Science's Less Accurate Grandmother: creator: art wetherell

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07 June 2023

Transformers UK #215–18, 223–27, 235–54: Aspects of Evil! and Other Stories (From Stockbridge to Segonus: A Doctor Who Magazine Comics Marathon, Part 48)

I had thought that I would intersperse my Titan reprints of Marvel UK's Transformers comics among my Doctor Who Magazine graphic novels. I knew I wouldn't read them at quite the same rate... but I did not anticipate just how long it would take me to read them all, because I did not realize how difficult they would be to track down!

It took me almost six months to my hands on a copy of Aspects of Evil! First, I almost ordered the wrong book, because the Transformers wiki gives the wrong ISBN for Aspects of Evil!; I actually bought and paid for a copy of Fallen Star, but (thankfully, I guess) the Amazon seller was a scammer who didn't actually have the book (and did refund me when confronted). But then when I put the correct ISBN into Bookfinder... I couldn't find it anywhere! It wasn't that the book was going for insanely high prices, it was that it just wasn't being sold anywhere at all on the whole Internet.

After a few months, my saved search on eBay finally paid off, but I was outbid at the last moment. I began considering other options, like posting a desperate plea on the Transformers trading subreddit or actually paying the insane prices to import the Hachette collections of the relevant issues, when finally Aspects of Evil! was posted on eBay again, this time as a pair with Fallen Star, which I actually did need. I think this helped me win, as I was willing to pay a decent price with the knowledge that I would end up with two different books; someone tried to snipe me at the last minute, but didn't beat the maximum bid I had set.

from Transformers #216

So, after a huge delay, I was finally able to finish off Marvel UK's original Transformers comics. These all come from the era when the strip had moved into shorter, black-and-white strips, but I was able to supplement a bit with some recent collections from IDW that took a couple of these strips and colorize them. This post covers the first half of that black-and-white run, though it jumps around a bit and overlaps with my previous post on it (see #28 in the long list at the bottom of this post).

Race with the Devil, from Transformers #215-18 (29 Apr.–20 May 1989), reprinted in Transformers: Fallen Star (Titan, 2005)

script by Simon Furman, art by Andy Wildman, letters by Glib and Hel

This story is okay. A group of Autobots called the Triggerbots is assigned to shadow some Decepticon mercenaries, Darwking and Dreadwind; it turns out that the mercenaries are trying to recover Starscream's corpse, since it contains the Underbase, the collected knowledge of the Transformer race. (This is all due to the Underbase saga, from the US book.) Starscream kind of becomes a zombie and the Triggerbots stop him and save some humans. I guess if I ever could remember who the Triggerbots were, I might have cared about this more.

from Transformers #223

Aspects of Evil!, from Transformers #223-27 (24 June–22 July 1989), reprinted in Transformers: Aspects of Evil! (Titan, 2005)

script by Simon Furman; pencils by Jeff Anderson, Art Wetherell, Andy Wildman, Lee Sullivan, and Simon Coleby; inks by Jeff Anderson, Simon Coleby, Andy Wildman, Lee Sullivan, and Cam Smith; letters by Helen Stone and Glib

We're back in the future timeline of Transformers, but in a different way. This five-part story is a set of five vignettes, framed by a dying Rodimus Prime in the year 2356 telling stories of various evils he has encountered to a student eager to learn of Unicron, but on the way, Rodimus tells him of Scorponok in 1991, Galvatron in 2009, Shockwave in 2004, and Megatron in 1990. Thus, we get glimpses all up an down the future timeline (which itself has been rewritten, thanks to the Time Wars) with tales set both before and after the 1986 film (set in 2006).

I found this fairly effective. Up until this point, the short black-and-white stories had clearly been scripted for the original longer format and then had their installments cut in half. Here, writer Simon Furman is figuring out the format that drive the book from here on out, telling small but sharp stories. I liked how Scorponock manipulated Rodimus's morality to his advantage during a Decepticon civil war; I liked the brutality of Megatron dealing with a traitor. The only one that didn't work was the last one... you can't cram Unicron into a five-page tale and convince me that he is the ultimate evil!

from Transformers #235

Deathbringer, from Transformers #235-36 (16-23 Sept. 1989), reprinted in Transformers: Best of the Rarities #1 (IDW, Aug. 2022)

script by Simon Furman, art by Geoff Senior and Staz, letters by Glib, colors by John-Paul Bove

