Science's Less Accurate Grandmother: creator: i. n. j. culbard

Showing posts with label creator: i. n. j. culbard. Show all posts

16 January 2023

The Crimson Hand (From Stockbridge to Segonus: A Doctor Who Magazine Comics Marathon, Part 33)

The Crimson Hand: Collected Comic Strips from the pages of Doctor Who Magazine
by Dan McDaid, Martin Geraghty, Mike Collins, et al.

Collection published: 2012
Contents originally published: 2008-10
Acquired: July 2014
Read: October 2022

With issue #382 (collected in The Widow's Curse), we entered the period where I was reading the strip in the magazine as it came out. Well, with #400 we enter the period where I haven't reread any of the strips. Prior to this project, my last DWM graphic novel was The Widow's Curse in April 2010, so from this point on, I might have read every strip before, but only in the context of reading ten pages a month. Kind of. As an American, DWM has never been easy to get ahold of. Issues could be late, out of order, or just skipped when arriving at an American comic shop. So even though I've read most of this material in theory, it feels new to me. And even if I got it all in order and on time, it's different to read a twenty-one-issue story in three days than in twenty months! By the time I got to The Crimson Hand on the original read, did I even remember details seeded in Mortal Beloved or The Age of Ice? Seems doubtful.

So anyway: The Crimson Hand. This marks a return the "old" way of doing DWM—original companion, linked storytelling—that went away when Paul McGann did. On top of that, Dan McDaid writes twenty-one strips in a row, the first writer to rack up a run more than five strips long since Scott Gray's run from #333 to 353 (The Power of Thoeuris! to The Flood). This basically covers the whole Tennant specials year, from just after the broadcast of "Journey's End" up to just before the broadcast of "The Eleventh Hour," an enormous canvas for DWM to once again draw its own destiny.

from Doctor Who Magazine #394

Hotel Historia, from Doctor Who Magazine #394 (Apr. 2008)
story & art by Dan McDaid, lettering by Roger Langridge

This is a nice little one-parter that sets the stage for the whole run, though that wasn't its intention at the time; Dan McDaid makes his DWM debut as an artist for a story he also writes, and really, McDaid's expressive, dynamic, cartoony style is what makes this story stand out so much. Lots of great panels and great dynamic colors and strong sense of characterization for both the Doctor and Majenta Pryce. You can see why they wanted to bring her back—if they hadn't made her into a companion, surely she would have become a Dogbolter if nothing else! My only complaint is the fact the Majenta is running a time-travel hotel almost feels incidental; that idea seems like it could have some fun implications, but the story's just not long enough to do anything with them. It's a shame McDaid didn't have the time to do any more double-duty stories in this volume, though he would return as an artist during the Matt Smith run.

Space Vikings!, from Doctor Who Storybook 2010
story by Jonathan Morris, art by Rob Davis & I. N. J. Culbard, letters by Will Lucas

This is the volume's only story with no Dan McDaid and no Majenta. It's a bit of a goof but fun enough, and of course Rob Davis is one of those artists who can only enhance such a story with his dynamic storytelling style.

from Doctor Who Magazine #401

Thinktwice, from Doctor Who Magazine #400-02 (Oct.-Dec. 2008)
story by Dan McDaid, pencil art by Martin Geraghty, inks by David A Roach, colours by James Offredi, letters by Roger Langridge

And Majenta debuts as a companion. This story is mostly here to make that work, and to set up the story arc, but it's all very well done. There are some good jokes, the characters are strongly done (the Doctor pretending to be a doctor is great), and the part two cliffhanger—where Majenta uses her last breath to complain that the Doctor's ruined her life—is excellent. I found the villain a bit perfunctory, but he's not really the point.

from Doctor Who Magazine #403

The Stockbridge Child, from Doctor Who Magazine #403-05 (Jan.-Mar. 2009)
story by Dan McDaid, pencil art by Mike Collins, inks by David A Roach, colours by James Offredi, letters by Roger Langridge

It seems to be a DWM tradition at this point. When the strip begins having story-to-story continuity again, you also need to explicitly link back into the early days of the strip, making clear that not only is it a big story, but it's just one big story. When The Mark of Mandragora pulled together threads from the preceding year or so, it also included a cameo from an Iron Legion villain; when End Game began a new ongoing era, it went back to Stockbridge and Maxwell Edison from the Steve Parkhouse–Dave Gibbons days. So too does The Stockbridge Child: aliens are up to no good in Stockbridge, and the Doctor needs the help of Maxwell Edison to stop them.

