is the master of the Sanctum Sanctorum, with it becoming her new Place of Power. Even a sorcerer as powerful and arrogant as Doctor Doom knows better than to try and threaten her within its walls.
• The Dreaded:
  • Clea deliberately cultivates a reputation as a Terror Hero in her stint as a Sorcerer Supreme in hopes of terrifying the gangs of New York City into behaving, invoking her title as warlord-born while flashing a Game Face worthy of a Faltine. But it doesn't work on everyone - and her attempts at escalation only convince the leader of the Blasphemy Cartel to take the fight straight to the Sanctum Sanctorum.
  • Umar is a Faltine and rival of her brother, Dread Dormammu. When the Blasphemy Cartel interrupts her dinner with Clea, the mooks present quickly panic at the incoming and furious warlord, who proceeds to rip them all into bloody ribbons.
• Drowning His Sorrows: Wong first appears with a raging hangover from drinking himself nearly blackout drunk at the Bar With No Doors out of grief over Stephen's death.
• Earn Your Happy Ending: Clea's trials and tribulations as the replacement Sorcerer Supreme and Strange's time as the Harvestman bring about the end of the Revenant Prime, allowing Strange to return to the land of the living, much to Clea's joy.
• "Eureka!" Moment: Moon Knight telling Clea about his connection to Khonshu and about how Gods and similar beings usually only resurrect people to act as their avatars and emissaries causes Clea to wonder whether Death's new servant, the Harvestman, might be Stephen. He is.
• Evil Cannot Comprehend Good: Clea is frustrated and outraged when she learns that her mother thinks her marriage to Stephen Strange was all part of a long-term plan to take his role as Sorcerer Supreme, rather than consider that Clea genuinely loved him.
• Faceless Mooks: All of the Blasphemy Cartel agents wear identical uniforms and masks, use numbers instead of names, and appear to be all-male. This is later revealed to have been invoked by them with a mystical excision of their identities.
• Fate Worse than Death: Clea stops Moon Knight from killing Thaddeus Paine, an old Deadly Doctor enemy of Morbius and Venom who she instead banishes to the Dark Dimension, where Paine is last seen being terrorized by Mindless Ones.
• Five Stages of Grief: Discussed. Clea mentions that the people of Earth are taught that grief should be processed and loss accepted as a part of life. But as a creature of pure magic and a member of a race that is compelled by passion, Clea declares herself incapable of simply accepting Stephen's death and strives to bring him back by any means necessary.
• Fusion Dance: When facing 'Revenant Prime' - the undead Sentry - in the final issue, Clea and Stephen's Big Damn Kiss triggers their temporary fusion into a cosmic being. Appropriately enough, it identifies itself solely as Strange.
• Game Face: Clea normally keeps a human-like appearance, but when she's using her powers her eyes glow and her hair flickers like a white flame as a showing of her magical powers. When the Shrouded Bazaar is attacked again, she's so furious that the Blasphemy Cartel would attack a location under her protection that her face and hair take on the color of lava, making her resemble her uncle, Dormammu.
• Glowing Eyes of Doom: Clea's eyes glow purple whenever she's flexing her metaphysical might as part of her Faltine transformation.
• Good Is Not Soft: As a half-Faltine, half-Dark Dimension denizen sorcerer, Clea cares little for the Thou Shalt Not Kill rule espoused by most superheroes, gorily dismembering and vaporizing the members of the Blasphemy Cartel for hurting innocents at the bazaar she was visiting. But she's motivated entirely by love for her husband and her desire to protect the world he loved so much. She rescues kidnapped victims with a reassuring smile before turning around and casually inflicting a Fate Worse than Death on a villain. In the finale of the comic, Clea would be happy to let the entire Blasphemy Cartel die in the wake of an exodus of 100 million ghosts, but Stephen implores her to show mercy, rewriting the Cartel's memories and giving them new identities as ordinary civilians.
• Greater-Scope Villain: The Blasphemy Cartel's "Management" turns out to be the Trinity of Ashes, an Evil Counterpart to the Vishanti from a 1990s storyline called the "War of the Seven Spheres." The Blasphemy Cartel's goal is to construct for the Trinity a Revenant body that is powerful enough to sustain them on Earth.