Another okay story, one that doesn't use the format as well as Aspects of Evil! Basically, the Autobots encounter a mechanoid animated by a fragment of the Matrix (which was lost in space back when Optimus died), and Optimus angsts about it. I never care much for angsty Optimus, and this story is no exception.

from Transformers #238

"Way of the Warrior" / "Survival Run" / "A Savage Place!", from Transformers #237-39 (30 Sept.–15 Oct. 1989), reprinted in Transformers: Way of the Warrior (Titan, 2005)

script by Simon Furman; art by Simon Coleby, Lee Sullivan, and Geoff Senior; letters by Glib and Helen Stone

This follows up on the Survivors, the group of Autobots, along with the Decepticons Catilla and Carnivac, who struck out on their own when cut off from Autobot High Command. The Mayhem Attack Squad is trying to hunt down and punish the two Deception traitors; the story mostly focuses on Carnivac, who refuses to recognize Autobot authority but also begrudgingly finds himself doing the right thing and in a desperate stand for his own survival. Decepticon-turned-"good" is one of my favorite Transformers tropes, and this is a good example of it. The middle installment illustrated by Lee Sullivan, with Carnivac crawling through the desert, is particularly effective.

from Transformers #240

"Out to Lunch!", from Transformers #240 (21 Oct. 1989), reprinted in Transformers: Aspects of Evil! (Titan, 2005)

script by Simon Furman, art by Andy Wildman, letters by Annie Halfacree

This is a good example of the vignette-focused approach of this era of the UK strip. Back in Race with the Devil, Dreadwind and Darkwing were working for Megatron, but he had (kind of) died, so this follows up on what they get up to next now that Thunderwing is in charge of the Decepticons. Here, they're hanging out in a bar on Cybertron, but it's attacked by Mecannibals... only they're too drunk and self-pitying to notice! So the story cuts between them and the desperate attempts of an Autobot agent to stop the Mecannibals from eating everyone. Fun stuff, exactly what you should do in a five-page Transformers comic, I reckon.

"Rage! / "Assault on the Ark!", from Transformers #241-42 (28 Oct.–4 Nov. 1989), reprinted in Transformers: Perchance to Dream (Titan, 2006)

script by Simon Furman, art by Andy Wildman, letters by Stuart Bartlett

These two tales jump back a bit to explain more of how Thunderwing ascended to power, following up on The Big Shutdown! They're fine but I kind of didn't really care.

"Mind Games", from Transformers #243 (11 Nov. 1989), reprinted in Transformers: Fallen Star (Titan, 2005)

script by Simon Furman, art by Staz, letters by Annie Halfacree

It's hard to talk about this story without getting into the weeds on continuity. Basically, when Simon Furman took over the US book, he decided he wanted to recurrect Megatron. But Megatron had already been resurrected in the UK book. He didn't want to alienate US readers by suddenly revealing Megatron had already been resurrected, so he wrote a story for the UK strip explaining that what everyone had thought was a resurrected Megatron was actually a clone of Megatron created by Straxus. (Chronologically, this goes before most of what I've reviewed above; see the note at the end of this post.) Anyway, not much happens here; it's mostly to set up the next story.

from Transformers #244

"Two Megatrons!", from Transformers #244 (18 Nov. 1989), reprinted in Transformers: Best of the Rarities #1 (IDW, Aug. 2022)

script by Simon Furman, art by Geoff Senior; letters by Glib, colored by John-Paul Bove

The "real" Megatron and the clone Megatron battle it out. Transformers fans have written whole dissertations on how this causes more problems than it solves, continuity-wise, but if you ignore all that, this is a great story with a perfect climax. Megatron is dead, love live Megatron!