It doesn't quite have the weirdness of Parkhouse's own Stockbridge stories, and I got a bit lost with some aspects (what were the parents up to exactly?), but this is an effective use of Maxwell Edison as a character. McDaid complains in the commentary that he gave Max too much angst, but I disagree; this builds on aspects of the character we saw in Stars Fell on Stockbridge and End Game, and also "new series"-ifies him. That is to say, this story treats him the same way "School Reunion" did Sarah Jane. It's got good callbacks without being nostalgic, and it looks forward to the future. Good stuff.

from Doctor Who Magazine #406

Mortal Beloved, from Doctor Who Magazine #406-07 (Apr. 2009)
story by Dan McDaid, art by Sean Longcroft, colours by James Offredi, letters by Roger Langridge

I thought this was a delightful story, sort of off-kilter and unhinged in only the way a Doctor Who comic can be. The Doctor and Majenta end up at the mansion of Majenta's fiancé—whom she doesn't remember. The mansion is built on an asteroid adjacent to a massive space storm. In parallel stories, the Doctor interacts with a self-aware hologram of the dead fiancé, while Majenta finds out he kind of hangs on to life. There's ghosts and monster cyborgs wearing bowties and corpses on a corporate board of directors. Sean Longcroft had drawn two previous strips, but this is his first "serious" one, and he knocks it out of the park with atmosphere, as does James Offredi on colours. Surprising pathos here, to be honest.

from Doctor Who Magazine #408

The Age of Ice, from Doctor Who Magazine #408-11 (May-Aug. 2009)
story by Dan McDaid, pencil art by Martin Geraghty, inks by David A Roach, colours by James Offredi, letters by Roger Langridge

I remembered not liking this one. I never like those kind of stories that basically come down to "whoa, dinos in the modern age!" Well, that was only a small part of this highly effective contemporary UNIT story. I wouldn't mark this as my favorite strip of the run, but it's perfectly done: good dialogue, good jokes, good characterization, especially for Majenta, some nice twists. It's a good riff on "The Sontaran Stratagem"-style storytelling, except that I thought McDaid managed to create some instantly likable UNIT characters in Colonel McCay and Captain Braxton. Seems a shame neither popped up again; they would have made good recurring characters for the strip. Majenta makes some interesting but very plausible moves here. And Martin Geraghty always excels that kind of high-energy stuff, whilst never losing the characters' essential humanity. My only real complaint is that derived of their drive to be "the first," returning aliens the Skith come across as kind of generic, but McDaid does eventually link them into the ongoing "Crimson Hand" plot in an effective way.

from Doctor Who Magazine #412

The Deep Hereafter, from Doctor Who Magazine #412 (Sept. 2009)
story by Dan McDaid, art by Rob Davis, colours by James Offredi & Rob Davis, letters by Roger Langridge

Now this is my favorite comic of the run, a madcap, hilarious riff on Golden Age detective comics. A dying private eye passes his hat and his charge onto the Doctor, who slips right into the role of investigating a list of bizarre characters, all suspects in a planet's greatest-ever crime, the theft of a world bomb. The Doctor hams it up in the part; Majenta, delightfully, disdains all of it: "If you're going to talk like that the whole time we're here, then I want nothing more to do with you." All the characters are great: the femme fatale who turns out to be a robot driven by "Tiny Danza," Half-Nelson the man where half of him got away in a transmat.. and half didn't, a beleaguered Centaurian lawyer who just wants to retire. Tremendous fun from writing to Rob Davis's pitch-perfect art to the colours that add so much to the atmosphere. Alpha Centauri was made for comics (there's a pinch of Zoidberg there, I feel), and the best part—other than the resolution—has got to be when Majenta threatens to drown Tiny Danza in whisky. Oh, and when he makes his surprise reappearance!

