Marvel's The Transformers Year One, Part I: The Enemy Within! (US #1-3 & 33-34 / UK #1-6 & 9-17)

From November 2015 to May 2016, I read the Transformers comics included by IDW in some Humble Bundles; this included The Transformers Classics vols. 1-4, which collected issues #1-50 of the US Marvel monthly Transformers comic.

Later, from December 2020 to April 2021, as part of my readthrough of the Doctor Who Magazine comic, I read IDW's The Transformers Classics UK, vols. 1-5. (The two are connected via the character of Death's Head, who travelled from the Transformers universe to the Marvel one via the Doctor Who one.) These collected the UK-exclusive comic strips up to issue #173 of that comic. (I subsequently tracked down some Titan collections to fill in the rest of the UK run, which took me from January 2022 to March 2023.)

The thing is, though, that about half of the UK comic was actually reprints of US material, and the UK material was designed to fit around it; basically, as the UK comic was 11 pages weekly, they didn't have enough content if they only reprinted the monthly 22-page US book. So UK stories expanded the US saga, as seamlessly as possible. 

Yet, the UK strips have only ever been reprinted on their own, not with the surrounding context of the US strips they are meant to fit into even though they are kind of weird and jumpy if you don't have US strips to hand! So as I read a UK strip, I had to strain to vaguely recall what had happened in a US strip I had read five years previous. And eventually I got beyond the point where I had even read the US strips.

So I decided that someday I would read them all in something approximating chronological order. When IDW dropped the Transformers license, I purchased all the remaining collected editions I would need on comiXology.

But by the time I actually got around to reading these books, I didn't need to! In 2025, new Transformers comic publisher Skybound crowdfunded a massive collection of the complete runs of both the US and UK strips... in internal chronological order! The Til All Are One Compendium takes up four absolutely massive hardcovers, but obviously I couldn't pass them up. 

So now that I've finished Black Panther, that will be my next "filler" comics project, reading either a US issue or the equivalent of one every day. (Early on, the UK strip was usually eleven pages; later, things got more complicated.) I won't be using the order given in the TAAO compendiums, though, because of course I've worked out my own. (I don't have a problem with theirs; indeed, I think some of their choices probably read more smoothly than mine!) Like all of my reading orders, it aims to balance chronology with narrative experience, incorporating flashback and flashforward stories where they make sense, not where they happen.

I'll be writing them up in batches of seven, so that I do one writeup a week. Thus here we start off with the first three issues of US comic (reprinted in the first six issues of the UK comic), and the first two UK-original stories, (supposedly) set during those US issues...

"The Transformers" / "Power Play!" / "Prisoner of War!" (part 1) / Man of Iron / "Prisoner of War!" (part 2) / The Enemy Within!, from The Transformers US #1-3 & 33-34 (Sept. 1984–Jan. 1985 & Oct.-Nov. 1987) / The Transformers UK #1-6 & 9-17 (20 Sept.–1 Dec. 1984 & 12 Jan.–4 May 1985); reprinted in The Transformers: Til All Are One Compendium One (2025)

plot by Bill Mantlo; scripts by Ralph Macchio, Jim Salicrup, Steve Parkhouse, and Simon Furman; pencils by Frank Springer, John Ridgway, and Mike Collins; inks by Kim DeMulder (with Mike Esposito), John Ridgway, and Mike Collins; lettering by Higgins & Parker, Janice Chiang (with others), and Richard Starkings; coloring by Nelson Yomtov, Josie Firmin, and Gina Hart

 

from The Transformers US #1

The US Transformers series began with what was intended to be a four-issue miniseries, though it's obvious that by the time issue #4 was written, that plan had already changed, as issue #4 sets up a number of ongoing plots. The first two issues have a lot to do, setting up the basic premise of The Transformers for an audience totally unfamiliar with it; plotter Bill Mantlo and scripter Ralph Macchio really pack in the exposition. The opening, about Cybertron, is fine... I find the big panels containing ten characters all telling each other their names and gimmicks much more contrived! This speaks to what will eternally be my issue with the Transformers comics: there are often just too many characters. And because new toys are always coming out, new characters always have to be worked in, so no one ever remains in the spotlight for long. (It's probably no coincidence that my two favorite Transformers series, Beast Wars/Machines and More than Meets the Eye/Lost Light, have limited casts.)