"Underworld!" / "Demons!" / "Dawn of Darkness", from Transformers #245-47 (25 Nov.–9 Dec. 1989), reprinted in Transformers: Aspects of Evil! (Titan, 2005)

script by Simon Furman; art by Jeff Anderson and Geoff Senior; letters by Helen Stone, Annie Halfacree, and Glib

To be honest, I completely forgot about this story until I went to write it up right now. I guess some Transformers battle robot zombies in sewers? Not really my thing.

from Transformers #248

"Fallen Star!", from Transformers #248 (16 Dec. 1989), reprinted in Transformers: Fallen Star (Titan, 2005)

script by Simon Furman, art by Andy Wildman, letters by Helen Stone

Another vignette, this one focused on Starscream who, thanks to events in the US book, has been brought back to life... but is feeling like he's lost his mojo in the process. But then he realizes that maybe after all, he's still got it. Told in the first person, this is a fun story of Starscream at his best. (Well, worst.) Nicely done.

from Transformers #249

"Whose Lifeforce Is It Anway?" / "The Greatest Gift of All!", from Transformers #249-50 (23-30 Dec. 1989), reprinted in Transformers: Way of the Warrior (Titan, 2005)

script by Simon Furman, art by Staz, letters by Stuart Bartlett and Helen Stone

Two linked stories, both pretty okay. Not as forgettable as some of these, but not the best either. In the first, we see an Autobot walrus robot named Longtooth. Long enough, Optimus Prime bequeathed a fragment of the Matrix to him to use to save a dying comrade... but the cowardly Longtooth kept it for himself. Guilt has since made him suicidal in battle, but all his fellow Autobots think he's just very brave. This I think is a good set-up for a story, but really all that happens is he just suddenly decides to send the Matrix fragment (anonymously) back to Earth so Optimus can make use of it. Not much of a story. In the second one, Optimus thinks about using the fragment to bring back some dead Autobots, but ends up using it to revitalize a part of Earth damaged ecologically by the Transformers' war. It's fine, you know. More Optimus angst.

from Transformers Annual 1990

"The Quest!" / "Destiny of the Dinobots!" / "Trigger-Happy!" / "Dreadwing Down!" / "The Chain Gang!", from The Transformers Annual [1990]

stories by Steve Alan (with Steve White), Ian Rimmer, Simon Furman, and Dan Abnett; art by Andy Wildman, Art Wetherell, Stephen Baskerville, and Dan Reed; colour by Steve White and Euan Peters; letters by Glib; dinosaur consultation by Steve White

The 1990 Transformers Annual (by which I mean the one published in 1989) contains, as they usually do, a mix of comic and prose stories. The UK produced two more after this, but this was the last one with a substantive amount of original content. "The Quest!" is a dull text story designed to recap Transformers history, but most of what's left is decent stuff. "Destiny of the Dinobots!" is a tragic glimpse of the future of the Dinobots (seemingly set after the "Earthforce" run I'll discuss in my next Transformers post); "Dreadwing Down!" and "The Chain Gang!" are two decent action-focused tales. I also enjoyed "Trigger-Happy!", a two-part text story about Backstreet, an Autobot who screws up so much he goes on the run rather than be punished by Optimus... but thankfully it's all a big misunderstanding.

from Transformers #254

"The Void!" / "Edge of Impact" / "Shadow of Evil", from Transformers #251-53 (6-20 Jan. 1990), reprinted in Transformers: Aspects of Evil! (Titan, 2005)

script by Simon Furman; art by Staz and Cam S; letters by Glib and Annie Halfacree

These are the first three installments of the last-ever future timeline story, detailing what Rodimus, Arcee, and Kup do after their defeat by Galvatron back in Aspects of Evil! It's all very moody, as some kind of enemy is stalking the Autobots on their escape vessel... but to be honest, I don't particularly care for how downbeat the future stories have become. The future was never cheery per se, but since the Autobots defeated Unicron, it feels like it's just fallback after fallback, and Rodimus Prime deserves better.

"White Fire", from Transformers #254 (27 Jan. 1990), reprinted in Transformers: Best of Hot Road #1 (IDW, May 2022)

script by Simon Furman, art by Cam Smith, letters by Stuart Bartlett, colors by John-Paul Bove

And finally the future timeline comes to an end here, in a story where Rodimus almost defeats Unicron... but Kup screws things up so that the Matrix will be eternally corrupted. Good job, heroes! I don't like the direction the future stories were going in, so I am glad it all got cut off here, to be honest.

A Quick Note on Chronology

from Transformers #241

Suffice it to say that this era of the strip is very confusing chronologically, with the UK stories jumping around a lot relative to the US stories and even themselves. I'll make a post later with more details, but here's how the above stories go chronologically, by my reckoning anyway. I've included US stories and UK stories not covered in this post for context; stories actually discussed here are in bold. I've omitted the future timeline stories from this list.