from Doctor Who Magazine #415

Onomatopoeia / Ghosts of the Northern Line, from Doctor Who Magazine #413-15 (Oct.-Dec. 2009)
stories by Dan McDaid, art by Mike Collins & David A Roach and Paul Grist, colour by James Offredi, letters by Roger Langridge

Onomatopoeia is one of those stories I admire more than enjoy; maybe I am a philistine, but I always struggle with comics where it's all about the images, not the words! That the characters lose their voices is a neat idea, but I struggled with the action a bit. Mike Collins is good at conventional tv tie-in comics, but I wonder if he was the right choice here, and if someone with a more fluid style might have done better. But I have to give kudos to this era's experimental run, which began in Deep Hereafter and continues into Ghosts of the Northern Line, a delightfully grounded (undergrounded?) ghost story with atmospheric art by Paul Grist. You can see that by this point, McDaid has got the tenth Doctor/Majenta partnership down to an art. They have great banter and Majenta some genuine character moments; the tenth Doctor gets in a nice bit of late-period self-loathing. The stuff about the ghosts is all so well done. Unfortunately, this is it, but thankfully it went out on a high...

from Doctor Who Magazine #419

The Crimson Hand, from Doctor Who Magazine #416-20 (Jan.-Apr. 2010)
story by Dan McDaid, pencil art by Martin Geraghty, inks by David A Roach, colours by James Offredi, lettering by Roger Langridge

In his many years on the strip, Scott Gray raised the "season finale" to an art form with stories like Ground Zero, Wormwood, The Glorious Dead, Oblivion, and The Flood. Dan McDaid revives that tradition and does it proud with Gray's consistent collaborator Martin Geraghty back yet again. Lots of drama here, good surprises (I did not expect the return of a character from Thinktwice), nice explanation of the backstory, and a climax that really works, plot-wise and emotion-wise. One last double-cross from Majenta is the perfect way to wrap the whole thing up! My favorite part is the bit where Majenta and the Crimson Hand have won, and the Doctor is trapped in a pocket universe. It's sort of cribbing from those bits of The Glorious Dead where the Doctor is missing and Izzy is all alone... except in this case, it's the companion's own fault! A solid conclusion to a solid run.

Overall, I really enjoyed this volume. Even if there wasn't an ongoing story to hold everything together, it would still be a strong run for showing off the versatility of the strip at its best. Add Majenta—the kind of companion character who plays to the strengths of comics and adds something to every story in which she appears—and you get what is certainly the best run since the Scott Gray years, even if Rose/Martha/Donna years were solid too.

Stray Observations:

I usually reorder these volumes by publication order as I read, but I kept Space Vikings! where the book had it, even though it's way off; it would have come out around the time of The Crimson Hand. But collection editors Tom Spilsbury and Scott Gray knew what they were doing; you wouldn't want to go from Hotel Historia to Thinktwice any more than you'd want to go straight from "The Runaway Bride" to "Partners in Crime"; vital to the latter story is a sense that time has passed. Plugging in a one-off standalone adventure creates that impression.
Space Vikings! is I. N. J. Culbard's only contribution to the DWM universe, but he would go on to be one of the best artistic contributors to Titan's excellent Eleventh Doctor ongoing.
The ending of Stockbridge Child kind of implies that Max dies! Seven years later we would find out, thankfully, that he was still alive.
I was kind of disappointed to realize the Worldsmiths in The Deep Hereafter were not the World Shapers.
Ghost of the Northern Line is Paul Grist's only DWM contribution, but he would also do a couple stories for IDW, including a fun wordless one with the eleventh Doctor and Santa Claus.
"YOU'RE JUST A TRACER" WATCH: The new collections design only put three or four names on the cover, so omitting inker David A. Roach is less of a snub, but he inks sixteen of this volume's twenty-three strips. Mike Collins gets cover credit for working on four!

