The Betrothal of Sontar (From Stockbridge to Segonus: A Doctor Who Magazine Comics Marathon, Part 31)

The Betrothal of Sontar: Collected Comic Strips from the Pages of Doctor Who Magazine
by Mike Collins, Gareth Roberts, Tony Lee, John Tomlinson & Nick Abadzis, Roger Langridge, Martin Geraghty, Jonathan Morris, et al.

Collection published: 2008
Contents originally published: 2006-07
Acquired: November 2008
Previously read: December 2008
Reread: October 2022

This collection spans the entirety of the tenth Doctor and Rose era of DWM, which initiated when "The Christmas Invasion" aired and ran all the way to "The Runaway Bride," and it also includes a (kind of) companion-free storyline from between "The Runaway Bride" and "Smith and Jones," making for a nice sizeable chunk of DWM. Like the comics collected in The Cruel Sea, these are definitely trying to ape the storytelling of the Russell T Davies era on screen, but I also felt there was a more concerted effort to play to the strengths of comics here: more stories that do things so big that they could never have been afforded on screen, or stories with lots of different locations. Overall, it's a pretty pleasing package.

I've read this collection before, way back in 2008 when it came out. This is (part of) what I wrote at the time:

Either way, this collection is a bit of a jumble. The title story by John Tomlinson & Nick Abadzis is fine for the most part, though the resolution is highly disappointing. Tony Lee's "F.A.Q." is an absolute mess, and the usually-dependable Mike Collins isn't up to scratch with "The Futurists"-- it has some nice ideas, but they don't really cohere. Jonathan Morris's "Opera of Doom!" is too slight to be effective. Morris's other effort, "Interstellar Overdrive" is quite fun and mostly faultless, but something always bothers me about stories where our protagonists would have died but for a convenient time loop that lets them do things over (as in Star Trek: The Next Generation's "Cause and Effect" or Deep Space Nine's "Whispers"). It's fun to see the Brigadier in Alan Barnes's "The Warkeeper's Crown", but as I write this review, I can't remember anything else about the story, good or bad. [...] The standouts of the collection are the two "comedy" one-parters: Gareth Roberts's "The Lodger" has the tenth Doctor moving in with Mickey for a week, with hilarious consequences, of course. And Nev Fountain's "The Green Eyed Monster" puts Rose on a reality television show exploring her jealousy of the Doctor's other women-- especially Jackie!

I was curious to see how much my impressions of some of these stories shifted this time around!

from Doctor Who Magazine #365

The Betrothal of Sontar, from Doctor Who Magazine #365-67 (Feb.-Mar. 2006)
story by John Tomlinson & Nick Abadzis, pencils by Mike Collins, inks by David A. Roach, colours by James Offredi, letters by Roger Langridge

This sees the first appearance of the Sontarans in the DWM strip since 1993's Pureblood (and even reuses that story's title term); it's about a group of low-quality Sontarans who run a mining rig instead of getting glorious soldiering duty, a neat look into a different dimension of Sontaran society than we've ever seen on screen. The cosmic maguffin wasn't super interesting, but I liked the two principal Sontaran characters. I'm not sure why in my review above I called this story's resolution "highly disappointing." Like, rereading it I have no idea what my beef was at all.

from Doctor Who Magazine #368

The Lodger, from Doctor Who Magazine #368 (Apr. 2006)
story by Gareth Roberts, pencils by Mike Collins, inks by David A. Roach, colours by James Offredi, letters by Roger Langridge

This was fun; you can see why Moffat picked it up to make it into a tv episode, and though being a 45-minute story gave it more room to breathe, this version has the benefit of pairing the Doctor with a familiar character—and not having to work in an alien threat of some kind. More of a series of vignettes than a story, but a very solid series of them, and the kind of thing that (somewhat ironically) only DWM could do, I think.

from Doctor Who Magazine #370

F.A.Q., from Doctor Who Magazine #369-71 (May-July 2006)
story by Tony Lee, pencils by Mike Collins, inks by David A. Roach, colours by James Offredi, letters by Roger Langridge

