Science's Less Accurate Grandmother: The Clockwise War (From Stockbridge to Segonus: A Doctor Who Magazine Comics Marathon, Part 44)

08 May 2023

The Clockwise War (From Stockbridge to Segonus: A Doctor Who Magazine Comics Marathon, Part 44)

The Clockwise War: Collected Comic Strips from the pages of Doctor Who Magazine
by Scott Gray, John Ross, Alan Barnes, Adrian Salmon, Charlie Adlard, et al.

Collection published: 2019
Contents originally published: 1994-2018
Acquired: December 2019
Read: December 2022

The twelfth Doctor's run comes to an end with this somewhat odd collection, which includes just one twelfth Doctor story as well as a number of outstanding uncollected color stories from various sources, basically everything color that was left except for a few strips that made their way into The Age of Chaos.

Anyway, for obvious reasons I didn't follow my usual principle of reading each collection in original publication order: it just wouldn't make sense to go from The Phantom Piper to a bunch of other stuff to The Clockwise War, when The Clockwise War picks up right from The Phantom Piper.

The Clockwise War, from Doctor Who Magazine #524-30 (May-Nov. 2018)
story by Scott Gray, art by John Ross, colours by James Offredi, lettering by Roger Langridge

This story caps off the twelfth Doctor era with a story that pits the Doctor and Bill against erstwhile companion Fey, who's out for revenge against the Time Lords after suffering through the horrors of the Time War. I think there's a lot to like about this story but it didn't totally work for me. I like the return of Fey, I like the installment told from the perspective of the War Doctor, I like the reveal about Shayde, I like the return of Jodafra and the use of his death to prove the situation is serious, I like the stuff with Wonderland and especially Annabel Lake. John Ross probably turns in his best-ever DWM work here, it's propulsive and beautiful to look at. On the other hand, the black-and-white monsters are too similar to what we just saw in The Phantom Piper, and while it's nice to see some of the supporting characters from The Parliament of Fear return... I'm not actually sure why they're there! Ultimately I think it's at least partially a victim of the sudden page cut: there's little room to breathe, and just like in the last story, Bill feels a bit forgotten in the middle of it all. This is her last story, but she doesn't get the kind of moments or send-off that Rose, Donna, Amy, and Clara got in theirs. Lots of moments of love but I didn't love it altogether.

from Doctor Who Yearbook 1994

A Religious Experience, from Doctor Who Yearbook 1994
story by Tim Quinn, art by John Ridgway, letters by Janey Rutter, colours by Chrissie McCormack

In this first Doctor story, he and Ian watch a religious ritual on an alien planet. I didn't care for this at all: overly talky and nihilistic, I felt. Plus, John Ridgway's art usually doesn't benefit from being colored, especially coloring this crude.

Rest & Re-Creation / The Naked Flame, from Doctor Who Yearbooks 1994 & 1995
scripts by Warwick Gray, art by Charlie Adlard, colours by Helen Nally and Steve Whitaker, letters by Janey Rutter and Jane Smale

These are both fourth Doctor stories where he re-meets old monsters: the Zygons in the first and the Menoptera in the second. They're by a young pre-"Scott" Scott Gray, and I found both kind of boring and confusing.

Blood Invocation, from Doctor Who Yearbook 1995
story by Paul Cornell, art by John Ridgway, colour by Paul Vyse, letters by Jane Smale

The fifth Doctor, Tegan, and Nyssa take on Time Lord vampires in this story that's almost but not quite a prequel to the Missing Adventure Goth Opera; in the extras, Paul Cornell explains that he doesn't know why they aren't consistent. I didn't find much to enjoy here; again, I think I'd be more into John Ridgway drawing vampires if it was all in black and white.

from Doctor Who Magazine #223

The Cybermen, from Doctor Who Magazine #215-38 & 504 (Aug. 1994–May 1996, Nov. 2016)
by Alan Barnes & Adrian Salmon, lettering by Peri Godbold

This was a series of one-page strips published in the magazine across about two years; even before reading the commentary it was obvious to me that it was based on the old Daleks strips: it focuses on the Cybermen on Mondas in the old days, encountering weird threats, where we're usually meant to identify with the monsters, not the people trying to stop them. Like those old strips, they're kinetic and weird and fascinating, and I kind of felt like reading them all in a row wasn't doing them justice. They're very visual stories, and I often didn't know what exactly had happened, and felt I ought to have spent the time working through the art of the (as always) brilliant Adrian Salmon, but instead I went on to the next. But still: where else can you get Cybermen battling dinosaurs, Cybermen with blimps, Cybermen battling Cthuluoid menaces. The use of stuff like the Silurians could be overly fannish, but Barnes and Salmon make it work; I don't know how this actually fits with previous Cybermen stories, not even The Tenth Planet, but I don't really care.

from Doctor Who Yearbook 1996

Star Beast II / Junk-Yard Demon II, from Doctor Who Yearbook 1996
stories by Gary Gillat and Alan Barnes, art by Martin Geraghty and Adrian Salmon, colours by Paul Vyse, letters by Elitta Fell and Peri Godbold

It would be easy to attack to self-consuming nature of DWM pre-TVM: the best it could come up was two sequels to Steve Parkhouse strips? But actually these were my favorites of the various yearbook stories collected here. Fun, straightforward stories with good artwork. Beep the Meep is always good fun, of course, and it's nice to see Fudge again. I don't know that Junk-Yard Demon demanded a sequel, but if it had to get one, this one is suitably grotesque.

from Doctor Who Magazine #526

Stray Observations:

Branding this collection "Collected Multi-Doctor Comic Strips – Volume 2" is one of those things that's technically correct but seems a bit confusing. Far better to brand it as the fifth and final of the "Collected Twelfth Doctor Comic Strips," since that's the series it actually ties into.
I liked the return of Jodafra, but on the other hand I didn't remember who Gol Clutha was at all even though she appeared much more recently, in Hunters of the Burning Stone and The Stockbridge Showdown!
I know the name came from Moffat (it debuted in this comic, but Scott Gray e-mailed Moffat to find out if the character had a name), but I find "Kenossium" as a name for Ken Bones/T'Nia Miller's General character really really stupid.
In the extras, Tim Quinn complains that editor John Freeman added a reference to the planet Quinnis from Inside the Spaceship to A Religious Experience. He seems to think the name "Quinnis" is intrinsically dumb-sounding but I'm not sure why.
These are Charlie Adlard's only Doctor Who contributions, and he seems faintly bemused by the whole things in the notes. He also did a lot of Vertigo work in the 1990s, but most notably went on to be the penciller on 187 issues of The Walking Dead, making him the person in this volume with the biggest non–Doctor Who comics career.
Star Beast II picks up from the end of The Star Beast; when Big Finish eventually did its own Beep the Meep story (2002's The Ratings War), it would actually pick up right from the end of Star Beast II, with Beep escaping Lassie.

This post is the forty-fourth in a series about the Doctor Who Magazine comic strip and Marvel UK. The next installment covers Death's Head: Clone Drive and Revolutionary War. Previous installments are listed below:

Science's Less Accurate Grandmother

08 May 2023

The Clockwise War (From Stockbridge to Segonus: A Doctor Who Magazine Comics Marathon, Part 44)

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