This post is the thirty-third in a series about the Doctor Who Magazine comic strip and Marvel UK. The next installment covers The Child of Time. Previous installments are listed below:

26 January 2022

Doctor Who: Branches by Alex Paknadel, Rob Williams, I. N. J. Culbard, Ivan Rodriguez, JB Bastos, and Luiz Campello

Doctor Who: The Eleventh Doctor: The Sapling, Vol 3: Branches

Collection published: 2018
Contents originally published: 2017-18
Read: September 2021

Writers: Alex Paknadel & Rob Williams
Artists: I. N. J. Culbard, Ivan Rodriguez, JB Bastos & Luiz Campello
Colorists: Triona Farrell, Thiago Ribiero & Stefani Renne

Letters: Richard Starkings and Jimmy Betancourt

The ninth and final volume of The Eleventh Doctor contains two linked stories. The first, by Alex Paknadel and I. N. J. Culbard, brings the Doctor, Alice, and the Sapling to a primitive planet where the Doctor was friends with its ruler—only the planet is highly industrialized and the Doctor doesn't remember the ruler. Paknadel's story is enjoyable, packed with great ideas, and Culbard's art is, as always, the best.

The second, by Paknadel, Rob Williams, and a host of artists, wraps up the ongoing Sapling storyline with the return of the forgotten silence. It has some great moments and good callbacks—I got chills at the return of an element from Alice's very first story way back in vol 1, and the way they defeat the villain was clever—but this title has set a very high bar for itself, and "Year Three" was not as strong as the first two years, and neither was its finale. The story didn't feel as personal to our protagonists, and the Sapling never really emerged as a character. Good stuff, and still the best of the Titan ongoings, but it seems best that it ended here.

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 Lost Dimension

05 January 2022

Doctor Who: Roots by George Mann, James Peaty, I. N. J. Culbard, Ivan Rodriguez, Wellington Diaz, Klebs Junior, Leandro Casco, et al.

Doctor Who: The Eleventh Doctor: The Sapling, Vol 2: Roots

Collection published: 2017
Contents originally published: 2017
Read: September 2021

Writers: George Mann & James Peaty with Vince Pavey
Artists: I. N. J. Culbard, Ivan Rodriguez, Wellington Diaz, Klebs Junior & Leandro Casco with Pasquale Qualano
Colorists: Triona Farrell, Stefani Renne & Thiago Ribiero

Letters: Richard Starkings and Jimmy Betancourt

Longtime readers of my reviews of Titan's Doctor Who comics will know that The Eleventh Doctor has consistently been my favorite of their three-then-four-then-three ongoings. For its first seven volumes, it was always written by Rob Williams and one other writer (Al Ewing for "Year One," Si Spurrier for "Year Two," Alex Paknadel for vol 1 of "Year Three"); they would typically cowrite the opening and closing story, and then alternate the stories in between, most of which were just one issue. I don't know how much collaboration there was, but they certainly seemed like a seamless whole, and the succession of done-in-ones allowed for a lot of variety. More than any other Titan ongoings, The Eleventh Doctor has felt like comics first and foremost, not a tv show on the comic page, much like the early years of Doctor Who Magazine's strip.

Year Three, alas, breaks the pattern. For the first time in the run of The Eleventh Doctor, we have a collected edition with no Rob Williams content, and this volume doesn't bring back Alex Paknadel from vol 1 of The Sapling, either. And to add insult to injury, the writer primarily used instead is George Mann. Now, Mann has gotten better than he was, even if he's not great, but I didn't find him very suited to the style of The Eleventh Doctor; neither is James Peaty, who handles the other of the four issues collected here. (There's also a four-page backup story by Vince Pavey.) Neither writer can get the short story down; in all of the examples collected here, the Doctor discovers a problem, and then defeats it right way, much too easily. Too long is spent on the build-up, keeping there from being an effective twist or turn at the climax; in Mann's "Fooled," for example, the Doctor just takes the villain's device and breaks it, and that's it; in Peaty's "Time of the Ood," things go similarly easy. Even when Mann has two issues, as in "The Memory Feast," we still have one-and-a-half issues of running around before we get to a quick resolution. (Overload the thingy, that good old Doctor Who standby.)

I also didn't find the engagement with the ongoing Sapling arc very satisfying. The Sapling himself is a blank slate of a character, the supposed memory crisis that the Doctor and Alice are experiencing doesn't really seem to make much of a practical difference, and though two of the three stories are about memory, they thematically are not up to much.

