Supergirl: Girl of No Tomorrow / Plain Sight by Steve Orlando, Robson Rocha, Daniel Henriques, et al.

Supergirl, Vol. 3: Girl of No Tomorrow

Collection published: 2018
Contents originally published: 2017
Read: February 2026

Writers: Steve Orlando, Jody Houser, Vita Ayala
Pencillers: Robson Rocha, Steve Pugh, Jose Luis, Carmen Carnero, Jamal Campbell, Julio Ferreira
Inkers: Daniel Henriques, Steve Pugh, Norm Rapmund, Carmen Carnero, Jamal Campbell, Julio Ferreira
Colorists: Michael Atiyeh, Jamal Campbell
Letterers: Steve Wands, Calos M. Mangual

The second half of Steve Orlando's Supergirl run moves away from the strengths that characterized the first. One senses that this isn't his fault, that editorial is revamping the premise periodically because the book isn't selling the way that they hoped. I don't have any proof of this, but it doesn't make sense to me that a writer would set up a bunch of concepts in their first eleven issues clearly designed to create a "storytelling engine" and then largely ignore or abandon them in their final nine. And it's probably indicative that after the last issue by Orlando, this volume of Supergirl took a four-month break and came back with a totally new creative team and a premise that completely moved away from what Orlando set up here. Though it continued this run's issue numbering, the volume numbering of the trade paperbacks reset, so it was clearly conceptualized as totally distinct. (It doesn't sound appealing, so I am not going to read it, but my understanding is that it moves away from this run's YA vibe and also puts Supergirl on her own in outer space. As far as I know, recurring characters like Ben Rubel have never appeared again.)

The series's third volume, Girl of No Tomorrow, begins where the cliffhanger ending of volume two left off, with Cat Grant seemingly shooting Supergirl. This is quickly shown to be the actions of not Cat Grant but a shapeshifter, and the gun doesn't kill her; it makes her powers stronger but also causes them to fluctuate. To be honest, I didn't really get or enjoy this subplot at all. I think my-powers-are-out-of-control subplots are rarely interesting because they don't really map onto anything comprehensible and the fluctuations can feel very arbitrary and thus the hand of the writer is a bit too evident. (The exception, perhaps, is X-Men stories where they can serve as an allegory for puberty; see X2.) Lots of stuff seems to happen but not mean anything: Kara gets attacked by a bunch of different villains, including the Legion's Emerald Empress, which means each one attacks her, then goes away, repeat. There's no development. Kara's powers fluctuate at school, but the reactions to this don't ring true at all—why, when a character falls down a hole that spontaneously appears in a hallway floor is every one just like, "lol kara is such a nerd"?

Well, this will certainly convince everyone you were being compassionate!
from Supergirl vol. 7 #13 (script by Steve Orlando, art by Robson Rocha & Daniel Henriques)

There's also one of my least favorite superhero tropes: the "regular people" turn on the superhero. This feels like a a bad fit for the Supergirl aesthetic in general and a big swerve from the inspirational approach of the first two volumes in specific. On top of that, when you don't have POV characters who embody this approach, it's just randos in crowd scenes going, "yes i used to look up to you but now you suck!" which just feels arbitrary and random. (Cat Grant is the one actual character we get who doesn't like Supergirl, but I didn't follow her reasoning.)

Look, I love the Emerald Empress, but I literally have no idea what she is going on about here.
from Supergirl Annual vol. 7 #1 (script by Steve Orlando, art by Steve Pugh)

The story doesn't so much end as stop (why all these bad guys were attacking Supergirl thinking she was a danger to the future is just not adequately explained), and there's a big status quo change at the end that doesn't pan out at all. Before that gets developed, though (which is more in the fourth volume), there's a one-issue story about Supergirl teaming up with the "New Super-Man" of China. This is fine but a bit short and facile.