I was dreading this one going in. I remembered my negative review from last time around, and having since suffered through Tony Lee's run on IDW's Doctor Who comic book, my opinions of Lee as a comic writer have only diminished. But... I actually kind of liked this? I wouldn't say it's a work of genius or anything—the stories on either side of it are better—but it's fun enough. It has the grounded sensibility of the RTD era, focusing on an ordinary family affected by alien powers, shades of "Fear Her" (a story that I really like). Rose gets some good spotlight moments. The main thing I don't like is the reveal about the teacher who didn't really exist, which seemed kind of pointless. Like, it's spooky, but it doesn't really seem to make a character or thematic point.

from Doctor Who Magazine #373

The Futurists, from Doctor Who Magazine #372-74 (Aug.-Oct. 2006)
story & art by Mike Collins, inks by David A. Roach, colours by James Offredi, letters by Roger Langridge

I really don't know what I was thinking when I wrote my above review, because this story was on fire. Good ideas, great visuals, neat contrasts (black Romans in Britain vs. a fascist Italian state), fast pace—four different key locations in three installments!—nice themes, and above all, good characterization for Rose and some genuine laugh-out-loud jokes. Loved gags about the Silurians, how many people were in the resistance, the use of the resistance, and especially the clever use of the psychic paper. "But Darius... you can't read..." "Oh." I can imagine it playing out perfectly on screen. Rose leading the captured Silurian women in revolt is great, and her voice is captured very well. Exactly the kind of story the strip ought to be doing when the tv show is leading, and the volume's highlight. I don't know how I got it so wrong fourteen years ago.

(Wait... fourteen years ago!?)

from Doctor Who Magazine #375

Interstellar Overdrive, from Doctor Who Magazine #375-76 (Nov.-Dec. 2006)
story by Jonathan Morris, pencils by Mike Collins, inks by David A. Roach, colours by James Offredi, letters by Roger Langridge

I do love time loop stories. They're one of my favorite sf subgenres. TNG's "Cause and Effect," Groundhog Day, SG-1's "Window of Opportunity," Discovery's "Magic to Make the Sanest Man Go Mad," Russian Doll season one, Palm Springs, I love them all. I am a total sucker for them. I even love the chronic hysteresis bit in Meglos.

Um, except this one. I think it's a noble attempt. But it has two things going against it, I reckon. One is that the repetition just isn't as interesting when it's solely visual. Here the scenes are all shown from a different angle, but that means you don't really get that uncanny echo that makes these kind of things work on screen. The second is that since it's only two parts, the loop only repeats once, and so it's less a time loop story, and more a story where something happens once, and then the characters get a do-over. It feels cheap, I guess, if it's that easy to get out of the loop. Seeing the iterations is what makes these kind of things fun!

But there are some good jokes and the part one cliffhanger is a good one.

from Doctor Who Storybook 2007

Opera of Doom!, from Doctor Who Storybook 2007
story by Jonathan Morris, pencils by Martin Geraghty, inks by David A. Roach, colours by James Offredi, letters by Roger Langridge

This story is a delight. Quick, fun, good gags. A little too quick, maybe—the fact that people were disappearing into the alien opera house maybe should have been set up better—but I really enjoyed it. The really terrible musician who becomes amazing is a fun character with lots of good jokes.

The Green-Eyed Monster, from Doctor Who Magazine #377 (Jan. 2007)
story by Nev Fountain, art & letters by Roger Langridge, colours by James Offredi

Rose's last appearance in the strip is a good one, bringing Mickey back again and also marking Jackie's only strip appearance. It's a kind of contrived story about an alien jealousy monster and a talk show, but it's all worth it for the incredible sequence where Rose thinks that the Doctor has settled down with her mother. The ending gag of Jackie wanting a second kiss is delightful.

