Book Review - Marvel Studios' The Infinity Saga - Doctor Strange: The Art of the Movie
- The Artbook Collector
- 2 days ago
- 7 min read
June 13th 2025
The Infinity Saga series from Titan Books returns with its 13th release, looking back at the early artwork for 2016's Doctor Strange. These new books are rereleases of the original artbooks from Marvel Studios, revisiting their run from the original Iron Man through to Spider-Man: Far From Home. Titan Books kindly sent me an early copy to dive into for this newest entry, so I can give you my thoughts on the book ahead of its release on June 17th!
Marvel Studios' The Infinity Saga - Doctor Strange: The Art of the Movie dives into the concept art and designs behind the debut of Stephen Strange and the world of magic in the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Since then, Doctor Strange has become a fan favourite on the big screen, with this release highlighting the work of the artists that helped the iconic comic book character make his big entrance into the MCU.
I’ll go over my thoughts with the usual 5 points; build quality, content, credits, use of space and value. These will be organised differently than usual to compare the book to the original release from 2016, simply titled Marvel’s Doctor Strange: The Art of the Movie. I’ve always considered the original to be one of the stronger entries in the artbook series, so was looking forward to seeing how this new version holds up to the Marvel published original. The titles of these artbooks are very long, so I will shorten this one throughout the review to simply Doctor Strange: The Art of the Movie.
Content
Coming in at 344 pages, this book is packing a huge amount of concept art. One of the best things about the Infinity Saga artbooks was the lack of a page cap, so some were treated to a lot of content. In this book you get art for every aspect of the movie; characters, key frames, storyboards, settings, weapons, marketing material, and the magic itself. If you’re a Doctor Strange fan then you’ll be more than happy with what is featured here, because not only is there a lot to pore over, but the talent of the art team is on full display with incredible artwork across the board.
It’s important to note that the content here is the same as what you get in the original release, so if you missed out before, this is a perfect way to see all the artwork, without worrying about anything being excluded.
Doctor Strange: The Art of the Movie highlights the concept art for the characters like all other books in the series, but as it is the debut of everyone you see on screen, it means you get a lot of interesting early ideas and designs for each. Doctor Strange, Mordo, The Ancient One and Kaecilius get a lot of page space, with artists like Ryan Meinerding, Karla Ortiz, Jackson Sze, and more getting to showcase why they are some of the best in the business. It’s only Wong that is lacking in concept art here, but perhaps at the time they didn’t expect him to be such a big player moving forward in the MCU.
There are also a lot of key frames throughout, depicting important moments of the movie, from Strange’s time in the hospital, through to action sequences later in the movie. These are common in Marvel artbooks, but welcome again here, especially as a lot show how things could have looked, not just the art for what you see on screen.
As expected in an artbook that has a lot of early and unused designs, there is a good chunk dedicated to developing the look of the astral plane and other dimensions too, with surreal and abstract explorations of how these would look in the movie. You don’t often get stuff like this from Marvel, the only other place it's seen is in art for Quantum Realm from the Ant-Man series, but Doctor Strange has the opportunity to take it a step further and it makes for an interesting section of the book.
The text includes commentary from Kevin Feige, director Scott Derrickson, the actors, and the art team, adding deeper insights about both the movie itself and the art. The series has always done a good job at not being too text heavy, while also adding valuable perspectives. You can read about the making of the movie, the sets, characters, the intentions behind the designs and even the ideas they had when writing and creating the script. As much as the art can easily stand on its own two feet and offer a lot to people who buy the book, the commentary provides even more value here. It’s always nice to hear from actors too, so it’s interesting to read about the movie from the viewpoint of Benedict Cumberbatch, Tilda Swinton and Mads Mikkelsen.
Credits
If you have any of the Marvel artbooks, new or old, you know what to expect here. Each image is credited to an artist on the page with their surname and a page at the back of the book lists their full names, as well as each page they are featured on too. It’s the best way to do it that I have seen and a consistent feature of the Marvel Studios’ artbooks.