• The Grim Reaper: The Harvestman claims to be Death's personal agent, enforcing her will by striking down the undead who are violating natural law. To this end, he wields a scythe and is dressed in glowing robes, possessing magical powers to rival Clea's. Wong speculates that Death created the Harvestman as an opposite to the Sorcerer Supreme to deal with an unseen "revenant" threat.
• Hedge Mage: Discussed. The Blasphemy Cartel has used its Post-Modern Magik and magitek weaponry to terrorize the magical denizens of New York. They also bring anti-magic measures against any wizards they encounter. However, when they run afoul of Clea, she disparages the Cartel's measures as only being useful against "hedge witches and gutter mages". She then proclaims that she's neither of those things and No Sells their Depleted Phlebotinum Shells before massacring the Cartel with her superior power and expertise.
• Heroes Love Dogs: Clea is very affectionate toward Bats, letting him lie on her lap (as much as a ghost dog can) and petting him while lounging around in the Sanctum Sanctorum.
• Hoist by His Own Petard: Despite Clea's wish for vengeance, all of the Blasphemy Cartel survive the final battle - with the exception of Director None. Having magically erased so much of his own existence, Strange's magic can't actually lock onto him to transport him to safety.
• Hopeless with Tech:
  • Clea is at a loss over what do with all of the computers and other high-tech equipment that she finds in one of the Blasphemy Cartel's bases.
    Clea: I am the Sorcerer Supreme, not the Technologist Transcendent.
  • A flashback depicts Stephen as being wholly ignorant of blockchain technology, requiring Pandora Peters to explain it to him to understand the magnitude of the Post-Modern Magik he's dealing with.
• I Gave My Word: Death promises to return Stephen to life if he defeats the source of the revenant threat as her Harvestman. Despite Clea's worries that she'll need to cheat Death somehow to get Stephen back, Death abides by her agreement and restores Stephen to life as promised.
• "I Know You're in There Somewhere" Fight: While Clea never used this phrase at the time, she reflects in hindsight that her victory over Thunderstrike's reanimated corpse was only possible because a part of his true heroic self was still in there holding back from going all-out against her. She explicitly acknowledges that she doesn't have this advantage when pitted against the ruthless "Shadowknight", who is nothing but a killer.
• I Need a Freaking Drink: Clea's reaction when her mother Umar tells her she's proud of her is take a large gulp of her wine glass.
• Ineffectual Death Threat: When Clea approaches the Rose for information on the Blasphemy Cartel, he attempts to arrange a deal for information, but Clea points out that a gangster like him doesn't have the ability to really threaten her directly, and when she's already lost the man she loves he has no means of threatening her emotionally.
• Innocently Insensitive: When Jean Grey mentions that Krakoa is eager to have a sit down with Clea, Wong says that might be awkward, as Clea is a bit put off by Krakoa's new currency, Mysterium, being Anti-Magic, and thus the bane of her existence.
• Kick the Dog: Along with constantly undermining her daughter, Umar also insults Wong's cooking.
• Lawman Gone Bad: The Blasphemy Cartel was started by ex-members of W.A.N.D., the defunct magic-based division of S.H.I.E.L.D.
• Made of Magic: When Bats asks if Clea can really bring Stephen back to life, she replies, "Yes, darling. I'm magic." Being half-Faltine, she's quite literal about this.
• Magitek: At first glance, the Blasphemy Cartel look like a typical mercenary outfit. But their automatic weapons use magical ammunition, their wristband sensors track occult opposition and their "Solomon grenade" and "RPGenie" unleash demons. Which makes perfect sense, given their origins as S.H.I.E.L.D.'s magical division, W.A.N.D..
• Many Spirits Inside of One: Dead heroes and villains, like Thunderstrike and Shadowknight, are being weaponized by having their corpses crammed full of legions of ghosts, turning them into unusually powerful Revenant Zombies that are capable of harming even someone like Umar.
• Mook Horror Show: The story emphasizes that the Sorcerer Supreme regularly deals with threats on a level that makes typical superhero confrontations child's play by comparison. Clea doles out one Curb-Stomp Battle after another to the Blasphemy Cartel's faceless mooks, killing them in horrific ways in retribution for their crimes. She only ever struggles against the revenants, who possess traits that make them much harder to defeat, such as Thunderstrike's possession of a weapon as powerful as Mjolnir or the Shadowknight's Anti-Magic.