The Warkeeper's Crown, from Doctor Who Magazine #378-80 (Jan.-Mar. 2007)
story by Alan Barnes, pencils by Martin Geraghty, inks by David A. Roach, colours by James Offredi, letters by Roger Langridge

Rose of course stopped appearing on screen way back in July 2006, but DWM seems to have considered "The Runaway Bride" her official cut-off point as the current companion—the first episode without her as a lead, I guess. So here we get a companion-less story to bridge the gap before Martha, and DWM brings back the Brigadier to serve as a temporary companion. Though the Brigadier appeared in the "past Doctor" early of the early 1990s, I think this is his first present-day appearance since The Mark of Mandragora.

from Doctor Who Magazine #380

It's okay. I liked the first part all right, which pulls the Doctor, the Brigadier, and the wrong Mike Yates together; I liked the last part, where the wrong Mike Yates tries to remake Britain. The middle part, though, lost me in the complicated exposition about the relations on the alien planet, and the whole story suffered as a consequence. I didn't really get the ending, for example. It seemed like things ought to have been simplified. The idea of the Doctor meeting the Brigadier for the first time after he himself fought in a war seemed squandered in a single panel. (Shades of Big Finish's own attempt to do this story, Way of the Burryman, which I read Warkeeper's Crown in the middle of, coincidentally.)

Other Notes:

• #367 is one of the rare issues from this era I actually do own; I picked it up to get the free Big Finish CD that came with it. I have no memory of reading The Betrothal of Sontar part three on its own, but I have to imagine it made no sense.
• John Tomlinson previously wrote for DWM way back in 1989, scripting Nemesis of the Dalek. (He also wrote two Who strips for The Incredible Hulk Presents and a prose story from the collection Abslom Daak: Dalek Killer.) At 210 issues, that's the longest gap between contributions for any DWM writer/artist as of 2014's strips. His cowriter here, Nick Abadzis, would go on to the primary writer of Titan's The Tenth Doctor comic.
  
• From #363 to 368, we have three stories, two of which were by Gareth Roberts and got adapted for television! Plus The Love Invasion inspires a scene in "The Unicorn and the Wasp" on screen. Quite a hit rate for him. The Lodger is, however, his last contribution to the DWM strip.
• I was all prepared to admit I was too hard on Tony Lee as a writer, and then I read his behind-the-scenes I comments. I don't know how one manages to write a bad creator's commentary, but somehow he does. Lots of very belabored jokes, with the kind of self-deprecating humour that comes across as false modesty.
• Jonathan Morris gives an incredible amount of detail in his creator's commentaries, down to entire lost scenes from both his stories. I can't think of another DWM graphic novel with this level of detail. Though I enjoyed Opera of Doom! the lost joke about the very slow gondola chase would have been amazing.



from Doctor Who Magazine #377


• The Green-Eyed Monster opens with a caption reading "Quite a while ago...", which confused me at first, but I guess it's meant to indicate that this goes between "The Girl in the Fireplace" and "Rise of the Cybermen," which was broadcast many months prior. Placement notes aren't really the kind of thing DWM typically goes in for, and it didn't even occur to me we weren't going in chronological order prior to that, since I think every strip here could comfortably fit between "Tooth and Claw" and "School Reunion."
• At the time I read this volume, The Warkeeper's Crown was seemingly Alan Barnes's last contribution to the strip, but he is the writer of the current fourteenth Doctor strip, Liberation of the Daleks, that began in issue #584. In between these points, he wrote one million Doctor Who audio dramas for Big Finish and script-edited ten million.
  
• David A. Roach works on literally every story in this volume except for one ten-page strip, more than any other writer or artist... and somehow does not deserve cover billing!

This post is the thirty-first in a series about the Doctor Who Magazine comic strip and Marvel UK. The next installment covers The Widow's Curse. Previous installments are listed below:

1. The Iron Legion
2. Dragon's Claw 
3. The Transformers Classics UK, Volume One
4. The Tides of Time
5. The Transformers Classics UK, Volume Two
6. Voyager
7. The Transformers Classics UK, Volume Three
8. The World Shapers
9. The Transformers Classics UK, Volume Four
10. The Age of Chaos
11. The Transformers Classics UK, Volume Five
12. A Cold Day in Hell!
13. Death's Head: Freelance Peacekeeping Agent (part 1)
14. Nemesis of the Daleks
15. Death's Head: Freelance Peacekeeping Agent (part 2)
16. The Good Soldier
17. The Incomplete Death's Head
18. Evening's Empire
19. The Daleks
20. Emperor of the Daleks
21. The Sleeze Brothers File
22. The Age of Chaos
23. Land of the Blind
24. Ground Zero
25. End Game
26. The Glorious Dead
27. Oblivion
28. Transformers: Time Wars and Other Stories
29. The Flood
30. The Cruel Sea
    

