Monstrous Beauty (From Stockbridge to Beyond Segonus: A Doctor Who Magazine Comics Marathon, Part 55)

Monstrous Beauty: Collected comic strips from the pages of Doctor Who Magazine
by Dan Abnett, Colin Andrew, Martin Geraghty, Scott Gray, Russ Leach, Paul Peart, Jacqueline Rayner, Gareth Roberts, John Ross, and Brian Williamson

Collection published: 2024
Contents originally published: 1991-2022
Acquired and read: November 2024

Like the final Peter Capaldi volume, the final Jodie Whittaker one is a weird catch-all one that has the "Collected Multi-Doctor Comic Strips" branding, with its Doctor's last two stories combined with a miscellany of material from previous Doctors: the first, third, fourth, seventh, and ninth, plus Dr. Who. As I usually do, I read the book's stories in original publication order, not internal order.

This book is a landmark volume, though! In plugging in the two gaps of uncollected strips (one during The White Dragon, the other between The White Dragon and Liberation of the Daleks), it means that every Doctor Who Magazine strip from issue #1 to issue #597, from 1979 to 2023, has been collected! In a mere thirty-four volumes! What an achievement—but more on that in a future post.

The Man in the Ion Mask, from Doctor Who Magazine Winter Special 1991
script by Dan Abnett, art by Brian Williamson, letters by Helen Stone

This is a slight-but-charming story of the Doctor visiting the Master in prison after the events of The Dæmons; the Master claims to have reformed, but the Doctor of course is wary, and rightly so. There's not much action (in a good way), and artist Brian Williamson is quite good at handling the dialogue and characterization the story requires.

Are You Listening? / Younger & Wiser, from Doctor Who Magazine Summer Special 1994
written by Warwick Gray, art by Colin Andrew, lettered by Amer Anwar

A linked first Doctor story and seventh Doctor story; the first visits a mysterious city with Vicki and Steven and runs off, while the seventh returns with Benny, finally understanding what's going on. They have their moments, but there's not a lot of conflict in Younger & Wiser, which is basically the Doctor and Benny just chatting.

from Doctor Who Magazine Winter Special 1994

Plastic Millennium / The Seventh Segment, from Doctor Who Magazine Winter Special 1994 & Summer Special 1995
stories by Gareth Roberts, art by Martin Geraghty and Paul Peart, letters by Elitta Fell

The first of these is fun, a stylish Martin Geraghty–drawn story about the seventh Doctor and Mel (in her DWM debut, I think) taking down some Autons. It's not very complicated, but the art really sells it. The second is also carried by the art—or rather, the art is the best part, because I found this noir pastiche featuring the fourth Doctor and the first Romana utterly impenetrable.

from Doctor Who Magazine #557

Monstrous Beauty, from Doctor Who Magazine #556-58 (Nov.-Winter 2020)
story by Scott Gray, artwork by John Ross, colouring by James Offredi, lettering by Roger Langridge

This Time Lord Victorious tie-in brings back the ninth Doctor and Rose, and plunges them into the "Dark Times" of the ancient Time Lords' war against the vampires (see State of Decay). Scott Gray is usually good value, and John Ross a strong artist, for sure, but something about this didn't sing. I think the stakes are ultimately too abstract. There's not a lot of sympathetic characters here, so ultimately it's kind of hard to care about any of this. Looks great, though (Ross does very well by Christopher Eccleston; actually, so does Gray), and I appreciated the very obscure (but footnoted!) callback to Tooth and Claw from the End Game collection. The DWM universe gets its tentacles everywhere!

