Review: Doctor Who: Four Doctors by Paul Cornell, Neil Edwards, et al.

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

Doctor Who: Four Doctors

Writer: Paul Cornell
Artists: Neil Edwards, with Arianna Florean, Marc Ellerby, Rachael Smith, and Neil Slorance
Colorist: Ivan Nunes
Letters: Richard Starkings and Jimmy Betancourt

Not to be confused with Big Finish's The Four Doctors, Titan's Four Doctors is actually unique among multi-Doctor stories. Most feature a "current" Doctor and a number of "past" Doctors; the current Doctor's story is still being told, but the past Doctors' stories no longer are. Or, as in the way Big Finish often does it, all the Doctors are past Doctors. But in a sense, the tenth, eleventh, and twelfth Doctors are all "current" Doctor because they were all featuring in ongoing series at the time they appeared in Four Doctors; this is a proper crossover in that it crosses over all three of Titan's then-ongoing series. So we have the tenth Doctor with Gabby (presumably fresh from the events of The Fountains of Forever), the eleventh Doctor with Alice (late of Conversion), and the twelfth Doctor with Clara (though this must go before the events of Hyperion, as there was a reference to Danny Pink being dead in that collection, which hasn't yet happened here). So in a way we don't normally see with multi-Doctor stories, this could have ramifications for the ongoing adventures of the earlier Doctors, not just the current ones.

from Doctor Who: Four Doctors #4 (art by Neil Edwards)

All that said, I felt the story didn't actually do that. It's nice to see Gabby and Alice here, but in this crowded story, they are generic companions, with none of the flavor of their main series, except for a brief excerpt from Gabby's sketchbook. This is much more a twelfth Doctor story, as the story turns on a choice he made in the television program being changed to create an alternate timeline.

from Doctor Who: Four Doctors #3 (art by Neil Edwards)

Cornell's story is a bit too complicated at times, but really the whole thing is there to justify some multi-Doctor sparkle, and the story makes that work admirably. Cornell has a good handle on the voices of all three Doctors, and their banter is a delight. But it's not just banter, it's personality-- like I said, the whole story hinges on a believable but terrible act on the part of the twelfth Doctor. Plus, the story is actually about something, which is not true of so many of the Big Finish multi-Doctor stories I have heard; yes, the time shenanigans seem gratuitously complicated, but the whole story is about the Doctor's fear on the day that he forgets to fight it. Plus there are some charming ideas, like Clara trying to stop all the incarnations of the Doctor from converging on the same Parisian cafe.

from Doctor Who: Four Doctors #4 (art by Neil Edwards)

Artist Neil Edwards is pretty good at likenesses, which is essential for a comic like this to really work, though I thought he did better at the companions than the Doctors. His Clara is perfect, and he also does a very good job with Gabby, even though she has no (as far as I know) real person referent. Definitely better than many of the artists of the actual Tenth Doctor ongoing! (Although there's a brief River Song cameo, and his Alice Kingston is unrecognizable.)

from Doctor Who: Four Doctors #5 (art by Neil Edwards)

All this plus some jokes about the Doctors doing stand-up. And the Voord? I don't think this is perfect (too much time spent on time shenanigans), but as an attempt to do something interesting with the often creaky genre of the multi-Doctor story, it succeeds admirably.

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: The Endless Song

Faster than a DC Bullet: Project Crisis!, Part LI: Final Crisis Aftermath: Escape

Comic trade paperback, n.pag.
Published 2010 (contents: 2009)
Borrowed from the library
Read August 2015

Final Crisis Aftermath: Escape

Writer: Ivan Brandon

Pencillers: Marco Rudy, Cliff Richards, Neil Edwards
Inkers: Mick Gray, Jack Purcell, JP Mayer, Prentis Rollins
Colorists: The Hories
Letterer: Sal Cipriano

I don't know why all the Final Crisis Aftermath books have verbs for subtitles, but I kind of like it. It would have been even better if they'd all used exclamation marks like Run!, though. Isn't Escape! a much better title than Escape?

In my review of Ink, I said it was my favorite FCA tale, but this one has supplanted it. This is the first of them that doesn't feel like the writer is trying to make something out of Grant Morrison's leftovers, that feels like its writer actually has his own story to tell. Ivan Brandon and Marco Rudy pick up some time after the end of Final Crisis, with its hints about Brother Eye and a Global Peace Agency. In Escape, Tom Tresser-- apparently a master of disguise called "Nemesis," but a new character to me-- wakes up in the Electric City, a sort of prison, a weird surreal prison whose wardens insist it's not a prison, and where his fellow inmates who know him refuse to talk to him. Many of the other prisoners seem to be characters who also worked for the government: Amanda Waller, Rick Flag, Blackhawk (I'm not sure which one-- Janos Prohaska?), Atomic Knight, Cameron Chase, the Spy Smasher.

The writing and the art are both deliberately disorienting, with Brandon providing little in the way of answers and Rudy embedding panels within panels to put the reader off from following the story. The characters don't know who to trust, they don't know who put them where they are or why, and imprisonment might not even be the purpose of their jailers. I was often confused by this story, but always intrigued, as the answers always felt just outside of my grasp. It reminded me-- quite deliberately, I suspect-- of The Prisoner, and that's almost always a good thing. The wheel with the options of DEATH, FREE, PEACE, VIOLENCE, ESCAPE, PANIC, RESET was a great surreal touch, and the seeming time travel elements were perfect icing on the cake of confusion.

I expected the end to be one of those endings that explains nothing, but to my surprise just enough explanations were provided to make me feel like there was a logic to this, and to intrigue me to read on. There was a purpose to everything that happened, one that stems from the events of Final Crisis and has repercussions for the future. I do want to know how the Buddy Blank and Brother Eye we see here relate to the ones from Countdown to Final Crisis and Final Crisis itself, though; that wasn't terribly clear.

Overall, I really enjoyed this. It was bold, it was different, and despite its obvious debts to both The Prisoner and Jack Kirby, I didn't feel like I'd ever encountered anything quite like it. I look forward to seeing what happens to Tom next, and unlike with most of these Final Crisis Aftermath tales, I actually can; Ivan Brandon apparently wrote a followup miniseries called Nemesis: The Impostors. Sadly, it's uncollected, so I'll have to find the floppies somewhere.

Next Week: That's it for Final Crisis and its tie-ins, so I jump backwards slightly to continue my superhero prose fiction reading project with the novelization of Countdown!