Doctor Who Free Comic Book Day 2018

Doctor Who Free Comic Book Day 2018

Published: 2018
Read: November 2021

Writers: Nick Abadzis, John Freeman, George Mann, Jody Houser
Artists: Giorgia Sposito & Arianna Florean, Christopher Jones, Mariano Laclaustra, Rachael Stott
Colorists: Marco Lesko, Carlos Cabrera

Letterers: Richard Starkings and Jimmy Betancourt

This Free Comic Book Day offering contains three-and-a-half stories, only one-and-a-half of which have been collected, so I picked it up. It's a weird artifact, in that when it came out, Titan clearly planned to do some stuff it never actually got around to doing; instead, it massively shrank its output when it began its Thirteenth Doctor comic.

It begins with "Catch a Falling Star," a twelfth Doctor story that picks up from the end of The Good Companion, showing Gabby being picked up out of the time vortex by a later incarnation of the Doctor than her own. Mostly it's recap and set-up, one assumes so that people could jump on with the new twelfth-Doctor-and-Gabby comics that the closing caption promised with its "THE ADVENTURE CONTINUES THIS NOVEMBER!" But November 2018 saw no such comics released, nor did any subsequent Novembers, even though Abadzis wrote the scripts. It's cute, though; I always like it when Florean draws Gabby's diary.

It continues with "The Armageddon Gambit," a slim story that serves as an utterly nonessential prologue to Operation Volcano, Titan's seventh Doctor miniseries... but at least that actually came out! Interestingly, it's by John Freeman, editor and occasional writer of the DWM strip during the era the comic seeks to recreate. This is actually collected in the Operation Volcano trade paperback, so you can read it there.

It ends (kind of) with "Midnight Feast," an eleventh Doctor story that offers some faint amusement. This story ends with "THE ELEVENTH DOCTOR WILL RETURN!" He never really did, appearances in The Road to the Thirteenth Doctor and The Many Lives of Doctor Who aside.

It actually ends with "And Introducing...", a one-page three-panel strip where the thirteenth Doctor gets out of the TARDIS, by the Thirteenth Doctor creative team. Not sure if it really needed a writer, but I guess someone had to write "VWOORRRP" down so the letterer knew to put it on the page.

So, overall, a bit of a curio, but if you were invested in Gabby's story from the Tenth Doctor comics, it's definitely worth a few minutes to read what turned out to be the end of her adventures.

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 First Doctor: "In-Between Times"

Doctor Who: The Good Companion by Nick Abadzis and Giorgia Sposito

Doctor Who: The Tenth Doctor: Facing Fate, Vol. 3: The Good Companion

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

Writer: Nick Abadzis
Artist: Giorgia Sposito
Colorists: Adele Matera & Arianna Florean
Letters: Richard Starkings and Jimmy Betancourt

This was pretty good! I think when it works, it's when it focuses on the characters of the tenth Doctor, Cindy, and especially Gabby. Slightly too late, but I felt like I finally understood their dynamic here, and the story was all the better for it. I was prepared to declare this great, but in the last couple issues, the stakes got a bit too abstract, and once again, Abadzis anticipates the Chibnall approach by piling on the characters in any given scene, to its detriment. Do I care about this dude's wife who got replaced by a Time Sentinel? No not really. But the ultimate outcome of Gabby's story is pretty great, and you can see how this leaves the tenth Doctor in a good place for his last few screen adventures. Shame this series ended as it finally regained its footing, though I feel like it might have regained its footing because it was ending.

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: A Confusion of Angels

Doctor Who: The Lost Dimension by George Mann, Cavan Scott, Rachael Stott, Mariano Laclaustra, et al.