US #53: "Recipe for Disaster!"
UK #215-18: Race with the Devil
UK #219-22, 229, 232-33: Survivors! / "The Hunting Party!" / A Small War!
UK #243-44: "Mind Games" / "Two Megatrons!"
UK #230-31: The Big Shutdown!
UK #241-42: "Rage!" / "Assault on the Ark!"
US #54: "King Con!"
UK #235-36: Deathbringer!
US #55: "The Interplanetary Wrestling Championship!"
UK #228: "[Double] Deal of the Century!"
UK #237-39: "Way of the Warrior" / "Survival Run" / "A Savage Place!"
US #56-59: "Back from the Dead" / "The Resurrection Gambit!" / "All the Familiar Faces!" / "Skin Deep"
UK #240, 245-48: "Out to Lunch!" / "Underworld!" / "Demons!" / "Dawn of Darkness" / "Fallen Star!"
US #60-61: "Yesterday's Heroes!" / "The Primal Scream"
UK #249-50: "Whose Lifeforce Is It Anyway?" / "The Greatest Gift of All"
Annual 1990: "The Chain Gang!"
US #62-66: Matrix Quest

This post is the forty-eighth in a series about the Doctor Who Magazine comic strip and Marvel UK. The next installment covers issues #255–89 of Transformers UK. Previous installments are listed below:

22 December 2021

The Incomplete Death's Head (From Stockbridge to Segonus: A Doctor Who Magazine Comics Marathon, Part 17)

After his appearance in The Sensational She-Hulk, Death's Head was killed off in Marvel UK's Death's Head II miniseries—and as that title might imply, he was replaced by Death's Head II. DHII had the original Death's Head's memories, but was otherwise his own character. I am not so interested in pursuing the Death's Head strand that I would follow any of DHII's appearances. To my eyes, he has a very generic 1990s killer cyborg look, and none of the knowing humor that makes the original Death's Head work.

However, Death's Head II was Marvel UK's smash hit, and an ongoing series was quickly commissioned, and DHII was dropped into every other Marvel UK book he could fit into. As I understand it, Marvel UK couldn't produce DHII content fast enough, and so they commissioned The Incomplete Death's Head, a twelve-issue reprint series. Its conceit was that DHII, along with his partner Tuck, ended up in an archive devoted to the original Death's Head, whose memories were replayed for them; each issue usually had one to two pages of new material framing an archival story. In addition to reprinting the original Death's Head vol. 1, it also reprinted Doctor Who Magazine #135, 140, and 173, Dragon's Claws #5, Marvel Comics Presents #76, and Sensational She-Hulk #24. (Death's Head doesn't appear in DWM #140, but the story features characters who reappear in Death's Head #5, reprinted in Incomplete Death's Head #6.) The major omissions are Fantastic Four #338, the The Body in Question graphic novel, and all of Death's Head Transformers appearances.

In the normal course of events, I wouldn't pick this up, but I had my reasons. The first is that it contains two stories Marvel didn't reprint in their 2019 Death's Head: Freelance Peacekeeping Agent trade, one of which features the Doctor and DWM's Josiah W. Dogbolter. The other is that the frame story actually features both the Doctor and Hob, Dogbolter's robotic assistant from DWM. It's actually set during "Party Animals" (DWM #173), which was reprinted in The Good Soldier, so I read it after that collection, even though that's slightly out of publication sequence. I did dutifully read the whole thing, but in this write-up I am just going to focus on the three new-to-me stories. Just let me tell you that any story featuring Dragon's Claws does not get better on a second reading.

The first story I hadn't read before is a simple one-page tale just called "Death's Head!", though many people on the Internet call it "High Noon Tex." Basically, Death's Head goes and gets a guy with his usual style, the end. Cute but not essential. I have no idea what this wasn't reprinted in Freelance Peacekeeping Agent, given it's only a page and Marvel clearly ought to have the rights to it, given the story of its genesis.

from The Incomplete Death's Head #1
(script by Simon Furman, art by Bryan Hitch)

The oft-repeated story about it is that Marvel UK quickly had it made after Death's Head's first appearance in The Transformers #113 was written and drawn, but before it was published, and then published it in various Marvel UK titles before TF #113 actually appeared. Since it featured Death's Head but not the Transformers, that would make Death's Head a Marvel character who happened to appear in The Transformers (akin to Spider-Man), instead of a Transformers character, so Marvel UK would hold the copyright instead of Hasbro. They could tell he was going to be a breakout star and didn't want to be limited in what they could do with him.