Dr. Who & the Mechonoids, from Doctor Who Magazine #578 (July 2022)
story by Jacqueline Rayner, art by Russ Leach, colour by Mike Summers, lettering by Roger Langridge

Maybe this would have been funny if I had more than a dim memory of one Cushing film, or if I got the reference to the actor "cast" as the one-off male companion here. But I didn't and it wasn't.

from Doctor Who Magazine #579

Fear of the Future / The Everlasting Summer, from Doctor Who Magazine #579-83 (Summer-Nov. 2022)
story by Jacqueline Rayner, art by Russ Leach, colour by Mike Summers, lettering by Roger Langridge

Unfortunately, I don't think Jac Rayner (or, perhaps, her editors) ever got to grips with the format of the six-page DWM strip, especially with the reduced panel count. The first story here is too slight even at six pages: Dan sees vaguely bad things, the Doctor realizes why, the end. The second story, on the other hand, like Rayner's last attempt at a thirteenth Doctor epic (Hydra's Gate), attempts to squeeze in too much and thus is basically impossible to follow. Which is a shame, because all the thematic ideas she gives in the backmatter sound great... but what's on the page is a confusing jumble of ideas, too many of them. Russ Leach will never go down as one of the DWM greats, with a strong tendency toward confusing panel transitions and weak storytelling skills. I get that COVID was at fault in very real ways, but #570-83 is surely the weakest run of the strip in the history of the mag since... well, I was going to say the early McCoy strips, but skimming back over my reviews, those were at least inconsistently enjoyable, whereas these are consistently unenjoyable. Maybe since the mid–Colin Baker run (#100-19)? But even those had John Ridgway!

Stray Observations:

• Alas, the original idea Scott Gray recounts in the notes for Are You Listening? and Younger & Wiser, that they'd be told in different orders from the perspective of the Doctor and the alien city Xenith, is better than what we got. Similarly, it's hard to read the notes on Monstrous Beauty and not wish that Scott Gray had got to write the eighth Doctor and Destrii story he'd originally pitched.
• Reading Plastic Millennium only a day or two after Business as Usual, I couldn't help but thinking the Auton and plastic factory here ought to have been the same one as in that story.
  
• I've charted the DWM strip's influence on Russell T Davies in the past; the line from Plastic Millennium to "Rose" seems pretty obvious!

This post is the fifty-fifth in a series about the Doctor Who Magazine comic strip and Marvel UK. The next installment covers statistics about the history of the strip. Previous installments are listed below:

1. The Iron Legion
2. Dragon's Claw 
3. The Transformers Classics UK, Volume One
4. The Tides of Time
5. The Transformers Classics UK, Volume Two
6. Voyager
7. The Transformers Classics UK, Volume Three
8. The World Shapers
9. The Transformers Classics UK, Volume Four
10. The Age of Chaos
11. The Transformers Classics UK, Volume Five
12. A Cold Day in Hell!
13. Death's Head: Freelance Peacekeeping Agent (part 1)
14. Nemesis of the Daleks
15. Death's Head: Freelance Peacekeeping Agent (part 2)
16. The Good Soldier
17. The Incomplete Death's Head
18. Evening's Empire
19. The Daleks
20. Emperor of the Daleks
21. The Sleeze Brothers File
22. The Age of Chaos
23. Land of the Blind
24. Ground Zero
25. End Game
26. The Glorious Dead
27. Oblivion
28. Transformers: Time Wars and Other Stories
29. The Flood
30. The Cruel Sea 
31. The Betrothal of Sontar
32. The Widow's Curse
33. The Crimson Hand
34. The Child of Time
35. The Chains of Olympus
36. Hunters of the Burning Stone
37. The Blood of Azrael
38. The Eye of Torment
39. The Highgate Horror
40. Doorway to Hell
41. Daleks: The Ultimate Comic Strip Collection, Volume 1
42. The Phantom Piper
43. Daleks: The Ultimate Comic Strip Collection, Volume 2
44. The Clockwise War
45. Death's Head: Clone Drive / Revolutionary War
46. Skywatch-7
47. Mistress of Chaos
48. Transformers: Aspects of Evil! and Other Stories
49. Transformers: ...Perchance to Dream and Other Stories
50. Cybermen: The Ultimate Comic Strip Collection
51. Liberation of the Daleks
52. The White Dragon 
53. The Return of the Daleks
54. Black Sun Rising