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

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

Doctor Who: The Lost Dimension, Book One

Writers: George Mann, Cavan Scott & Nick Abadzis
Artists: Rachael Stott, Adriana Melo, Cris Bolson, Mariano Laclaustra, Carlos Cabrera, Leandro Casco, & I. N. J. Culbard, with Pasquale Qualano, Mony Castillo, Klebs Jr, JR Bastos, & Fer Centurion
Colorists: Rod Fernandes, Marco Lesko, Dijjo Lima, & Hernán Cabrera

Letters: Richard Starkings and Jimmy Betancourt

 

Doctor Who: The Lost Dimension, Book Two

Writers: Gordon Rennie, Emma Beeby, George Mann & Cavan Scott
Artists: Ivan Rodriguez, Wellington Diaz, Rachael Stott & Mariano Laclaustra, with Anderson Cabral, Marcelo Salaza & Fer Centurion
Colorists: Thiago Ribiero, Mauricio Wallace, Rod Fernandes & Carlos Cabrera, with Mony Castillo
Letters: Richard Starkings and Jimmy Betancourt

 

Titan's Doctor Who crossovers got bigger every year. This one is eight issues and two collected editions, and crossed through its ongoings (instead of just featuring characters from them), taking in issues of The Tenth Doctor: Year Three, The Eleventh Doctor: Year Three, and The Twelfth Doctor: Year Three. It also features the ninth Doctor, Rose, Jack, Tara, Madame Vastra, and Jenny; Jenny, the Doctor's daughter; the fourth Doctor and second Romana; and River Song in a set of specials. Plus every other incarnation of the Doctor puts in at least a one-scene cameo. Is that enough already?

 

It is, in fact, too much. It follows the Big Finish model: the characters are mostly separate for most of it, which means they undertake pretty generic adventures, and then the characters come together at the end, which means the narrative doesn't have room for anything other than simple solutions and generic Doctor sniping... something we've seen twice in the past two years! I have posited in the past that Big Finish's nostalgic crossovers are pointless because they bring together characters we see in ongoing adventures all the time already, and the same is true here. There is no novelty to bringing "back" the tenth Doctor, Gabby, and Cindy when I read their adventures already. The only characters we don't already see all the time in Titan adventures are Jenny, the fourth Doctor and Romana, and River, but the first of those I had no desire to see come back, and the others I listen to the adventures of already via Big Finish. (Plus, I didn't find the stories or dialogue very good; the River story in particular was confusingly written and poorly illustrated.)

 

If we aren't getting nostalgia, then we're not getting anything, because this story isn't really about anything. A dimension turns people into mindless zombies... as Doctor Who threats go, it's definitively bottom tier and generic. Does this story have any interesting themes or clever characterization? Basically, no. The one exception is the Eleventh Doctor issue, which isn't by any of the regular Eleventh Doctor writers but is at least by regular Eleventh Doctor artists Leandro Casco and I. N. J. Culbard. It's a decent tale of the eleventh Doctor and Alice being trapped on ancient Gallifrey and becoming inadvertently involved with the Time Lord's early TARDIS experiments. The rest of it all is sound and fury, signifying nothing. I'm glad that after three goes, Titan finally abandoned these annual events; I had mixed thoughts about Four Doctors, but it was overall pretty interesting. The latter two have been exercises in tedium.

 

(If, like me, you are curious about what issues are collected where, the collected editions give incomplete information, and the Tardis wiki is flat-out wrong. Book one collects what was originally published as parts 1-4 and 7: The Lost Dimension: Alpha #1, Ninth Doctor Special #1, The Tenth Doctor: Year Three #9, The Eleventh Doctor: Year Three #10, and the Jenny and Alice stories from The Lost Dimension Special #2. Book two contains parts 5, 7, 6, and 8 in that order: the fourth Doctor story from The Lost Dimension Special #1, the River Song story from The Lost Dimension Special #1 and 2, The Twelfth Doctor: Year Three #8, and The Lost Dimension: Omega #1. Thanks to a friendly Gallifrey Base poster for working this out for me. Not confusing at all! I also have a feeling the credits are incomplete or inaccurate.)

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: The Good Companion

Doctor Who: Vortex Butterflies by Nick Abadzis, Giorgia Sposito, Iolanda Zanfardino, et al.

