Review: Doctor Who: After Life by Al Ewing, Rob Williams, Simon Fraser, and Boo Cook

Comic PDF eBook, n.pag.
Published 2015 (contents: 2014)
Acquired September 2018
Read November 2019

Doctor Who: The Eleventh Doctor, Vol 1: After Life

Writers: Al Ewing & Rob Williams

Artists: Simon Fraser and Boo Cook
Colorist: Gary Caldwell
Letters: Richard Starkings and Jimmy Betancourt

As of this writing, I've dipped into Titan's offerings for the tenth, eleventh, and twelfth Doctors; The Eleventh Doctor series is my favorite of the three. In my review of the first Tenth Doctor volume, I said it did what a lot of good tie-in fiction does, and hit the nostalgia button. After Life goes one better, and does what the best tie-in fiction does, which is offer nostalgia and the new. The writing of Al Ewing and Rob Williams captures Matt Smith's voice, and the art of Simon Fraser and Rob Williams gets his crazy kineticism across on the comics page.

On the other hand, it's hard to imagine Steven Moffat pairing Matt Smith's Doctor with a grieving middle-aged librarian, much less adding two more companions who are a David Bowie riff and a shapeshifting service robot. But Alice is a great companion, and while Jones is often more of a joke than a character, he's a funny joke, so I'll allow it. (ARC doesn't make much of an impression in this volume, to be honest.) And while Revolutions of Terror was often (though admittedly not always) trying to be tv episodes on the comics page, the stories in After Life feel like they are told like comics. I especially appreciated their usual done-in-one nature; this volume collects five issues but four stories, whereas Revolutions of Terror did two stories in six issues.

The stories are vibrant and dynamic and out there, but also emotionally true. My favorites were the opener, "After Life," with its focus on depression, and good use of color, and the batshit insane "What He Wants..." (#3), where Alice and the Doctor accidentally pluck Alice's mother's favorite pop star out of time at the beginning of his career and transport him to 1931 Mississippi, leading to a series of escapades that results in Bessie (in the form of a monster truck!) careening through the delta while a blue musician blasts a crowd of zombies with his guitar. Oh my god, what? So good, and the kind of rapid-fire invention that one reads Doctor Who comics for. (I find it interesting how this comic is written. In this collection, Ewing & Williams co-write the first issue, but take turns on subsequent stories; Ewing goes on to write #2 and 4-5, while Williams pens #3. Maybe not coincidentally, I found the two solo-penned by Ewing more traditional, though still strong work.) And even though these are mostly done-in-ones, the writers are clearly working through a long-term plan, I look forward to seeing it unfold...