Review: Doctor Who: Arena of Fear by Nick Abadzis, Eleonora Carlini, Elena Casagrande, Iolanda Zanfardino, et al.

Collection published: 2016
Contents originally published: 2016
Acquired: March 2020
Read: March 2021

Doctor Who: The Tenth Doctor, Vol 5: Arena of Fear

Writer: Nick Abadzis
Artists: Eleonora Carlini, Elena Casagrande, Iolanda Zanfardino, with Simone De Meo & Luca Maresca
Colorists: Arianna Florean & Rod Fernandes, with Azzurra Florean
Letters: Richard Starkings and Jimmy Betancourt

When I read this, it had been four months since I read the previous volume of The Tenth Doctor. I guess that volume ended on a cliffhanger? I didn't remember, but this volume begins with our main characters (now including Captain Jack for some reason) in an alien arena without their memories. I guess I should read the "Previously..." notes more carefully, but usually they seem to only contain pretty vague information. Even if I had, I still wouldn't have realized I was supposed to remember the Terileptil from the previous story arc.

This volume continues the downward trajectory of this title. I just don't care about the large cast of recurring characters writer Nick Abadzis insists on bringing to the fore so often. What is up with the evil tech guy? Who cares! Reading about a group of people regain their memories is particularly dull; it's a common sf tv trope, and sometime shows do interesting things with it... but none are to be found here. Really, this arena plotline needed to stick to its two issues in the previous volume, and stay there; it was not a four-issue idea. This series is at its best when it does Russell T Davies pastiche... not whatever this is supposed to be. It actually reads like Chris Chibnall pastiche, a couple years early: a huge cast that mostly just stands there because there's too many of them for most of them to do anything.

from Doctor Who: The Tenth Doctor: Year Two #10
(art by Elena Casagrande)

There are two other stories here: an okay short about Cindy getting lost inside the TARDIS (she's a companion now, I guess), and one about a witch in a country village. This has its moments, but Iolanda Zanfardino is not among Titan's great art finds. At least we get a few issues by Elena Casagrande.

I read an issue of Titan's Doctor Who comic every day (except when I have hard-copy comics to read). Next up in sequence: The Twelfth Doctor: The School of Death

Review: Doctor Who: The Endless Song by Nick Abadzis, Elena Casagrande, Eleonora Carlini & Leonardo Romero

Collection published: 2016
Contents originally published: 2015-16
Acquired: September 2018
Read: November 2020

Doctor Who: The Tenth Doctor, Vol 4: The Endless Song

Writer: Nick Abadzis
Artists: Eleonora Carlini, Elena Casagrande & Leonardo Romero
Colorists: Arianna Florean & Claudia 'SG' Ianniciello
Letters: Richard Starkings and Jimmy Betancourt

"Year Two" of Titan's Tenth Doctor series kicks off with this volume, which consists of three stories. The first, "The Singer Not the Song," is the best of them. This series's strength is in its nostalgia for the Russell T Davies screen era, and this story feels like it could have been produced by the man who gave us "Gridlock" or "Planet of the Ood": the Doctor and Gabby visit a planet of "conceptual beings" that can only be heard, not seen... but human music is being used to infect them with a conceptual plague. It's a fun science fiction idea, and the story does some fun stuff with it-- though I couldn't shake the feeling that a story about music would work much better on screen than on the comics page!

Then comes a story that mostly recaps Year One, as Gabby's friend Cindy (who stayed back on Earth at the end of The Fountains of Forever) reads Gabby's sketchbook. I usually enjoy Gabby's sketchbook excerpts, but this was less interesting than their normal use of giving the reader a window into Gabby's mindset during stories; plus, it all turns out to be in aid of foreshadowing something to do with the ongoing Osirian storyline... a storyline that has thus far utterly failed to interest me on any level.