What does work is the art of I. N. J. Culbard. He's worked on two previous volumes of The Eleventh Doctor, but this is the first where he's made an impression on me, and it's a strong one; he draws three of the four issues here, and he has a somewhat Mike Mignolaesque style, even if it's all his own. Very atmospheric, pairs well with the coloring, and as The Eleventh Doctor does at its best, it feels like comics, not comics-as-tv (or tv-as-comics). I see that for the final volume he'll be back, and paired with Alex Paknadel, which should hopefully be an excellent combination.

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: Free Comic Book Day 2017

06 October 2021

Review: Doctor Who: Growth by Rob Williams, Alex Paknadel, I. N. J. Culbard, Simon Fraser, Leandro Casco, and Wellington Diaz

Collection published: 2017
Contents originally published: 2017
Read: July 2021

Doctor Who: The Eleventh Doctor: The Sapling, Vol 1: Growth

Writers: Rob Williams & Alex Paknadel
Artists: I. N. J. Culbard, Simon Fraser, Leandro Casco, Wellington Diaz
Colorists: Triona Farrell, Gary Caldwell

Letters: Richard Starkings and Jimmy Betancourt

This volume opens "Year Three" of Titan's Eleventh Doctor ongoing, and as always, I find it excellent stuff. The opening two-parter, "Remembrance"/"The Scream" by returning writer Rob Williams with artists I. N. J. Culbard, Leandro Casco, and Wellington Diaz, takes the Doctor and Alice first to the funeral of their old friend John Jones, and then to a trap laid for them by a Silence who's so good at being forgotten that not even his own people remember who he is. As always, it's full of bonkers, delightful, dark stuff that is both very Doctor Who and nothing like the tv show. (Well, actually, it reminds me a lot of the first half of series 6's opening two-parter; "The Impossible Astronaut" is a delightfully disconcerting opening that I felt "Day of the Moon" didn't really capitalize on, and this pushes out even further in that direction.) My only complaint here is that what actually happened to the memories of the Doctor and Alice is a bit nebulous; their quest to regain them seem to be the Year Three arc, but it also seems that they remember most things!

As always, Rob Williams trades off his stories with another writer; in this case, newcomer Alex Paknadel writes "The Tragical History Tour" with returning artist Simon Fraser. Again, this is a story with an off-the-wall concept: time on Earth becomes spatialized, so you can get from one year to the next just by walking. The late 1960s start invading future years to take their stuff; the Doctor, Alice, and the Sapling bump into Alice's neighbor Kushak, all whose past selves are taking refuge in his 2015 apartment. So the Doctor, Alice, the Sapling, and all the Kushaks pile into a bus and drive back to 1968 to figure out what's going on! I enjoyed it a lot, though I did wish it was a three-parter as I felt the character(s) of Kushak kind of got lost in the midst of everything else. But this is a series that never does three-parters really, and is probably better for it; The Eleventh Doctor rockets through concepts that other Titan ongoings would probably drag out to tedium, always chasing the novelty that makes it always the best of the ongoings.

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 Tenth Doctor: Facing Fate: Breakfast at Tyranny's

28 July 2021

Review: Doctor Who: The Malignant Truth by Si Spurrier, Rob Williams, I. N. J. Culbard, and Simon Fraser

Collection published: 2017
Contents originally published: 2016
Acquired: March 2020
Read: May 2021

Doctor Who: The Eleventh Doctor, Vol 6: The Malignant Truth

Writers: Si Spurrier & Rob Williams
Artists: I. N. J. Culbard & Simon Fraser
Colorists: Marcio Menys & Gary Caldwell

Letters: Richard Starkings and Jimmy Betancourt

"Year Two" of The Eleventh Doctor comes to an end. I will admit that I did not entirely understand how this all fit together; maybe if I had read this story arc all at once instead of spread out across six months. (But then, it originally appeared across an entire year!) But, to be honest, I didn't really care. This is great stuff: great character moments for the eleventh Doctor, for Alice, for the Master, for the War Doctor, for the Squire, even for Abslom Daak! And great, weird concepts. I think more than any other Doctor Who tie-in creators, the writers and artists of this series have captured the weirdness and the horror of the Time War. Some genuine creepy bits-- counterbalanced by some genuine punch-the-air moments. I look foward to seeing where this comic goes in "Year Three"; indeed, it may be the only Titan ongoing I actually do follow into Year Three.

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: Supremacy of the Cybermen