Supergirl, Vol. 4: Plain Sight

Collection published: 2018
Contents originally published: 2018
Read: February 2026

Vol. 4, Plain Sight, unfortunately leans into the things that didn't work for me in vol. 3. At the end of Girl of No Tomorrow, Cameron Chase was fired as the DEO director in National City, and her boss, Director Bones, takes direct control of the DEO's operations there. For reasons that, again, I never really understood, Bones has some kind of vendetta against Supergirl. This means the setup of the first two volumes, where Supergirl works for the DEO is abandoned. Supergirl's adoptive parents are DEO agents; they quit. Who her parents are is scrubbed from the DEO records... somehow Bones can't figure this out, which doesn't really make any sense. What also doesn't make sense is that Kara continues to attend human high school despite the danger this puts both herself and her classmates in; for some reason, she also continues in her internship at Catco even though this means she spends much of her manufacturing anti-Supergirl content. Why does she need this internship so much?

This book does attempt to recapture the storytelling enginge set up in vol. 1 again, by including a subplot about Kara and Ben going—or not going—to nerd prom together, while a girl shows up who's a rival for Kara's affections. I felt, though, that this coordinated pretty awkwardly with the main plot of Supergirl continuing to battle bad guys sent by an increasingly and implausibly unhinged Director Bones. (Like, why would this guy be dumb enough to think, "oh someone from apokolips is definitely more trustworthy than supergirl"!?) Also it might have worked better if the rival character had ever appeared before! (Or maybe she did but was completely unmemorable? Either way, not well done.)

And this dude promptly never appeared again.
from Supergirl vol. 7 #18 (script by Jody Houser & Steve Orlando, art by Carmen Carnero)

The book does have a standout issue, though; the penultimate one is a lot like the story in vol. 2 where Supergirl redeemed a villain, in that it's character-driven and mostly focuses on seeing Supergirl through another's eyes. In this case, though, it's not a villain, but a nonbinary kid who finds acceptance with Supergirl when they can't get it at home. Great art by Jamal Campbell, and I felt that we were tapping into what make Orlando's version of the character actually work for the first time in a long while. Too bad the rest of the book couldn't do this.

To be honest, I didn't totally buy this argument. "If your parents reject you, it's because they love you!"
from Supergirl vol. 7 #19 (script by Steve Orlando & Vita Ayala, art by Jamal Campbell)

The last issue is very much an "oops we're being cancelled let's cram it all in and wrap it all up" one, unfortunately. Necessary from a storytelling perspective, I guess, but not interesting to read. Shame that this run started out strongly but fizzled out so badly.

How did Director Bones get to be so dumb?
from Supergirl vol. 7 #20 (script by Steve Orlando & Jody Houser, art by Robson Rocha & Daniel Henriques)

As I said, I'm not interesting in continuing onto the Marc Andreyko run that continues from here (even if it does feature Kevin Maguire on art!), but what I've read about the subsequent Sophie Campbell one makes it sound more my speed. Maybe someday!

Doctor Who: Empire of the Wolf by Jody Houser and Roberta Ingranata

This is it! Back in November 2019, I began reading my way through the contents of two Humble Bundles of Titan's Doctor Who comic that I had acquired. Once I exhausted those, I kept going, mostly using Hoopla to borrow the comics digitally through my local library. Thirty months and fifty-four installments later, I am finally all caught up! There's more to come (and some of that will have come out by the time this is posted), such as a series of specials by Dan Slott and a Doctor Who Origins miniseries about the "fugitive" Doctor, but as of this writing, Empire of the Wolf is Titan's most recent Doctor Who story, and there is nowhere else to go.

Doctor Who: Empire of the Wolf

Collection published: 2022
Contents published: 2021-22
Read: May 2022

Writer: Jody Houser

Artist: Roberta Ingranata

Colorist: Warnia K. Sahadewa

Letterer: Richard Starkings

Vol. 3 of Doctor Who Comic is an odd beast. It's a sequel of sorts to Alternating Current: that tenth/thirteenth Doctor crossover introduced a Rose Tyler from an alternate universe where Earth was occupied by the Sea Devils. The alternate Rose was a resistance leader, and at the end of that story, the tenth Doctor dropped her off on a planet in our universe that could use her help. It's also a follow-up to "Doomsday": our universe's Rose is also in the story. She's been living on Pete's World long enough, married to the "metacrisis" Doctor, to have a teenage daughter. The other Doctor and Mia are only cameos, because Rose is pulled back into our universe due to some kind of temporal shenanigans that I didn't feel were ever really explained.