I can find no evidence this actually happened. No one on the Internet provides any specific issues this strip supposedly appeared in. Indeed, most of the evidence I can find indicates this is not true. The notes in Incomplete Death's Head #1 say "the original appearance of Death's Head was a one page strip called High Noon Tex (reprinted this issue) which set the tone for the character. Originally, it had been intended as a one-off page to appear in a British comics fanzine, Scan." No mention of any Marvel UK title; indeed, the main thing we know is where it did not appear. As a Wikipedia sleuth drew my attention to, the strip is drawn by Bryan Hitch, who was not yet active as a comics artist when TF #113 came out in 1987... and indeed, it is clearly signed "Hitch '88" in its final panel. As far as I can tell, it actually originally debuted as a back-up strip in Transformers #167 in March 1988, the month before Death's Head made his first non-Transformers appearance in DWM #135's "The Crossroads of Time." So sure, Marvel UK was establishing Death's Head as a Marvel character... but seemingly retroactively and belatedly, no matter what has been claimed elsewhere.

The other omission from the FPA trade is much more understandable: Death's Head #8, "Time Bomb!", features the Doctor, Josiah W. Dogbolter, and Hob, and thus Marvel would need BBC permission to reprint. Unfortunately, it's a pivotal story for Death's Head, establishing how he went from 8162 in the Doctor Who universe to bouncing around in time in the Marvel universe. (It's also pivotal for DWM from a chronological perspective; because Dogbolter appears in it, it's the reason we know that a vast number of DWM characters including Frobisher, the Free-Fall Warriors, Sharon, and Olla the Heat Vampire reside in the 82nd century.)

It's been interesting to note in my DWM readthrough that the idea of a DWM universe hasn't really emerged yet; usually, writers do not reference the idea of previous eras of the strip. This is one of the first times something created for DWM has been brought back later; Dogbolter appeared in two fifth and sixth Doctor strips from 1984, five years before "Time Bomb!" (Abslom Daak was the first, back in Nemesis of the Daleks.) The reason he made a comeback is because "Time Bomb!" is the only Death's Head vol. 1 story (and, indeed, the first-ever Death's Head story) not written be Simon Furman; it's penned by Steve Parkhouse, regular DWM writer from 1981 to 1985, and creator of Dogbolter.

from The Incomplete Death's Head #9
(script by Steve Parkhouse,
art by Art Wetherell & Steve Parkhouse)

Thankfully, this isn't just a keystone story for both Death's Head and DWM, it's also very good. Dogbolter has created a time machine, and he hires Death's Head to kill the Doctor. What Death's Head doesn't know is that the time machine itself is a bomb, so the Doctor and Death's Head end up working together to turn the tables on Dogbolter. The previous Death's Head/Doctor Who team-up, "The Crossroads of Time," didn't work for me because it wasn't much of a story in general, and it wasn't a good Doctor Who story in specific. Despite the fact that this is a Death's Head story, it feels more like Death's Head turning up in a Doctor Who story than the other way around, and it's all the better for it. Parkhouse writes a good Death's Head, but there's a certain goofy charm that only Doctor Who can yield: Death's Head is initially lost in time when trying to find the Doctor, so we get some quick historical hijinks. (My favorite gag is when Death's Head thinks he's found his mother.) Then when he does find the Doctor, he's acting in a pantomime! The cuts between the Doctor and Death's Head in one strand, and Dogbolter and Hob in the other, are effectively done. Overall, this is a nice story, and I was glad I tracked down this series to read it.

As I said, the whole set of reprints has a frame. I think it runs about thirty pages in total across the twelve issues. In the first issue, it's called "Connections," in the second, "Mind Meet!", and after that it has no title. The credits are also inconsistent; how I've indicated them below is how they are given in the book.

Death's Head II and his sidekick Tuck are teleported to an unknown location; Tuck is attacked by robots while DHII is uploaded into cyberspace, and both watch memories of the original Death's Head. Eventually, the original Death's Head joins DHII in cyberspace.