 

The moments that shined for me, then, were the ones that kept things focused on a smaller cast: I liked the emphasis on Ravage here, Megatron's loyal servant (something that continues into the following UK stories), and I appreciated the emphasis on the human characters to keep things focused and grounded, though it's surprising (both given the big emphasis on him here, and given what future versions of this story have done) that there's not much of an ongoing connecting between Buster Witwicky and Bumblebee after this. 

from The Transformers UK #9

Things get a bit complicated if you're trying to reach chronologically. The first UK story, Man of Iron (released in UK issues #9-12), represents a status quo that really only existed for the opening US story (released in UK issues #1-8), so it must somehow take place during its events, even though there's no noticeable gap. I followed the placement advice of the Transformers wiki and read it during issue #3 of the US comic, after p. 10. This almost kind of works, but does mean you have to assume Buster's dad Sparkplug is slaving away as prisoner of the Decepticons while everyone goes to England! Man of Iron is great, a story about the Autobot/Decepticon war affecting the life of a kid, almost entirely told from the point-of-view of that kid, and thus the Transformers are alien and inscrutable and brutal. (Surely it is one of the peaks of what the fan writer "Broadside" calls Budianskian storytelling.) I have read it twice before, since IDW collected it in both Transformers Classics and Transformers Classics UK, as it was the only UK story to also appear in the US strip. In its original US appearance, it came after issue #32, where it was quite a jarring change of tone, but reading it here, I found it flowed a lot more smoothly. We just don't know the Autobots that well yet, and the tendency of the Decepticons to engage in wacky plots involving car-washes and graffiti hasn't taken off yet; they are still ruthless attackers from an alien world.

 

After this, we segue back into the second half of US issue #3, where Spider-Man teams up with Gears to rescue Buster's dad. This is fine but weird. Later, the idea these comics took place in the Marvel universe would be quietly and wisely forgotten.

 

from The Transformers UK #14

Chronologically, things are still difficult, because the UK story The Enemy Within! (#13-17) supposedly also takes place during the original miniseries, but Megatron mentions Spider-Man, so evidently after US #3, where there is even less of the gap. Put that aside, though, and I found this one of the stronger stories of this first run. We have two parallel stories: in one, the Autobot Brawn malfunctions and begins attacking humans; once he's been recaptured and repaired, he needs to prove himself to his comrades. In the other, Starscream tries to plot against Megatron but is found out by Ravage; he needs a way to bring himself back into the Decepticon fold. Once again, I really like the emphasis on the loyal but sinister Ravage. In general, I'm happy to see Mike Collins artwork... but the wimpy arms of Brawn (which I assume are toy accurate?) belie his given name!

 

Overall, I think what is interesting is that I found myself much more sympathetic to the US material than I remember being first time around. Maybe I haven't read enough for the antipathy to set in, but I also think I have a stronger sense of what it's going for and thus appreciate its successes more. We'll see if I still think that way when we get to the car wash!

 

This is the first in a series of posts about Marvel's The Transformers. The next covers US issues #4-8 and UK issues #7-8 & 18-30.

The Incomplete Death's Head (From Stockbridge to Segonus: A Doctor Who Magazine Comics Marathon, Part 17)

After his appearance in The Sensational She-Hulk, Death's Head was killed off in Marvel UK's Death's Head II miniseries—and as that title might imply, he was replaced by Death's Head II. DHII had the original Death's Head's memories, but was otherwise his own character. I am not so interested in pursuing the Death's Head strand that I would follow any of DHII's appearances. To my eyes, he has a very generic 1990s killer cyborg look, and none of the knowing humor that makes the original Death's Head work. 

However, Death's Head II was Marvel UK's smash hit, and an ongoing series was quickly commissioned, and DHII was dropped into every other Marvel UK book he could fit into. As I understand it, Marvel UK couldn't produce DHII content fast enough, and so they commissioned The Incomplete Death's Head, a twelve-issue reprint series. Its conceit was that DHII, along with his partner Tuck, ended up in an archive devoted to the original Death's Head, whose memories were replayed for them; each issue usually had one to two pages of new material framing an archival story. In addition to reprinting the original Death's Head vol. 1, it also reprinted Doctor Who Magazine #135, 140, and 173, Dragon's Claws #5, Marvel Comics Presents #76, and Sensational She-Hulk #24. (Death's Head doesn't appear in DWM #140, but the story features characters who reappear in Death's Head #5, reprinted in Incomplete Death's Head #6.) The major omissions are Fantastic Four #338, the The Body in Question graphic novel, and all of Death's Head Transformers appearances.