But this story doesn't feature the tenth Doctor... instead it features, for some reason, the eighth and the eleventh. I don't know why. There's not two Doctors worth of stuff to do, and the story doesn't do anything interesting with its multi-Doctor premise. (But then, has any Titan multi-Doctor story?) Did anyone want to see two different Roses interact with the eleventh and eighth Doctors? Why would they? The Sea Devil–Earth Rose has a decent story, but the Pete's World Rose could pretty much be any companion, except for a very brief sequence where she has to pretend to be the other Rose. Lots of flash, but like so many Jody Houser and Roberta Ingranata Doctor Who comics, it seems to have nothing to say.

My next daily comic feature will be: The Wicked + The Divine 

Missy: The Master Plan by Jody Houser and Roberta Ingranata

Doctor Who: Missy: The Master Plan

Collection published: 2021
Contents published: 2021
Read: May 2022

Writer: Jody Houser

Artist: Roberta Ingranata

Colorist: Erica Eren Angiolini

Flatter: Sari Chankhamma

Letterer: Richard Starkings

After Alternating Current, Titan's redundantly named Doctor Who Comic became a sort of anthology feature, resetting its numbering and its focus every four issues. Doctor Who Comic vol. 2 #1-4 focused on Missy, Michelle Gomez's incarnation of the Master. The story sees Missy breaking her earlier self, in the form of the Roger Delgado incarnation, out of prison while pretending to be a future regeneration of the Doctor who needs his help recovering a fragment of the Key to Time. Missy trying to bamboozle her past self into thinking she's the Doctor is about as delightful as one might expect—she is, quite frankly, not very good at it. I was thoroughly entertained by this, and found that Houser and Ingranata did a great job of capturing the characters of both incarnations. There are a number of good cameos her, especially by other Master incarnations, and some invocation of the Master's own history in Titan comics.

One thing didn't work for me: the story seemed to not climax so much as just stop. The Master works out who Missy is and.... that's it? The Key to Time thing was, unless I was reading carelessly, basically forgotten. I had thought Houser's storylines were like this because she was pastiching the Jodie Whittaker era, but here we're doing a Peter Capaldi and the writing is still like that, so maybe that's just how she writes things. Frustrating.

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: Empire of the Wolf

Doctor Who: Time Lord Victorious: Defender of the Daleks by Jody Houser, Roberta Ingranata, et al.

 Doctor Who: Time Lord Victorious: Defender of the Daleks

Collection published: 2020
Contents published: 2020
Read: February 2022

Story: James Goss

Writer: Jody Houser

Artist: Roberta Ingranata

Colorist: Erica Eren Angiolini

Flatters: Sari Chankhamma, Sabrina Del Gross

Letterer: Richard Starkings

Last year, I worked through all of Big Finish's Time Lord Victorious contributions, along with one novel; with this, I add one more piece to the puzzle, though I am coming to it as a Titan Doctor Who story, not a Time Lord Victorious one. This supposedly picks up from the end of the tenth/thirteenth Doctor story Alternating Current, the recap here telling us that at the end of that story, the tenth Doctor was sucked into a time vortex... only in Alternating Current no such thing actually happened. Oops! There's also a small thirteenth Doctor appearance here that takes place between pages of Alternating Current.

The stories of TLV are sometimes pretty loosely linked; while for the tenth Doctor this takes place some time prior to his TLV appearances and isn't really connected to them, it's a stronger connection for the Daleks. For them, this directly leads into the Big Finish audio drama The Enemy of My Enemy.

What actually happens is, as is so often true of Houser/Ingranata Who comics, not very much. The tenth Doctor is asked for help by the Daleks; he seems to be in a timeline where the Time War never happened. He helps them defeat a pretty bland threat from the "Dark Times." There's some okay back-and-forth between the Doctor and the Dalek Prime Strategist of the Dalek Time Squad (not to be confused with Big Finish's Dalek Time Strategist!), but this is two double-sized issues (clearly, though, originally scripted as four regular-sized one) where it just doesn't feel like that much actually happens. The elements of the story are good, but there was a more interesting tale to be told about the tenth Doctor having to help the species he thought had destroyed his people, and who (he thought) he had destroyed himself! Not as bad as Alternating Current, I guess, but not really up to much.