The final story takes the Doctor and Gabby back to the time of the Neanderthals, where alien slavers are kidnapping them for slave labor. Some early shenanigans with the TARDIS translation aside, it's dull, plodding stuff.

from Doctor Who: The Tenth Doctor: Year Two #5
(art by Elena Casagrande)

Terrible cover model aside (I mean, I'm sure she's a nice person, she just doesn't look right), Gabby looks her proper self in this volume, which isn't surprising, as most of it is drawn by Elena Casagrande and Eleonora Carlini, who I think are uniformly excellent. Great faces, great facial expressions, beautiful vistas, solid storytelling. Something about Leonardo Romero's art turned me off; not enough expression in it, I think. Looks like he drew it with a computer. (I mean, I know probably everyone here drew with a computer-- but I don't like it when the inking is all the same thickness.)

I read an issue of Titan's Doctor Who comic every day (except when I have hard-copy comics to read). Next up in sequence: The Eleventh Doctor: The Then and the Now

Review: Doctor Who: The Fountains of Forever by Nick Abadzis, Elena Casagrande, Eleonora Carlini, Rachael Stott & Leonardo Romero

Collection published: 2015
Contents originally published: 2015
Acquired: September 2018
Read: October 2020

Doctor Who: The Tenth Doctor, Vol 3: The Fountains of Forever

Writer: Nick Abadzis
Artists: Elena Casagrande, Eleonora Carlini, Rachael Stott & Leonardo Romero
Colorist: Arianna Florean
Letters: Richard Starkings and Jimmy Betancourt

This volume wraps up "Year One" of Titan's ongoing tenth Doctor comic; if the opening volume was a highly effective pastiche of a Russell T Davies new-companion episode, this is a very dismal one of a Russell T Davies season finale. The Doctor and Gabby return to Gabby's home of New York City, and even though Gabby's friend Cindy gets swept up in events, none of it matters. There's no sense of personal investment here-- this story isn't about the Doctor or Gabby or Cindy in the way that "The Parting of the Ways" was about the Doctor and Rose and Jack and Mickey and Jackie, or that "Doomsday" was about the Doctor and Rose and Mickey and Jackie and Pete, or that "The Last of the Time Lords" was about the Doctor and Martha and Jack, and so on. Nothing is at stake here for our main characters, they're just participants. This could at least be a story about Gabby and Cindy's friendship, but mostly Cindy is just an extra person to stand around in scenes where lots of people stand there while the Doctor talks. (Nick Abadzis anticipated the storytelling tics of the Chibnall era, I guess.)

It just feels like a random standalone adventure except for the attempt at scale. The universe is threatened-- but so what? The Osirans from Pyramids of Mars return-- but so what? Your boring bad guy from a boring story being related to an interesting bad guy from an interesting story doesn't make him interesting. I found it very hard to get invested in whether this guy should go through some portal, and without the period trappings, the Osirans are pretty generic super-beings.

from Doctor Who: The Tenth Doctor #12
(art by Elena Casagrande & Eleonora Carlini)

Despite all this, and despite involving four different people, the art is pretty consistent and mostly very good. I'm not sure about the occasional manga-esque effect (they're so occasional it jars), but at least Gabby looks like a Hispanic woman again. These artists could be supporting a stronger story is all.

I was disappointed because I thought the first volume of The Tenth Doctor had real potential. The second was meh-- but it had a different writer, so I could accept that, and figured that when the original came back, things would be better again. Hopefully "Year Two" gets things back on track.

I read an issue of Titan's Doctor Who comic every day (except when I have hard-copy comics to read). Next up in sequence: The Twelfth Doctor: Hyperion

Review: Doctor Who: Revolutions of Terror by Nick Abadzis, Elena Casagrande, et al.