In the normal course of events, I wouldn't pick this up, but I had my reasons. The first is that it contains two stories Marvel didn't reprint in their 2019 Death's Head: Freelance Peacekeeping Agent trade, one of which features the Doctor and DWM's Josiah W. Dogbolter. The other is that the frame story actually features both the Doctor and Hob, Dogbolter's robotic assistant from DWM. It's actually set during "Party Animals" (DWM #173), which was reprinted in The Good Soldier, so I read it after that collection, even though that's slightly out of publication sequence. I did dutifully read the whole thing, but in this write-up I am just going to focus on the three new-to-me stories. Just let me tell you that any story featuring Dragon's Claws does not get better on a second reading.

The first story I hadn't read before is a simple one-page tale just called "Death's Head!", though many people on the Internet call it "High Noon Tex." Basically, Death's Head goes and gets a guy with his usual style, the end. Cute but not essential. I have no idea what this wasn't reprinted in Freelance Peacekeeping Agent, given it's only a page and Marvel clearly ought to have the rights to it, given the story of its genesis.

from The Incomplete Death's Head #1
(script by Simon Furman, art by Bryan Hitch)

The oft-repeated story about it is that Marvel UK quickly had it made after Death's Head's first appearance in The Transformers #113 was written and drawn, but before it was published, and then published it in various Marvel UK titles before TF #113 actually appeared. Since it featured Death's Head but not the Transformers, that would make Death's Head a Marvel character who happened to appear in The Transformers (akin to Spider-Man), instead of a Transformers character, so Marvel UK would hold the copyright instead of Hasbro. They could tell he was going to be a breakout star and didn't want to be limited in what they could do with him.

I can find no evidence this actually happened. No one on the Internet provides any specific issues this strip supposedly appeared in. Indeed, most of the evidence I can find indicates this is not true. The notes in Incomplete Death's Head #1 say "the original appearance of Death's Head was a one page strip called High Noon Tex (reprinted this issue) which set the tone for the character. Originally, it had been intended as a one-off page to appear in a British comics fanzine, Scan." No mention of any Marvel UK title; indeed, the main thing we know is where it did not appear. As a Wikipedia sleuth drew my attention to, the strip is drawn by Bryan Hitch, who was not yet active as a comics artist when TF #113 came out in 1987... and indeed, it is clearly signed "Hitch '88" in its final panel. As far as I can tell, it actually originally debuted as a back-up strip in Transformers #167 in March 1988, the month before Death's Head made his first non-Transformers appearance in DWM #135's "The Crossroads of Time." So sure, Marvel UK was establishing Death's Head as a Marvel character... but seemingly retroactively and belatedly, no matter what has been claimed elsewhere.

The other omission from the FPA trade is much more understandable: Death's Head #8, "Time Bomb!", features the Doctor, Josiah W. Dogbolter, and Hob, and thus Marvel would need BBC permission to reprint. Unfortunately, it's a pivotal story for Death's Head, establishing how he went from 8162 in the Doctor Who universe to bouncing around in time in the Marvel universe. (It's also pivotal for DWM from a chronological perspective; because Dogbolter appears in it, it's the reason we know that a vast number of DWM characters including Frobisher, the Free-Fall Warriors, Sharon, and Olla the Heat Vampire reside in the 82nd century.)

It's been interesting to note in my DWM readthrough that the idea of a DWM universe hasn't really emerged yet; usually, writers do not reference the idea of previous eras of the strip. This is one of the first times something created for DWM has been brought back later; Dogbolter appeared in two fifth and sixth Doctor strips from 1984, five years before "Time Bomb!" (Abslom Daak was the first, back in Nemesis of the Daleks.) The reason he made a comeback is because "Time Bomb!" is the only Death's Head vol. 1 story (and, indeed, the first-ever Death's Head story) not written be Simon Furman; it's penned by Steve Parkhouse, regular DWM writer from 1981 to 1985, and creator of Dogbolter.

from The Incomplete Death's Head #9
(script by Steve Parkhouse,
art by Art Wetherell & Steve Parkhouse)