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: Missy: The Master Plan

Doctor Who: Alternating Current by Jody Houser and Roberta Ingranata

Doctor Who Comic: Alternating Current

Collection published: 2021
Contents published: 2020-21
Read: January 2022

Writer: Jody Houser

Artist: Roberta Ingranata

Colorist: Erica Eren Angiolini

Flatter: Sari Chankhamma

Letterers: Richard Starkings & Sarah Hedrick 

I usually read these Titan Doctor Who collections in publication order, and the issues collected here came out after those collected in Defender of the Daleks. But if it hadn't been for COVID delays, this would have come out first, and for the thirteenth Doctor, it goes between A Little Help from My Friends and Defender of the Daleks, so that's where I read it.

It follows on directly from Little Help: returning to the present day, the thirteenth Doctor and fam discover that the Earth was taken over by Sea Devils in the past; at the same time, the tenth Doctor learns the same thing, even encountering an alternative Rose Tyler who is a resistance fighter. Supposedly this happened because of the events of Little Help, but exactly how two Doctors meeting in the 1960s would have lead to an alternative timeline is never explained; characters just keep saying "paradox" again and again... but what is the actual paradox here? Even by Doctor Who terms, this didn't cut it for me. After two issues of Sea Devil avoidance, it suddenly switches gears entirely and becomes about going back in time and recreating the events of "Nikola Tesla's Night of Terror"... but why? The story doesn't do anything interesting with the events of that episode, and again, how would shenanigans in the 1960s cause the Skithra attack on New York in the 1903 to happen differently? I don't know, it's all pretty blah and unsatisfying.

Also Ingranata continues Titan's proud tradition of Star Trek: Voyager swipes: the Skithra engine core is very obviously Voyager's warp core.

I guess injecting the tenth Doctor into the thirteenth Doctor series must have caused a sales boost, but this has taken an already mediocre series and made it even worse. And evidently not enough of a sales boost, because after this, the (I think somewhat weirdly titled) Doctor Who Comic became a rotating anthology series, dropping the thirteenth Doctor.

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: Time Lord Victorious: Defender of the Daleks

Doctor Who: A Tale of Two Time Lords by Jody Houser and Roberta Ingranata

Doctor Who: A Tale of Two Time Lords: A Little Help from My Friends

Collection published: 2020
Contents published: 2020
Read: January 2022

Writer: Jody Houser

Artist: Roberta Ingranata

Colorists: Erica Eren Angiolini

Color Assistant: Sari Chankhamma

Letterers: Richard Starkings & Sarah Hedrick 

This collection has the thirteenth Doctor and the fam landing in London in the 1960s—during exactly the time the tenth Doctor and Martha were stranded there, as glimpsed in episode "Blink." The later Doctor tries to figure out if she needs to do something to help the earlier Doctor, and it turns out that not only are there Weeping Angels afoot (I am not sure why, though), the Nestene Consciousness is also up to something, and everyone ends up joining forces.

It's fun enough. Houser has a good grasp of the fam in dialogue and action, and one can imagine Jodie Whittaker being suitably awkward when she's trying to keep a low profile with Martha. The actual plot, as it always is in these thirteenth Doctor comics, is a bit basic, with what feels like a lot of wandering around and an easy resolution that feels a bit stretched out at four issues. I'd like to see this series play with story lengths more as Titan's earlier Doctor Who series did, but alas, they seem to be locked in at four issues.

(Note that this is, according to its copyright page, the first volume of "A Tale of Two Time Lords." There never was a volume 2, but one presumes that Alternating Current would have been so if not for the COVID-related changes to Titan's publishing schedule. But that does leave us with the slightly irksome phenomenon of a volume 1 with no volume 2!)

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: Alternating Current

Doctor Who: Time Out of Mind by Jody Houser, Roberta Ingranata, et al.

 Doctor Who: The Thirteenth Doctor: Time Out of Mind

Collection published: 2020
Contents published: 2019
Read: January 2022

Writer: Jody Houser

Artists: Roberta Ingranata, Giorgia Sposito, Valeria Favoccia

Colorists: Erica Eren Angiolini, Tracey Bailey

Color Assistant: Sari Chankhamma

Letterers: Richard Starkings & John Roshell, Sarah Jacobs & Sarah Hedrick

 

Like a lot of Jody Houser/Roberta Ingranata Thirteenth Doctor comics, this has a fun idea at its heart but reading it is a bit of a plod. The Doctor and the fam investigating a Krampus takeover of Santa's workshop ought to be a delight... but the whole thing is for some reason bogged down in the conceit that they already did this but had their memories erased, so they spend most of the comic not really doing anything except figuring out what they might have done last time. I appreciate that the comics decided to give us a Christmas special in an era where the tv programme has abandoned it, but it lacks Christmas sparkle, and doesn't really say anything about Christmas, either; it's just trappings on a pretty ordinary story.

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: A Tale of Two Time Lords: A Little Help from My Friends

Doctor Who: Old Friends by Jody Houser, Roberta Ingranata, and Rachael Stott

 Doctor Who: The Thirteenth Doctor: Old Friends

Collection published: 2019
Contents published: 2019
Read: January 2022

Writer: Jody Houser

Artists: Roberta Ingranata, Rachael Stott

Colorists: Erica Eren Angiolini, Tracy Bailey

Color Assistants: Viviana Spinelli, Aaron Daly & Sari Chankhamma

Letterers: Richard Starkings & Sarah Jacobs, John Roshell & Jimmy Betancourt

There's a good idea at the heart of this volume: the Doctor runs into the Corsair, an old Time Lord friend she learned died back in "The Doctor's Wife." How do you handle a situation like this? Unfortunately, I felt that that aspect of the story was barely present; I only really got what the story was going for in its last issue. If the Doctor had talked about this with her companions, it could have been highlighted more, but much like on screen, Houser's version of the fam are interchangeable recipients of exposition. There's just nothing very characterful here. What do they all make of meeting another Time Lord at last, so different from the one they know so well? Who knows. Probably this is how Chris Chibnall would handle it on screen, as in, just as dully. Not terrible, but it's a disappointment for our first real glimpse of the Corsair.

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 Thirteenth Doctor: Time Out of Mind

Doctor Who: Hidden Human History by Jody Houser, Roberta Ingranata, and Rachael Stott

  Doctor Who: The Thirteenth Doctor: Hidden Human History

Collection published: 2019
Contents published: 2019
Read: January 2022

Writer: Jody Houser

Artists: Roberta Ingranata, Rachael Stott

Colorist: Erica Eren Angiolini

Color Assistant: Viviana Spinelli

Letterers: Sarah Jacobs and John Roshell

This volume perfectly evokes the screen adventures of the thirteenth Doctor. Unfortunately, for me, that is damning with faint praise. The story is mostly the Doctor wandering around, seemingly rarely actually doing anything with any sense of urgency, following by three companions who altogether have the narrative function of a single person, until the story comes to an end without any kind of climax. It might have worked as a two-parter, but unfortunately it runs four issues. I much prefer Scott Gray's approach to thirteenth Doctor comics over in DWM (which is to tell the same kind of Doctor Who stories he always does, but with different characters in them).

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 Thirteenth Doctor: Old Friends

Doctor Who: A New Beginning by Jody Houser, Rachael Stott, et al.

  Doctor Who: The Thirteenth Doctor: A New Beginning

Collection published: 2019
Contents published: 2018-19
Read: December 2021

Writer: Jody Houser

Artists: Rachael Stott, Giorgia Sposito, Valeria Favoccia

Colorist: Erica Eren Angiolini

Color Assistant: Viviana Spinelli

Flatters: Sara Michielli, Andrea Moretto, Adele Matera

Letterers: Sarah Jacobs and John Roshell

This is the first proper installment in Titan's Thirteenth Doctor series, with a four-issue adventure for the Doctor, Graham, Yaz, and Ryan. Rachael Stott does great art, of course, but beyond that I found it pretty forgettable; it explains the mystery of the time portal in The Road to the Thirteenth Doctor, but I wasn't too fussed about that despite the ad in the back of this one trumpeting that I can pick up that story to discover the first appearance of Perkins. It is impossible for me to imagine someone finishing this story and wanting to do that, and if they did, all they would find there was a hand emerging from a time portal!

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 Thirteenth Doctor: Hidden Human History