Cover B: Will Brooks's Doctor Who Comics Covers

Will Brooks is a Doctor Who artist, known for his skilled photomanipulations; he's done some covers for Big Finish over the years, for example. His most prominent professional work, however, is probably doing the majority of the photo covers on Titan's Doctor Who comics output from 2015 to 2019. All of his work for Titan (covering Doctor Who, Torchwood, and Sherlock) is collected in this hardcover Kickstarter volume that I backed earlier this year, here without straplines or other trade dress. These were typically the "cover B" (as opposed to the artwork "cover A"), hence the volume's title. Along with the actual art, we get some behind-the-scenes commentary on design choices, licensor approvals, and so on.

Cover B: The Titan Comics Covers
by Will Brooks

Originally published: 2024
Acquired: July 2024
Read: December 2024

I'm not much of a reviewer of artwork, so I don't know that I will have a whole lot to say about this book, but I can tell you that I liked it. I don't think every cover works perfectly—sometimes you just don't believe two people are in the same scene, or that a person fits with the background—but Brooks has a strong sense of composition and a keen eye for striking imagery that many other Photoshop artists who make covers for tie-in fiction lack. Even in some of the weaker covers, you can tell a lot of work went into it. 

Some I would dearly love to own an art print of, such as his cover for Doctor Who: The Eighth Doctor #4, which recreates an iconic Paul McGann publicity photo for the 1996 tv movie, but with the Doctor in his "Night of the Doctor" outfit. He seems to particularly have a lot of good covers featuring Clara—see for example Twelfth Doctor: Year Two #2 and 3. Or maybe I'm just in love with Jenna Coleman! I don't think I can my review consist entirely of links to the Tardis wiki, but get a load of this picture of Matt Smith in a Time Lord collar and fez! Brilliant. I also like a lot of his "story tribute" covers, particularly the one for The Happiness Patrol on Seventh Doctor #3.

He talks a bit about something I complained about when reading and reviewing Titan's Tenth Doctor range, the inconsistent appearance of his companions Gabbie and Cindy on the covers. Before him the photo artists had never used the same stock photo model twice, but he selected models for all the Titan comics companions so he could be consistent. I do wish they had looked more how I imagined them from the interior art, but I think he did the best job he could within the constraints he was operating under. (See them on, for example, the cover of Tenth Doctor: Year Three #14.) I did particularly like the inclusion here of the drafts of the written-but-never-published story about how Gabbie travelled with the twelfth Doctor.

Outside of Doctor Who, I think the cover to Sherlock: The Blind Banker #2 is brilliant. (Also, was there really a Torchwood comic featuring the Vervoids? Not sure I can bring myself to believe it, even with the cover in front of me!)

Anyway, if you like Doctor Who art, this is a good "coffee table" book, one I'm happy I jumped on when it became available for a limited second run on Kickstarter.