Thankfully, this isn't just a keystone story for both Death's Head and DWM, it's also very good. Dogbolter has created a time machine, and he hires Death's Head to kill the Doctor. What Death's Head doesn't know is that the time machine itself is a bomb, so the Doctor and Death's Head end up working together to turn the tables on Dogbolter. The previous Death's Head/Doctor Who team-up, "The Crossroads of Time," didn't work for me because it wasn't much of a story in general, and it wasn't a good Doctor Who story in specific. Despite the fact that this is a Death's Head story, it feels more like Death's Head turning up in a Doctor Who story than the other way around, and it's all the better for it. Parkhouse writes a good Death's Head, but there's a certain goofy charm that only Doctor Who can yield: Death's Head is initially lost in time when trying to find the Doctor, so we get some quick historical hijinks. (My favorite gag is when Death's Head thinks he's found his mother.) Then when he does find the Doctor, he's acting in a pantomime! The cuts between the Doctor and Death's Head in one strand, and Dogbolter and Hob in the other, are effectively done. Overall, this is a nice story, and I was glad I tracked down this series to read it.

As I said, the whole set of reprints has a frame. I think it runs about thirty pages in total across the twelve issues. In the first issue, it's called "Connections," in the second, "Mind Meet!", and after that it has no title. The credits are also inconsistent; how I've indicated them below is how they are given in the book.

Death's Head II and his sidekick Tuck are teleported to an unknown location; Tuck is attacked by robots while DHII is uploaded into cyberspace, and both watch memories of the original Death's Head. Eventually, the original Death's Head joins DHII in cyberspace.

Eventually, we learn a number of things:

• This is Maruthea, the planet at the heart of the space-time vortex from the DWM strip "Party Animals."
• This in fact is set during "Party Animals"; in the middle of its events, both the seventh Doctor and the original Death's Head come to aid DHII and Tuck.
• The archive was made by Hob, Dogbolter's assistant. Dogbolter was destroyed by the bomb in "Time Bomb!", but Hob was flung into the space-time vortex and eventually ended up on Maruthea.
• The Doctor has been manipulating Death's Head's life longer than we knew: he shrunk him down and sent him into the Transformers universe to begin with. He also wipes the original Death's Head's mind of the events of "Party Animals" and this story to maintain the timeline.
  

I mean, it's fine. It does what it needs to, I guess. Like I said, there's no Transformers content here; it's just called a "robot universe." I thought it was curious to establish that Death's Head didn't come from this universe, given that he himself is a robot, though now that I think about it, that might be consistent with what we learned about his origins in The Body in Question, so I guess I didn't think that through enough. I thought it was odd that the vague references to the robot universe aren't actually consistent with the Transformers comics, as it seems like it would have been easy to make them so.

What I don't understand is why this whole story takes place during a Doctor Who one, and why in the process of writing the Transformers out of Death's Head's backstory, they write the Doctor in. One would think that Marvel UK had just learned its lesson about incorporating licensed characters into the backstory of their original characters! Like, this story can never be reprinted now for the very same reason that the Transformers ones couldn't be at the time.

(For an archive on Death's Head's history, the events of The Body in Question seem like a staggering omission... but I imagine that the 1990 collection was still in print when this came out, so it wasn't needed here.)

I am not sure what I think about Hob becoming a gigantic death robot who is also insane. I don't exactly remember how Dogbolter and Hob return in DWM, but I feel pretty certain all this will be ignored.

from The Incomplete Death's Head #2
(script by Dan Abnett, art by Simon Coleby)

Nothing about this story made me rethink my preconceptions of Death's Head II. He is clearly the inferior character to the original, and I don't understand how anyone could think otherwise. His partner Tuck is all the worse thing about "strong female characters" of the 1990s. The bit where the Doctor suggests that maybe she could be a companion boggles the mind. What a clash of genres! I guess I could imagine her hanging out with New Adventures–era "Spacefleet" Ace, though.

Ultimately, I have enjoyed this weird side-step. The early 1990s were a weird, often bad time in comics, and the strange journey of Death's Head from The Transformers to Doctor Who to the Marvel universe embodies that. When the character is written well, he's fun, but I've come to realize he's one of those characters who's a better foil than a star. I'm not sure that Simon Furman, at least, ever figured out how to make him a main character.