Doctor Who: The Tenth Doctor: Facing Fate, Vol 2: Vortex Butterflies

 

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

Writer: Nick Abadzis
Artists: Giorgia Sposito with Arianna Florean & Iolanda Zanfardino
Colorists: Arianna Florean with Nicola Righi
Letterers: Richard Starkings and Jimmy Betancourt

The uphill climb of The Tenth Doctor continues—so help me, I actually enjoyed this! Every time the action flashed to what "Noob" was doing, my interest plummeted, but aside from that, this was a solid tenth Doctor comic. Unlike previous stories in this series, it keeps the focus on the characters and their emotions, following up on the emotional fall-out from the pretty intense things that the tenth Doctor, Gabby, and Cindy have gone through; the appearance of Sarah Jane Smith could be gratuitous, but is a perfect grace note here, too. There's a strong sense of increasing desperation as events escalate (some Titan storylines are pretty badly paced but not this one), and the way the imagery of the Jon Pertwee title sequence is used is pretty damn clever. I am excited to see where this series wraps up in the next volume.

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 Wolves of Winter

Review: Doctor Who: Breakfast at Tyranny's by Nick Abadzis, Giorgia Sposito, and Valeria Favoccia

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

Doctor Who: The Tenth Doctor: Facing Fate, Vol 1: Breakfast at Tyranny's

Writer: Nick Abadzis
Artists: Giorgia Sposito & Valeria Favoccia
Colorist: Arianna Florean
Letters: Richard Starkings and Jimmy Betancourt

The opening story of The Tenth Doctor: Year Three is better than anything this series has served us in a while, but it still doesn't grab me. At first, aliens place the Doctor and his companions (who now include "Noob," actually the Phaester Osiran / Egyptian god Anubis) in a simulation of Gabby's life in New York City, and they have to break out of it. Pretty trope-y and kind of dull. The next story, where the Doctor and Gabby (and Noob, I guess) have to rescue Cindy from ancient China, where she's been cloned dozens of times, is more interesting, but occasionally had odd leaps that disrupted my experience. Abadzis experiments with storytelling techniques, which is fun, but these feel like sci-fi characters, not people.

But people told me Year Three was worth it even if I didn't like Year Two at all, and so I am trying to be open minded. We shall see how it goes!

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 Ninth Doctor: Sin Eaters

Review: Doctor Who: War of Gods by Nick Abadzis, James Peaty, Giorgia Sposito, Warren Pleece, et al.

With this, I am finally caught up on reviewing my Titan Doctor Who comics, so finally I can review something else! Until I read some more, anyway...

Collection published: 2017
Contents originally published: 2016-17
Read: May 2021

Doctor Who: The Tenth Doctor, Vol 7: War of Gods

Writers: Nick Abadzis, James Peaty
Artists: Giorgia Sposito, Warren Pleece with Arianna Florean
Colorists: Arianna Florean, Adele Matera
Letterers: Richard Starkings and Jimmy Betancourt

To be honest, this is wretched. A series that began by emulating Russell T Davies's "domestic" style has ended up embracing the "planet Zog" style of Doctor Who he used to rail against. The Osirians are doing some kind of evil space thing, and all space itself is under threat. Who cares? I found the dimensions of the threat murky and confusing (I swear three different issues ended with Sutekh being released from captivity), I don't care about Anubis or the actress lady, and the personal hook of Gabby and Cindy is pretty much nonexistent. Bad and dull. Giorgia Sposito is fine as an artist, but she's no Elena Casagrande or Eleonora Carlini. I wanted to jump off the book at this point, but some people claim Year Three is a return to form, and my library has it all via Hoopla, so I guess I'll give it a shot.

There's also a one-issue story set during vol 6, about Gabby going to London for the first time. I didn't find the idea that the Doctor would be all mopey about London because Rose, Martha, and Donna were from there very convincing (it seems to me that he has a lot more London memories from across 900 years of life, and we've never seen him react to a place like that before), and I don't think Warren Pleece's art is a good match for the tenth Doctor (loved him on The Eleventh Doctor, though), but aside from that it was a fine enough insubstantial 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: The Third Doctor: Heralds of Destruction

Review: Doctor Who: Sins of the Father by Nick Abadzis, Giorgia Sposito, Eleonora Carlini, et al.

