When Marvel's Writers Took Acid...

Marvel’s Most Psychedelic Superhero

In the early 1970s, Marvel was entering a new phase — creatively, culturally, and philosophically. The buttoned-up superhero tales of the '60s were giving way to something stranger. Younger writers were stepping in, many of them just out of college, drawn not only to storytelling, but to the cultural energy of the time: mysticism, consciousness expansion, and psychedelics.

Steve Englehart was one of them.

When Doctor Strange needed a new direction, artist Frank Brunner picked up the phone. He and Steve Englehart had talked about wanting more from the series — more symbolism, more metaphysics, more truth. And they were both living in a world where LSD wasn’t a taboo. It was a tool.

Englehart was more than capable of taking the character into deeper territory. Over the course of his career, he quite literally became one of the most respected writers in comic book history — with landmark runs on Batman, Justice League of America, Captain America, and The Avengers. He also created or co-created characters that now appear across the Marvel Cinematic Universe movies, including Star-Lord, Mantis, Shang-Chi, and more that will be debuting within the next few years (no spoilers).

But in the early ’70s, it started with two artists asking how far they could push a story.

Every other month, they’d meet, toss ideas back and forth, and figure out how to stretch the series beyond its limits. And sometimes, they’d trip.

Doctor Strange wasn’t just a superhero anymore. He became a vessel for ideas rarely seen in comics at the time — explorations of death, ego, infinity, and surrender. Englehart immersed himself in tarot, Kabbalah, astrology.

And psychedelics helped him feel how those systems could live inside a narrative — not just sit on top of it.

What followed was a run of issues that didn’t just transform Doctor Strange. It reshaped the role of mysticism in mainstream comics.

It opened a door that Marvel never fully closed:

Just how deep do psychedelic influences run in what would become a multi-billion dollar universe?

Psychedelics Opened The Door

Englehart was clear: psychedelics didn’t hand him a plot. What they gave him was mental elasticity — the ability to zoom out, reorganize patterns, and trust his subconscious.

Acid, mushrooms, peyote — Englehart explored them all. Not recklessly, but curiously. He was trying to understand the universe from the inside out. And that’s what Doctor Strange became: an inner journey wrapped in outer spectacle.

The results speak for themselves. During his and Brunner’s tenure, Strange stopped being a supporting character and became the star of a monthly title. Marvel was all-in. The sales were strong. The fan mail poured in. The “risk” had worked.

Because it wasn’t just about cool visuals. It was about truth. Strange’s arc mirrored the psychedelic path: losing control, surrendering to the unknown, and returning changed.

From Paper to the Big Screen

By the time Doctor Strange hit theaters in 2016, the groundwork had been laid. You can see it in the Mirror Dimension. In the city-bending sequences. In the astral projections, sacred texts, and Strange’s hallucinatory fall through the multiverse during his initiation. They were echoes — unmistakable fingerprints from the Englehart/Brunner era.

The film introduced audiences to a neurosurgeon whose identity collapses after a tragic accident — and who finds meaning only by surrendering control and expanding his understanding of reality. It’s a classic hero’s journey filtered through a psychedelic lens. And for those familiar with the source material, it felt deeply familiar.

The MCU went beyond just adapting Doctor Strange’s stories. It adapted his tone. The existential stakes. The distortion of time, space, and identity. The subtle hints of ego death, rebirth, and transformation. It captured the feeling of stepping outside yourself and seeing the world — and your place in it — from a higher vantage point.

And it didn’t stop there.

Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness leaned even further into the psychedelic current — pushing Strange across timelines, into alternate versions of himself, and through cascading layers of existential reckoning. We watched him confront not just external threats, but fractured parts of his own psyche. Guilt, obsession, pride — all laid bare through mirror versions of the man he once was.

It was more than visual spectacle.

It was Marvel channeling the same altered-state ideas that once redefined Strange on the page — and now, were reshaping the universe on screen.

The Era That Changed Comics Forever

Englehart wasn’t alone. The 1970s brought in a wave of psychedelic creators — Jim Starlin, Steve Gerber, Frank Brunner, and others — who wanted to see how far comics could go.

It was part of a larger cultural movement — the same one influencing music, film, and spiritual exploration at the time.

While they may not have been crazy about the idea of their writers and artists dropping acid, Marvel didn’t micromanage their minds. They primarily cared about two things: Did you hit your deadline? And did the books sell?

Englehart checked both boxes. So nobody asked what fueled the magic. As long as it kept showing up.

The Magic of the Mind

Steve Englehart used psychedelics as a creative tool — not to escape, but to explore. The deeper he went, the more the stories opened up. His process mirrored the transformation at the heart of Doctor Strange: self-inquiry, surrender, and expansion.

That approach shaped more than a character. It reshaped how Marvel told stories — grounding superhero narratives in mysticism, metaphysics, and deep internal change. Under Englehart and Brunner, Doctor Strange evolved into something rare: a psychedelic epic hiding in plain sight.

That legacy is still unfolding. Today’s audiences are watching it happen on screen, in research labs, and inside psychedelic therapy rooms. The same questions that shaped Strange’s journey — Who am I? What lies beyond death? What can I become if I let go? — continue to echo.

We sat down with Englehart in 2023 to talk about all of it: the writing process, the acid trips, the influence of tarot and Kabbalah, and what it means to tell stories from an altered state of mind. That full conversation, along with a detailed feature, lives here:

👉 Read the full article here.

It’s more than a behind-the-scenes look.

It’s a window into the strange, visionary current still running through the heart of psychedelic storytelling.

Creativity, Flow States, and the Psychedelic Edge

Psychedelics open a unique kind of mental space — one where ideas flow more freely, and connections emerge that might otherwise stay hidden. Substances like psilocybin, LSD, and mescaline reduce the brain’s default mode network, quieting inner commentary and allowing for more flexible, intuitive thought.

Many artists describe a sense of clarity, heightened emotion, and a sudden access to creative insight. It’s not about distortion — it’s about depth.

Current research shows psychedelics may:

• 🔄 Enhance cognitive flexibility

• 🧠 Support divergent thinking (rapid, original idea generation)

• 🎭 Expand emotional awareness and empathy

• 🧩 Strengthen pattern recognition and creative association

For creators working at the edge of innovation, psychedelics offer a direct line to what's often beneath conscious awareness — and a way to bring it to the surface.

👉 Explore our full guide to psychedelics and creativity here.

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