Anyway, this was basically it for the original Death's Head at Marvel, until Kieron Gillen revived the character in his S.W.O.R.D., Iron Man and Spider-Man runs in the 2010s. Those, I am given to understand, actually take place before Death's Head's Transformers appearances, as he is still big but doesn't yet call himself a "freelance peacekeeping agent." I'm not so motivated as to track them down, but he did get a miniseries in 2019, which I'll read when I get up to that year in DWM. Until then, it's the end, yes?

“Death’s Head!” (also known as “High Noon Tex”) was reprinted in issue #1 of The Incomplete Death’s Head (Jan. 1993). The story originally appeared in issue #167 of The Transformers (Mar. 1988), and was written by Simon Furman, illustrated by Bryan Hitch, and lettered by Richard Starkings. The reprint was edited by John Freeman.

“Time Bomb!” was reprinted in issue #9 of The Incomplete Death’s Head (Sept. 1993). The story originally appeared in issue #8 of Death’s Head vol. 1 (July 1989), and was written and inked by Steve Parkhouse, pencilled by Art Wetherell, lettered by Annie H, colored by Louise Cassell, and edited by Steve White.

“Connections” / “Mind Meet!” originally appeared in issues #1-12 of The Incomplete Death’s Head (Jan.-Dec. 1993). The story was plotted by John Freeman (#1); scripted by Dan Abnett (#1-2, 5, 8-12); pencilled by Simon Coleby (#1-2, 5, 8-12); inked by Simon Coleby (#1-2, 5), Sean Hardy (#8-10), Niel Bushnell (#11-12), and Tim Perkins (#11); lettered by Annie Parkhouse (#2, 5) and Gary Gilbert (#8-12); colored by David Leach (#2, 5, 9-12) and David Boyle (#8); and edited by John Freeman (#1-2) and Tim Quinn (#5).

This post is the seventeenth in a series about the Doctor Who Magazine comic strip and Marvel UK. The next installment covers Evening's Empire. 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
    

Voyager (From Stockbridge to Segonus: A Doctor Who Magazine Comics Marathon, Part 6)

Collection published: 2007
Contents originally published: 1984-85
Acquired: January 2008
Read: January 2021

Voyager: Collected Comic Strips from the Pages of The Official Doctor Who Magazine
by John Ridgway, Steve Parkhouse, and Alan McKenzie

After souring on Steve Parkhouse's approach to Doctor Who across the course of The Tides of Time, I was pleasantly surprised by this volume. I don't know if it's because Parkhouse found his enjoyment of the series revitalized by a new Doctor, or if it's because he was now writing toward the talents of John Ridgway (in the introduction, Ridgway discusses how Parkhouse tailored the strip to his interests), but suddenly the whole thing feels fresh and energetic in a way entirely unlike 4-Dimensional Vistas.

The Shape Shifter, from The Official Doctor Who Magazine #88-89 (May-June 1984)
script by Steve Parkhouse, art by John Ridgway, letters by Annie Halfacree

This picks up right from The Moderator; the Doctor, having regenerated between strips (it's this kind of thing that makes the strip feel like a parallel universe to the show rather than something that slots in between it) is tracking down whoever hired the Moderator to kill Gus. But it doesn't just pick up in terms of plot but also style and tone: just as The Moderator was dominated by colorful, humorous narration from its title character, so too is The Shape Shifter. This story introduces us to Avan Tarklu, a shape-shifting private investigator who decides to find the Doctor for Dogbolter and turn him in for the reward money. The narrator is a delight, and yet again, I found myself wishing Big Finish's comic strip adaptations lasted longer than a single box set, because I would have loved to hear Robert Jezek read some of this aloud. The story is filled with a lot of genuinely humorous shape-shifting antics; I laughed out loud more than once. This is definitely one of those strips where story and writing are totally simpatico. Avan becoming a burger or hijacking the TARDIS, the panels where they imagine how Avan could make the Doctor's life hell hiding in the TARDIS, it's all a delight. After a number of one-off artists, John Ridgway has debuted as the strip's new long-term artist, and he nails it from the off; his Colin Baker isn't perfect, but otherwise, he has a great sense of tone, both grim and humor, and his storytelling is always clear.