• Mystical White Hair: Clea's hair is snow white to reflect her otherworldly origins as a half-Faltine, half-Dark Dimension sorcerer. As the Harvestman, Stephen's hair has been completely dyed white as well.
• Non Violent Initial Confrontation: Played with. Doctor Doom calls on Clea to offer his condolences, advise that he’ll be taking over as the new Sorcerer Supreme and requests that she hand over some of Stephen’s magical artifacts. It’s not public, though, and it almost gets violent, although he backs down when Clea visibly gathers her power.
• Oh, My Gods!: Wong mutters, "By the Vishanti..." when Clea begins her murderous rampage against the Blasphemy Cartel for attacking the Shrouded Bazaar.
• Only One Name: Clea points out that her people don’t have surnames. She then averts it (and provides a Title Drop) by adopting Stephen’s surname. There is still a Strange on Bleeker Street.
• Outside-Context Problem:
  • Clea is this for the Rose, a normal human gangster who is barely able to maintain his composure when Clea, far from the usual rival criminal or costumed vigilante, barges into his office, demanding information about the Blasphemy Cartel.
  • Similarly, Clea's teamup with Moon Knight has her terrorizing his usual crooks into submission with her dread powers. By Moon Knight's own admission, the Sorcerer Supreme operates on an entirely different scale than he does.
• Plot-Triggering Death: The whole series spins out of The Death of Doctor Strange.
• Pokémon Speak: The revenants are only capable of yelling their own names, often in a Punctuated! For! Emphasis! fashion.
• Portal Cut: Clea deals with the undead Thunderstrike by severing his arms with a portal, literally disarming the monster of his magical weapon.
• Post-Modern Magik: The Blasphemy Cartel uses hijacked crypto blockchains to inscribe digital prayer wheels and cast powerful spells. This method is how they gathered restless spirits to animate superhero corpses as their undead warriors.
• The Power of Love: It's Stephen's love for Clea that allowed him to develop the loophole that granted her the seat of Sorcerer Supreme and prevent Doom from taking it.
• Pretender Diss: While Clea acknowledges that the Blasphemy Cartel is better equipped than the average gangster, she mocks them for thinking their weapons would be effective against anything but "hedge witches and gutter mages", of which she is neither.
• Primary-Color Champion: Clea dons the outfit that Stephen once wore while acting as Sorcerer Supreme.
• Purple Is Powerful: Clea's street wear is a purple bustier over a lilac-colored dress that demonstrates her otherworldliness and inclinations as a Lady of Black Magic.
• Remember When You Blew Up a Sun?: Director None references Stephen's participation in the War of the Seven Spheres, in which Stephen fought in a cosmic war on behalf of the Vishanti for 5,000 years. He declares Stephen's performance against Revenant Prime pitiful by comparison.
• The Reveal:
  • The Harvestman is Doctor Strange, who has been pressganged into becoming a servant of Death.
  • The Blasphemy Cartel are the remnants of S.H.I.E.L.D.'s magical division, W.A.N.D. - and all of Wong's memories of W.A.N.D. and Pandora Peters have been obscured by Laser-Guided Amnesia.
• Sinister Scythe: The Harvestman wields one while confronting Clea over her attempts to resurrect Stephen.
• Smug Snake: Director None remains smug even after his actions piss off Clea, the Sorcerer Supreme of two dimensions and the niece of Dormammu. Despite the regular Mook Horror Shows she dolls out, he never second-guesses his plans for the "revenant" project. After Revenant Prime defeats Clea and Stephen, None stops to gloat about his victory and his foes' pathetic performance rather than finishing them off. This buys Clea enough time for a Big Damn Kiss that triggers a Fusion Dance, granting the newly created "Strange" the ability to dismantle all of None's plans.
• So Proud of You: Umar tells Clea she's proud of her for becoming Sorcerer Supreme, not just of the Dark Dimension but of Earth as well. Clea is understandably offended that her mother assumes she took the role as a power play.
• Spanner in the Works: Clea is this to Director None and the ex-W.A.N.D. members in general. Pandora Peters created contingency plans for Strange, Doctor Doom, Scarlet Witch, Wiccan, or any other potential Sorcerer Supremes. But no one had expected Clea to take over the position because she's not from Earth and the Sorcerer Supreme of another dimension. Clea's volatile demeanor and mastery of both Earth and Faltine magics renders many of these countermeasures useless.