Build Quality
Getting into the comparisons now and there are come clear differences between this new Infinity Saga series version from Titan Books and Marvel’s own release. The big one of course is a lack of a slipcase, something included in the original run. This slipcase is more than decorative, it’s very sturdy and protective too, but this is a trade-off, because they have brought the price down by not including it here.
The new hardcover book is a little smaller too, coming in at 24 x 27cm, which is still a good size. The original was 24.5 x 29.5 cm without the slipcase, so not a huge amount of difference. As mentioned before, the artwork included in both is the same and therefore the page count is too.
An inclusion I like with the new Titan Books version of Doctor Strange: The Art of the Movie is the art on the dust jacket. The front features the original book’s wrap around cover and underneath the dustjacket is the front and back of the slipcase. They could have left it blank underneath, so it’s a thoughtful extra.
Where things begin to get interesting is with the binding. Something I found with another Titan Books’ Infinity Saga artbook, for the first Avengers movie, is that the binding is improved in the new version. As you can see in the photos below, Titan Books has added more flex to the binding, as well as an increased number of page signatures. This added flexibility allows the pages to open more easily and, as I will touch on shortly, helps with some of the art too. The binding on the original from Marvel is tight and the pages don’t lay flat because of this, a problem with many of their books.
An improvement in quality I also really like is in the brightness of the art. The originals had suffered with dark prints, not great for seeing details in the art for some environments, or dark costumes on a dark background. But as you can see, Titan Books have done a fantastic job and making the art not just brighter and more clear, but more vibrant too. A huge selling point for these rereleases.
Use of Space
The Marvel artbooks have always been strong in this regard, they fill up the pages and waste none of the real estate available. A big reason this book has a large amount of pages is the number of double page spreads included. It is appreciated that rather than keeping the page count lower, they bulked this entry up to accommodate them. However, it does come with a drawback that is a common issue in artbooks, which is image loss. When crossing the centre fold, often some of the art is either cut off or obscured and that happens here too. The good news is that it is less of an issue in the new Titan Books version due to the previously mentioned improvement in the binding, but earlier pages don’t escape it entirely. It’s unfortunately unavoidable, but I’m happy that the new version has improved things by a good margin in this regard.
One small disadvantage with this rerelease if the placement of text, as due to the change in size, the placement is altered to remain clear. Text in this book is placed over the images in almost all cases because art fills the pages. Fortunately, it doesn’t obscure the focus of the image in either version, being found in the corners or bottom of character pieces. But, because of the smaller pages, the text does cover more of the art than before to remain a readable size, with headings also doing the same thing. This is still done as well as it can be, but it is worth pointing out.
Despite this, I am personally happy to have this as a smaller issue, as it comes with the big improvement in binding and print quality.
Value
This is the selling point of The Infinite Saga series from Titan Books, because by the resizing the books and not including the slipcase, the price point is very good. Not only this, but some of the original books are now rare and hard to come by. In the case of Doctor Strange, the original artbook is over £100/ $100, with some cheaper or much higher depending on the condition. The Titan Books rerelease is available for an RRP of £35/ $40 and that's without the possibility of a discount, which is common. Using Amazon as always for fair comparisons, in the UK it has at one time reached 23% off, but this does of course fluctuate.
For over 300 pages of the same incredible art, the value for money here, as it has been for each rerelease, is unquestionable. If you missed out before, due to being a new fan or its availability, this is a great way to add the art of Doctor Strange to your collection.
Verdict
One of the strongest artbooks from the Infinity Saga gets a highly recommended rerelease, perfect for fans that missed out on the original. Marvel Studio’s The Infinity Saga – Doctor Strange: The Art of the Movie collects hundreds of pieces of concept art for an impressive price, while improving on some aspects of the original 2016 artbook.
Although not perfect, if you want more Doctor Strange or you’re collecting the entire series from Titan Books, this is a superb addition to any shelf and the best printed showcase of the wonderful talent of the artists at Marvel Studios.
If you are interested in the book, you can order Marvel Studio’s The Infinity Saga – Doctor Strange: The Art of the Movie for your own collection here;
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