I did find there was one big leap I didn't quite follow: why does Avan agree to collaborate with the Doctor to fool Dogbolter and split the reward money? We go from Avan having the Doctor over a barrel to the two teaming up to take down Avan's ostensible employer! But hey, it's a fun con, and I'll take it.

from The Official Doctor Who Magazine #90

Voyager, from The Official Doctor Who Magazine #90-94 (July-Nov. 1984)
script by Steve Parkhouse, art by John Ridgway, letters by Annie Halfacree

In the time since The Shape Shifter, Avan has taken the name "Frobisher" "in deference to the Doctor's love of all things English" (and it's implied Avan might not actually be his real name, either); here he also adopts the penguin form that will become his default. His presence maintains the moments of humor that Parkhouse introduced with The Shape Shifter. (There's a great gag where Frobisher decides to disguise himself by putting on a fake mustache, for example, and I liked the bit about the gun the Doctor threatens Astrolabus with.) But otherwise this is very unlike what has come so far.

Reading The Moderator and The Shape Shifter, you might think the strip was moving off into a new storyline about Dogbolter in a sort of noir universe, but Voyager is a surreal, weird fantasy epic. The Doctor has a dream about being lashed to a doomed sailing ship, then he finds the ship, along with the mysterious Astrolabus, who's fleeing the strange entity known as the Voyager, apparently for a past crime.

It's weird stuff. I don't quite entirely get it. But it's excellent stuff, too; Parkhouse's occasional moments of surreality in The Tides of Time were great, and with Ridgway as his partner, this story leans into it completely. But unlike some surreal stories, you really feel a sense of danger and mystery. Astrolabus's da Vinci helicopter is awesome; the true identity of his TARDIS is awesome. This is Doctor Who as grandiose mythology, and I wish I got it just a tad more, but I otherwise enjoyed it a lot.

from The Official Doctor Who Magazine #96

Polly the Glot, from The Official Doctor Who Magazine #95-97 (Dec. 1984–Feb. 1985)
script by Steve Parkhouse, art by John Ridgway, letters by Annie Halfacree

Ivan Asimoff of The Free-Fall Warriors reappears, having made his last DWM appearance nearly forty issues prior; I think this makes him the first original strip character to recur after an absence, and leads to a feeling of a DWM universe being built up. 

Shortly after Voyager, the Doctor and Frobisher bump into Asimoff at a busy spaceport; Asimoff asks for help freeing a spacefaring life-form called a zyglot from captivity in his capacity as treasurer of the Save the Zyglot Trust. The plan the Doctor and Frobisher come up with is to kidnap Asimoff and send off a ransom demand so that the public will donate to the Trust to help fulfill the ransom demand! This plan seemed a bit wacky, and I was feeling uncertain about the whole deal, but once the three of them go about an Akker zyglot-hunting ship, the strip sparkles with the kind of humor that has partially defined it of late; the dull Akkers are great, the janitor robot pretending to be a warrior robot is a delight.

In the end, the Doctor donates his share of the money he and Frobisher ripped off from Dogbolter to the Save the Zyglot Trust. It's not a total tonal shift into the humorous, though; the moment where Polly the Glot is freed from captivity is one of beauty, and Astrolabus turns out to the president of the Trust, giving the Doctor glimpses of doom throughout the story, and then kidnapping the Doctor at the end. I think it would be easy for a writer's approach to seem tired as he approaches the end of his tenure (Steve Moore's did after just over a dozen strips), but Parkhouse I think has totally reinvented himself as a writer to play to Ridgway's strengths. (In the introduction, Ridgway said Parkhouse had grown tired; he wasn't even scripting even more, he'd just call Ridgway on the phone and tell him what to draw on a panel-by-panel basis, and then he'd do the dialogue once Ridgway submitted his art.)

from The Official Doctor Who Magazine #98

Once Upon a Time-Lord, from The Official Doctor Who Magazine #98 / The Doctor Who Magazine #99 (Mar.-Apr. 1985)
script by Steve Parkhouse, art by John Ridgway, letters by Annie Halfacree

Steve Parkhouse departs the DWM strip in a story that wraps up the Voyager/Astrolabus storyline. This one too is a delight, as things all get a bit meta when Astrolabus uses his storytelling powers to slow down the Doctor, converting the strip into a children's story book! Surely "Frobisher Eats a Worm" and "Frobisher Wishes He Hadn't" is a highlight of the strip. When Astrolabus thinks he's escaped, he literally escapes the confines of the comic page, running across a blank space with no panel borders. In the end, though, the Doctor turns Astrolabus over to the Voyager, freeing himself from the feeling of doom he's had, but leaving him unsettled. This one is a little too quick to be as satisfying as Voyager, but I still enjoyed it.