Eventually, we learn a number of things:

This is Maruthea, the planet at the heart of the space-time vortex from the DWM strip "Party Animals."
This in fact is set during "Party Animals"; in the middle of its events, both the seventh Doctor and the original Death's Head come to aid DHII and Tuck.
The archive was made by Hob, Dogbolter's assistant. Dogbolter was destroyed by the bomb in "Time Bomb!", but Hob was flung into the space-time vortex and eventually ended up on Maruthea.
The Doctor has been manipulating Death's Head's life longer than we knew: he shrunk him down and sent him into the Transformers universe to begin with. He also wipes the original Death's Head's mind of the events of "Party Animals" and this story to maintain the timeline.

I mean, it's fine. It does what it needs to, I guess. Like I said, there's no Transformers content here; it's just called a "robot universe." I thought it was curious to establish that Death's Head didn't come from this universe, given that he himself is a robot, though now that I think about it, that might be consistent with what we learned about his origins in The Body in Question, so I guess I didn't think that through enough. I thought it was odd that the vague references to the robot universe aren't actually consistent with the Transformers comics, as it seems like it would have been easy to make them so.

What I don't understand is why this whole story takes place during a Doctor Who one, and why in the process of writing the Transformers out of Death's Head's backstory, they write the Doctor in. One would think that Marvel UK had just learned its lesson about incorporating licensed characters into the backstory of their original characters! Like, this story can never be reprinted now for the very same reason that the Transformers ones couldn't be at the time.

(For an archive on Death's Head's history, the events of The Body in Question seem like a staggering omission... but I imagine that the 1990 collection was still in print when this came out, so it wasn't needed here.)

I am not sure what I think about Hob becoming a gigantic death robot who is also insane. I don't exactly remember how Dogbolter and Hob return in DWM, but I feel pretty certain all this will be ignored.

from The Incomplete Death's Head #2
(script by Dan Abnett, art by Simon Coleby)

Nothing about this story made me rethink my preconceptions of Death's Head II. He is clearly the inferior character to the original, and I don't understand how anyone could think otherwise. His partner Tuck is all the worse thing about "strong female characters" of the 1990s. The bit where the Doctor suggests that maybe she could be a companion boggles the mind. What a clash of genres! I guess I could imagine her hanging out with New Adventures–era "Spacefleet" Ace, though.

Ultimately, I have enjoyed this weird side-step. The early 1990s were a weird, often bad time in comics, and the strange journey of Death's Head from The Transformers to Doctor Who to the Marvel universe embodies that. When the character is written well, he's fun, but I've come to realize he's one of those characters who's a better foil than a star. I'm not sure that Simon Furman, at least, ever figured out how to make him a main character.

Anyway, this was basically it for the original Death's Head at Marvel, until Kieron Gillen revived the character in his S.W.O.R.D., Iron Man and Spider-Man runs in the 2010s. Those, I am given to understand, actually take place before Death's Head's Transformers appearances, as he is still big but doesn't yet call himself a "freelance peacekeeping agent." I'm not so motivated as to track them down, but he did get a miniseries in 2019, which I'll read when I get up to that year in DWM. Until then, it's the end, yes?

“Death’s Head!” (also known as “High Noon Tex”) was reprinted in issue #1 of The Incomplete Death’s Head (Jan. 1993). The story originally appeared in issue #167 of The Transformers (Mar. 1988), and was written by Simon Furman, illustrated by Bryan Hitch, and lettered by Richard Starkings. The reprint was edited by John Freeman.

“Time Bomb!” was reprinted in issue #9 of The Incomplete Death’s Head (Sept. 1993). The story originally appeared in issue #8 of Death’s Head vol. 1 (July 1989), and was written and inked by Steve Parkhouse, pencilled by Art Wetherell, lettered by Annie H, colored by Louise Cassell, and edited by Steve White.

“Connections” / “Mind Meet!” originally appeared in issues #1-12 of The Incomplete Death’s Head (Jan.-Dec. 1993). The story was plotted by John Freeman (#1); scripted by Dan Abnett (#1-2, 5, 8-12); pencilled by Simon Coleby (#1-2, 5, 8-12); inked by Simon Coleby (#1-2, 5), Sean Hardy (#8-10), Niel Bushnell (#11-12), and Tim Perkins (#11); lettered by Annie Parkhouse (#2, 5) and Gary Gilbert (#8-12); colored by David Leach (#2, 5, 9-12) and David Boyle (#8); and edited by John Freeman (#1-2) and Tim Quinn (#5).

This post is the seventeenth in a series about the Doctor Who Magazine comic strip and Marvel UK. The next installment covers Evening's Empire. Previous installments are listed below: