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!

Review: Doctor Who: A Fairytale Life by Matt Sturges, Kelly Yates, & Brian Shearer

Comic trade paperback, 103 pages
Published 2013 (contents: 2011)
Acquired November 2013
Read August 2014

Doctor Who: A Fairytale Life

Written by Matt Struges

Pencils by Kelly Yates & Brian Shearer
Inks by Brian Shearer, Steve Bird, & Rick Ketcham
Colors by Rachelle Rosenberg
Letters by Shawn Lee & Neil Uyetake

This is kind of a neat idea-- the Doctor taking Amy to a fairytale world-- but it doesn't do enough with it to justify the four issues the story takes to tell. Despite the title, there's not much of Grimm-esque fairytale tropes in use here; rather, the story uses some very generic fantasy trappings, feeling more like we're looking at fairytales via Tolkien via Saturday morning cartoons. So the crashing of Doctor Who into fairytale tropes is maybe not as exciting as it could be. Still, Sturges really captures the voice of the eleventh Doctor in particular, and Amy, and the art by Yates and Shearer is clean and economic-- I hope they turn up on the main IDW title at some point.