• Spare a Messenger: Clea leaves one member of the Blasphemy Cartel alive to relay back to his masters that Manhattan is under her protection as Sorcerer Supreme.
• Star-Crossed Lovers: The story begins with Clea seeking to defy this trope, with her refusing to accept Stephen's death and that she'll bend destiny itself to bring them together once more.
  Clea: Circumstances brought us together and tore us apart time and again. But no more. No more will I accept the uncaring whims of fate. No more will I suffer the constraints of mere life and death. I have the power, the will, and the nerve to shape my destiny into a form that pleases me. And I reject any fate but that which I have made for myself.
• Stripped to the Bone: After Clea incinerates a mook of the Blasphemy Cartel with "Dire's Scourging Ray", all that's left of him is his skeleton after his flesh is vaporized.
• Taken for Granite: Clea ends her second confrontation with the Blasphemy Cartel by turning all of the mooks in her vicinity to stone with the "Stone Prison of Umar", a spell of her mother's making.
• Terror Hero: While Stephen made threats to his enemies, Clea is more than willing to brutally slaughter those foolish enough to murder innocents in her presence, as the Blasphemy Cartel finds out first-hand. She only leaves the last Mook alive so the people teleporting him to safety can know that the bazaar is under her protection.
• This Means War!: When the Blasphemy Cartel attacks the Shrouded Bazaar once again, Clea is outraged that they would dare attack a place under the protection of a Warlord. When Wong points out that Earth doesn't have warlords like the Dark Dimension, she makes it clear that she's going to impress that point by marching to war against the Cartel.
• Thou Shalt Not Kill: Subverted. Clea mercilessly slaughters the Blasphemy Cartel for attacking the Shrouded Bazaar she's visiting above. She justifies it by saying that the Cartel is a bunch of killers and that death is far more merciful than anything she would have subjected them to in the Dark Dimension. But Wong protests, complaining that as the Sorcerer Supreme of Earth, she has to act like it and that Stephen would have never done what she did.
• Unfinished, Untested, Used Anyway: Director None orders that the Revenant Prime be unleashed, and when a lackey stammers that the project is still not finished, None screams back, "Tell that to the Sorcerer Supreme! Tell that to the Harvestman! There's only one thing that can stop them!"
• Unperson: The Blasphemy Cartel are all Faceless Goons because they mystically erased their own identities to veil their operations. Their leader took it further and did it so thoroughly that they're just a white silhouette with a mask bearing the null symbol.
• Weird World, Weird Food: Clea and Wong visit the Shrouded Bazaar, a hidden pocket dimension in New York City where magical creatures like elves, fairies, and dwarves come to sell goods and services. Wong orders a "Muspelheim fire-wasp wrap" from a troll to snack on while he window shops. Nearby Clea finds stalls selling vorpal, blessed, and unbreakable swords as she looks for otherworldly coffee, as Earth coffee is Bad to the Last Drop to her. All of these things show how different the hidden magical world is compared to that of the "uninitiated".
• What Measure Is a Non-Human?: While the two of them are laying siege to the Emerald City, the Harvestman asks Clea not to kill any humans, just revenants, demons, and monsters.
• Witch with a Capital "B": The RPGenie that the Blasphemy Cartel launches at the Sanctum Santorum is inscribed with, "TAKE THAT, WITCH!"
• Yin-Yang Bomb: Clea and the Harvestman cannot touch, as they represent opposing forces as agents of magic (life) and Death respectively. Any contact would result in catastrophe akin to matter meeting antimatter. When Clea and Stephen are beaten within an inch of their lives by Revenant Prime, Clea kisses Stephen in an act of defiance, using her practice in balancing the energies of Earth and the Dark Dimension to instead fuse them into a cosmic being capable of meeting Revenant Prime head-on.
• Your Magic's No Good Here: Essentially an inverted version of this applies when the Blasphemy Cartel attack Clea with a weapon that negates all magic for three minutes. Unfortunately for the Cartel, the weapon may have negated all magic from their own dimension, but since Clea is also of the Dark Dimension, she still has those powers.

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