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

Doctor Who: The Tenth Doctor, Vol 6: Sins of the Father

Writers: Nick Abadzis [with Andrew James]
Artists: Eleonora Carlini & Giorgia Sposito, with Leandro Casco, Simon Fraser & Walter Geovanni
Colorists: Arianna Florean, with Azzurra Florean, Mattia De Lulis, Adele Matera, Rod Fernandes & Gary Caldwell
Letters: Richard Starkings and Jimmy Betancourt

This volume contains three things: a two-issue story about the Doctor, Gabby, and Cindy in New Orleans during the Jazz Age; the first two issues of a five-part story about the Osirians (the last three parts are in vol 7); and a short story about the tenth, eleventh, and twelfth Doctors.

The jazz one seems like it has potential... but as I said when I read this title's earlier story about living sound, surely comics is the medium least suited to telling a story about music? I also don't really understand what the writing is trying to do with the Doctor's dynamics with his companions now that he has two of them; I feel like the three of them are always getting mad at each other for reasons I have not actually been told about, like writer Nick Abadzis has forgotten to put on the page what ideas he has in his head about how these characters relate to each other. On top of that, I found the climax to this one very confusing in terms of script and art. Giorgia Sposito is good at likenesses and her art is attractive, but her storytelling skills aren't always up to it.

from Doctor Who: The Tenth Doctor: Year Two #11
(art by Giorgia Sposito)

As for the Osirian one... well, this title plummets into mediocrity every time that storyline comes up, and this installment is no exception. Dull dull dull planet Zog stuff. It has never been clear to me why I should care, and it still isn't. The twists and turns seem arbitrary and random. Ancient Gallifrey? Why not! I can only hope that when vol 7 brings it to a climax, that that will be the end of it all. At least we have some Elenora Carlini art, but I really wish she was getting to illustrate a more "domestic" story that plays to her strengths. We seem to have all but forgotten the set-up of Gabby's home life in New York City, something that Russell T Davies (who this series seeks to emulate) would never have done.

The short story about three Doctors and the word "con" is cute. For once, Titan remembers to credit the illustrators of a bonus short in the trade... but they still don't credit the writer!

Also the cover once again has pretty poor choices of models. If I can't tell which one is meant to be Gabby (a Hispanic woman) and which one is meant to be Cindy (a Chinese-Canadian woman), I feel like you've really screwed up!

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 Malignant Truth

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

The Transformers Classics UK, Volume Four (From Stockbridge to Segonus: A Doctor Who Magazine Comics Marathon, Part 9)

Collection published: 2013
Contents originally published: 1987
Read: February 2021

The Transformers Classics UK, Volume Four

editorial notes and assistance by James Roberts

Written by Simon Furman, Ian Rimmer, and Lew Stringer

Pencils by Geoff Senior, Will Simpson, Dan Reed, Jeff Anderson, and Lew Stringer

Inks by Geoff Senior, Tim Perkins, Dan Reed, Stephen Baskerville, Dave Harwood, David Elliot, and Lew Stringer

Colors by Steve White, Euan Peters, and Abadzis
Letters by Annie Halfacree, Richard Starkings, and Mike Scott

So far, Marvel UK's The Transformers has been on a nice upward trajectory: that comes to an end with this volume. It does get off to a nice start with the sequence of stories about Rodimus Prime of 2007 hiring a bounty hunter to kill Galvatron, who ends up tracking him to Earth of 1987 ("Wanted: Galvatron, Dead or Alive!"/"Burning Sky!"/"Hunters!"/"Fire on High!"/"Vicious Circle!"). The bounty hunter is Death's Head, who will be the character who connects Transformers to Doctor Who Magazine in the long run. You can see why Death's Head went on to get his own spin-off: he's a fun, expressive, dynamic character, and the four-way collision we get here between Death's Head, Galvatron, the Autobots of 1987, and the Autobots of 2007 is kind of explosive stuff Furman excels at. Big, fast-paced action, with enjoyable characters. I liked the IDW Ultra Magnus, and I am quickly coming to appreciate the Marvel UK Ultra Magnus as well, even though he's a very different character. (I am not sure why it is taking him months to locate the Ark, though!)