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

Doctor Who: The Tenth Doctor, Vol 1: Revolutions of Terror

Writer: Nick Abadzis

Artist: Elena Casagrande with Michele Pasta
Colorist: Arianna Florean with Claudia Sg, Rabiola Ienne, Valentina Cuomo, Azzurra Florean
Letters: Richard Starkings and Jimmy Betancourt

A couple years ago, I read through all of IDW's Doctor Who comics thanks to a Humble Bundle. In 2014, Titan took over the Doctor Who comics license from IDW, and in 2018, they put together their own Humble Bundle of a bunch of their earlier stuff. So here I am, reading it all. Unlike IDW, which usually just published an ongoing featuring the current Doctor and TARDIS team, Titan publishes multiple ongoings, plus miniseries, featuring the current Doctor and past ones. Rather than read this all in chronological order, though, I'm sticking to publication order to get the most out of Titan's crossovers.

from Doctor Who: The Tenth Doctor #2
(art by Elena Casagrande)

So it all launches with this, Revolutions of Terror, featuring the tenth Doctor and a new companion, the American would-be art student Gabby Gonzalez. This collection contains two stories; the first, "Revolutions of Terror," is a very effective pastiche of a Russell T Davies new-companion episode (e.g., "Rose," "Smith and Jones"), telling the story of alien parasites in New York City on the Day of the Dead from the perspective of Gabby and her family. Nick Abadzis's writing is decent, but the real star is Elena Casagrande's artwork, which really brings the whole family and their environment and the Doctor and the monsters to life. This was a fun, nostalgic tie-in: you won't be bowled over by this, but if you enjoyed Doctor Who from 2005 to 2009, you'll probably like this take on it. I found the rules of the parasites overly fiddly (I think Russell himself could have handled it more elegantly), but otherwise, it was on point.

The second story, "The Arts in Space," was less effective. Clearly also pastiching an RTD genre, the throw-the-companion-into-the-crazy-future one (e.g., "The End of the World," "Gridlock"), but I got lost amidst all the stuff about block transfer computation, and the actions of the villain didn't ring true emotionally. I did really love the bits drawn to look like Gabby's own drawings, as she writes about her journeys to her friend Cindy. But otherwise, I struggled with this one. It's just two issues compared to "Revolutions"'s four, so maybe Abadzis's stories need more time to breathe.

Elena Casagrande used to do a lot of fill-in work on IDW's Star Trek titles, often hired to imitate the work of David Messina, so I was really gratified to see her get to soar in her own style here.

Review: Star Trek: Alien Spotlight, Volume 2 by Keith R.A. DeCandido, Scott & David Tipton, Stuart Moore, J. K. Woodward, Elena Casagrande, et al.

Comic trade paperback, 122 pages
Published 2010 (contents: 2009)
Acquired July 2012
Read May 2016

Star Trek: Alien Spotlight, Volume 2

Written by Arne Schmidt and Andy Schmidt, Keith R.A. DeCandido, Scott Tipton and David Tipton, Ian Edginton, Stuart Moore

Art by Agustin Padilla, J. K. Woodward, Elena Casagrande, Wagner Reis, Mike Hawthorne
Color by James Brown, J. K. Woodward, Ilaria Traversi, Priscilla Ribeiro, Mike Hawthorne

Letters by Robbie Robbins, Neil Uyetake, Richard Starkings

The first Star Trek: Alien Spotlight collection was a decent set of comics, more notable for its enjoyable variety than the quality of its individual tales (except for John Byrne's excellent Romulan story). The second one is similar, but I'd say it has more hits. The best is clearly, and oddly, the Tribbles story by Stuart Moore and Mike Hawthorne: a Federation cargo ship is forced down on an alien planet by Klingons (the story takes place in the runup to "Errand of Mercy") and receives some unexpected assistance from the mysterious creatures that have displaced the planet's original inhabitants. It's cute and fun.