Kind of awkward to have your hand shot off, yes?
from The Transformers #120 (script by Simon Furman, art by Geoff Senior)

After that, though, it's a bit of a mix. There's "Ancient Relics!", a crossover with Action Force (the UK equivalent of G. I. Joe) that is mostly just tedious, uninteresting action sequences, with none of Furman's character flare. There's "Worlds Apart!", a really uninteresting tale of some Headmasters on Nebulos, apparently slotting in during an issue of the US Headmasters miniseries that hadn't even been reprinted in the UK mag yet at the time it came out.* And there's the UK retelling of the Headmasters series, and what can I say about the Headmaster concept except that I just really really hate it, because it overloads an already overloaded series with uninteresting characters.

Apparently the UK version of "The Headmaster Saga" presents a whole different reason the Headmasters traveled to Earth than the one the US stories gave, yes?
from The Transformers Annual 1987 (art by unknown)

But there is some decent stuff here, even if it doesn't rise to the high points of volume three. "Kup's Story" (a flashback of how Kup met Rodimus) is fun, as is "Ark Duty" (a flashback of Kup and Rodimus in the period leading up to Transformers: The Movie). The return of the Dinobots in "Grudge Match" was kind of silly (I liked the Dinobots throwing down the Predacons, but I didn't buy that they would let them off so easy), though I did like the "What's in a Name?" lead-in story that revealed Swoop's secret shame over "losing" his name. The "Ladies' Night" story, uniting three female characters from across the UK run, might have been more successful if the artists here were more skilled at drawing humans, not robots, but it was fine.

So that's what Rodimus Prime's alt mode looks like, yes?
from The Transformers #118 (script by Simon Furman, art by Jeff Anderson & Stephen Baskerville)

I did have to love "Stargazing," where a human boy teaches Starscream-- Starscream!-- the true meaning of Christmas. He thinks he's succeeded, but Starscream just wants to get one up on an Autobot.

This kid is Starscream's most compelling nemesis, yes?
from The Transformers #145 (plot by Simon Furman, script by Ian Rimmer, art by Jeff Anderson & Stephen Baskerville)

And Death's Head reappears in "Headhunt," which gives us our first glimpse of a 21st-century storyline not tied to the 20th-century one. I am curious to see how that is going forward, and how Furman pulls all the strands-- of which there are a lot at this point-- together. But this volume itself felt more like a chore than any previous one.

* The chronology gets a bit complicated here. The UK stories collected here (#113-45) overlap with the US stories collected in The Transformers Classics, Vol. 3, but those stories also overlap with the Headmasters miniseries, which wasn't collected until the US Classics, Vol. 7. And some of these UK stories fit in during Headmasters, and others are set purely in the future, and one ongoing plot from the UK strip is only tied up in the annual. And then also some of the US issues during this time reprinted UK strips! I suggest something like this, but your mileage may vary, and this also means you need to save some of the UK strips from this volume until you get to UK volume five: US #26-27; UK #113-20; "Vicious Circle!" (from UK Annual 1987); US #28; UK #125; US #29-30; UK #132; "Ark Duty" (from UK Annual 1987); UK #133-34; Headmasters #1; US #31; "What's in a Name?" (from UK Annual 1987); UK #135-38; US #32; Headmasters #2; "Doomsday for Nebulos"/"Stylor's Story" (from UK Annual 1987); Headmasters #3; US #35-36; UK #145-53; US #37; Headmasters #4; UK #130-31; "The Final Conflict" (from UK Annual 1987); US #38. This does rather stretch out Headmasters, so it functions as a sort of "meanwhile... in space" in advance of their appearance in #38. Okay wow that is messy... I should just do a Transformers reading order post at some point.

This post is the ninth in a series about the Doctor Who Magazine comic strip and Marvel UK. The next installment covers The Age of Chaos. Previous installments are listed below:

1. The Iron Legion
2. Dragon's Claw 
3. The Transformers Classics UK, Volume One
4. The Tides of Time
5. The Transformers Classics UK, Volume Two
6. Voyager
7. The Transformers Classics UK, Volume Three
8. The World Shapers
   

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.