Tribbles are actually pretty insidious if you think about it.
from Star Trek: Alien Spotlight: Tribbles (script by Stuart Moore, art by Mike Hawthorne)

Most of the other tales aren't really notable either way. One can't argue that Keith R.A. DeCandido doesn't get Klingons, for example, but I didn't find his and J. K. Woodward's tale of Kang recounting three different perspectives on his observation that "four thousand throats may be but in a single night by a running man" particularly impactful. The Q tale by the Tipton brothers and Elena Casagrande has an interesting premise, but (like most Tipton tales) is too slight: Q decides to live as Picard for a day to prove he can do better. I would love to have seen this on screen; one can imagine John De Lancie relishing the part of Picard, and Patrick Stewart as the disembodied voice heckling Q the whole time would be great. There are a number of good moments, but the Enterprise-E mission this all interrupts is simplistic at best, and there's not enough space to explore all the possibilities of this set-up. Ian Edginton and Wagner Reis's Romulan story is all right. Like John Byrne's tale from the previous volume, it's a prequel to "Balance of Terror"-- in fact, it's a prequel to Byrne's prequel! But Reis is no Byrne when it comes to art or character, and the politics are a little too simple. Okay, but it suffers by comparison.

Disembodied advice head Picard is the snarkiest.
from Star Trek: Alien Spotlight: Q (script by Scott Tipton & David Tipton, art by Elena Casagrande)

The only outright bad story is the Cardassian one, by the Schmidt brothers and Agustin Padilla. Padilla is not very good at drawing Cardassians that look differently from one another, even though one of them is half-Bajoran, and one of them is Garak! This makes the story basically impossible to follow, but I suspect there's not much to it, anyway, and it seems odd to make a part-Bajoran Cardassian-hater the central character of your story that's ostensibly about Cardassians.

Thank God someone said Garak's name, because there's no way I ever would have guessed that was meant to be Andy Robinson.
from Star Trek: Alien Spotlight: Cardassians (script by Arne Schmidt & Andy Schmidt, art by Agustin Padilla)

Review: Doctor Who: Prisoners of Time, Volume 3 by Scott & David Tipton et al.

Comic PDF eBook, 92 pages
Published 2013 (contents: 2013)
Acquired May 2014
Read December 2014

Doctor Who: Prisoners of Time, Volume 3

Written by Scott & David Tipton

Art by David Messina with Giorgia Sposito, Elena Casagrande, Matthew Dow Smith, and Kelly Yates
Colors by Arianna Florean with Azzura M. Florean and Charlie Kirchoff
Letters by Tom B. Long

I found the ninth Doctor story here completely forgettable, but the tenth Doctor one is decently fun: Quarks and Dominators!

The eleventh Doctor one is where it all goes to shit. That's where the Doctor takes on Adam directly-- Adam the short-lived ninth Doctor companion who's been kidnapping the Doctor's companions systematically at the end of each of these chapters. Adam as a villain just being a hilariously fannish idea in the worst way. It just all gets terribly convoluted and uninteresting, and there are too many characters, and too much space-filling. And the last two pages are just genuinely awful in a way that's completely bizarre; like, how could anyone think this was a reasonable emotional resolution? Prisoners of Time had its high points, but this volume does not include many of them.

Next Week: On to my next reading project... a couple weeks of catching up with the Legion of Super-Heroes!

Archival Review: Star Trek: Spock: Reflections by Scott & David Tipton, David Messina, et al.

Comic trade paperback, 98 pages
Published 2010 (contents: 2009)
Acquired December 2010
Read June 2011

Star Trek: Spock: Reflections

Written by Scott & David Tipton

Layouts by David Messina
Inks by Elena Casagrande, Federica Manfredi, and Arianna Florean
Finishes by Federica Manfredi
Colors by Iliana Traversi
Color assists by Chiara Cinabro
Lettering by Chris Mowry, Robbie Robbins, and Neil Uyetake

This is a new film tie-in in the loosest of senses, taking place as it does shortly after Generations. (There is a starbase that looks like the starbase from the film, I suppose. And Spock kinda looks like Zachary Quinto in one picture.) Mostly it is Spock reflecting on his own history, recalling things like his meeting with Captain Harriman on the Enterprise-B, arguments with Sarek, being awkward with Doctor Chapel, and so on. The stated aim of the book is to explain why Spock goes to Romulus, which is briefly alluded to in the film, but it doesn't really do that. A collection of disposable vignettes.