from The Doctor Who Magazine #101

War-Game, from The Doctor Who Magazine #100-01 (May-June 1985)
script by Alan McKenzie, art by John Ridgway, letters by Annie Halfacree

Alan McKenzie, formerly editor of the strip, takes over as write from this story, which sends the Doctor and Frobisher to a barbarian planet where they meet a Draconian who crash-landed and set himself up as a local warlord. The comedy is the best part of it, my favorite gag being one where the Doctor and Frobisher get wine, but then reveal they don't have any money. The Doctor says, "I'm sure I can explain.... After all, what can they do to us?" Next panel: the Doctor and Frobisher are being auctioned off as slaves. In this story, Frobisher is back to shape-shifting, making himself look like a barbarian. When they attack a castle, Frobisher makes himself big... only to discover that makes it easier to be stabbed in the leg.

Outside of this, though, I found this one to be fairly dull stuff.

from The Doctor Who Magazine #103

Funhouse, from The Doctor Who Magazine #102-03 (July-Aug. 1985)
script by Alan McKenzie, art by John Ridgway, letters by Annie Halfacree

The TARDIS materializes in a weird sort of space entity that takes the form of a haunted house; it feels like McKenzie trying to give Ridgway the kind of surreal stuff to draw that he did so well under Parkhouse... but I didn't really find it interesting, a couple nice moments aside. (I liked the Doctor's attempted use of an axe to resolve the crisis is fun; the use of string for the actual solution is cute, but feels like nonsense even by Doctor Who time travel standards.)

from The Doctor Who Magazine #106

Kane's Story / Abel's Story / The Warrior's Story / Frobisher's Story, from The Doctor Who Magazine #104-06 / Doctor Who Magazine #107 (Sept.-Dec. 1985)
script by Alan McKenzie, art by John Ridgway, letters by Annie Halfacree

I wanted to like this story. Alan McKenzie takes a stab at the epic, with a four-part story about creatures called Skeletoids invading the Federation of Worlds. The Doctor and Frobisher are among a team of six who unite to stop the invasion; most of the other characters have very detailed backstories and become the strip's viewpoint characters... only it's three-and-a-half issues of set-up and just half an issue of actual action! All the set-up is made totally irrelevant, and the way the Skeletoids are defeated feels far too easy; I think you're supposed to feel bad about one character's sacrifice, but you barely know or care about him. One of the six is the Draconian warlord from War-Game, but at an earlier point in his timeline. If I had cared about him in War-Game, I might have found that more interesting.

Another of the six is Peri, making her strip debut-- which makes her the first human-played companion to appear. Peri doesn't do much, though the way she's folded in is interesting; the Doctor goes to pick her up, where she's working as a waitress in 1985 New York; she says, "I never thought I'd see you again!", so whatever circumstances she left the Doctor under, it felt like a final exit rather than a temporary break. I don't think Frobisher knows here, though, based on how he answers Kane's question about who she is. I don't know where you would wedge the Doctor's travels with her into the strip's continuity; before The Shape Shifter, I guess, but that would disrupt the way The Moderator flows right into it. I'm curious to see what kind of use the strip makes of her going forward; it didn't exactly make great use of its previous human companion.

Anyway, this means this volume, which begins quite strongly, ends with a fizzle. But, you know, tell John Ridgway to draw an ancient valley, and he will draw the hell out of it.

Stray Observations:

• Pedants should note that the first installment of Voyager claims the story title is The Voyager... but even I am not pedantic enough to do something like list it as The Voyager / Voyager. Interestingly, it is the first story where each individual part has its own subtitle ("It Was a Devil Ship.." / "The Light at the Edge of the World..." / "The Lighthouse" / "Dreams of Eternity" / "The Final Chapter"). Also, the cover of the first twelve DWM graphic novels usually used the title strip's unique logo as the cover logo, but the way "VOYAGER" is rendered on the cover is not the way it's rendered in the strip itself. These are the things that I notice and wonder about...
• In part two of Voyager, the TARDIS materialization noise is rendered as "VOORP! VOORP!" Boy, I really hope somebody got fired for that blunder.
• In the introduction, Ridgway talks about how Parkhouse gave Frobisher mono-morphia so he couldn't actually change form, probably because as a shape-shifter he had virtually unlimited power... Ridgway also complains that McKenzie ignored this, most prominently in War-Game. But as far as I noticed, the word "mono-morphia" is never actually used here! There are just a couple Parkhouse stories where Frobisher acts a bit awkward when someone asks him to shape-shift. I think if you weren't paying attention, it would be easy to miss. (Though, given McKenzie was editor on most of the Parkhouse/Ridgway strips, he should have been paying attention!)
• There was a small reference to the Freefall Warriors in The Moderator, but the reappearance of Ivan Asimoff in Polly the Glot definitively ties The Free-Fall Warriors to the home era of Dogbolter and Frobisher, beginning the creation of DWM cosmology of sorts. There's a reference to Dogbolter's company, Intra-Venus, Inc., in Abel's Story, implying that sequence (and thus War-Game) takes place in the same era, too, which would make this the same time period where Davros is active as Emperor of the Daleks (i.e., between Revelation and Remembrance, though at the time these strips came out, that would not have been known).
  
• I feel like on tv, the sixth Doctor was always bumping into old friends, so the appearance of Asimoff is appropriate. Except that on screen, they were always old friends we'd never actually met before (Azmael in The Twin Dilemma, Dastari in The Two Doctors, Stengos in Revelation of the Daleks, Hallett and Traves in The Trial of a Time Lord), but we actually Asimoff already!
• Steve Parkhouse departs the strip after a venerable run as writer (and sometimes artist) spanning three Doctors! I will see as I go, but I suspect no one will repeat this feat. After leaving DWM, he would go on to illustrate DC/Vertigo titles such as The Sandman and The Dreaming. He would also make one small but important contribution to Marvel UK's Transformers strip, writing its first original story, which was also the only UK story Marvel reprinted in its US book.
  
• For the last six strips, Alan McKenzie is credited as "Max Stockbridge." The pseudonym of "Maxwell Stockbridge" was first used back in 1981 according to the Tardis wiki, but this was its first use in the main DWM strip itself. Poking around in the Grand Comics Database informs me it was previously used on DWM back-up strips, in DWM specials, and in other Marvel UK titles such as Marvel Super-Heroes and Savage Action. I had thought the pseudonym was inspired by Maxwell Edison and Stockbridge, but given those didn't appear until late 1982, the pseudonym must have inspired them. (Tardis wiki also claims it was retired by 1984, but these strips were published in 1985.)
  
• In Kane's Story, Kane suggests fixing the damage done to the TARDIS in Funhouse by replacing the busted temporal component with the intact spatial one; Kane says they'll only need the spatial one for their mission to defeat the Skeletoids. But then they promptly travel back in time to 1985!
• Some people seem to think that Kane's Story indicates Frobisher had already met Peri, but I think it indicates exactly the opposite. The Doctor and Frobisher encounter an illusory version of Peri in Funhouse, which turns into a demon. The Doctor expresses concern for her but Frobisher says nothing to her; in Kane's Story, basically the same thing happens again. When Kane asks who Peri is, Frobisher says, "I just hope she doesn't change into anything more comfortable this time!" This makes me think Funhouse was Frobisher's only previous experience of Peri.
  
• It is sort of weird to note that the sixth Doctor had about half as many tv adventures as the fifth... but twice as many comic ones! As a helpful GallifreyBase commenter elucidates: "Davison was squished at both ends as Tom Baker was the lead in the strip right up to December 1981 and Davison didn't start until Castrovalva was broadcast. However with Twin Dilemma on air at the end of season 21, Colin went straight into the strip straight after Caves was broadcast and remained the lead until Time and the Rani went out, so he got both the gap between seasons 21 & 22, the hiatus and after 23 went out. Giving him much more time as the current Doctor." Good fact!
  

This post is the sixth in a series about the Doctor Who Magazine comic strip and Marvel UK. The next installment covers The Transformers Classics UK, Volume Three. 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
   

The Tides of Time (From Stockbridge to Segonus: A Doctor Who Magazine Comics Marathon, Part 4)

Collection published: 2005
Contents originally published: 1980-84
Acquired: 2005
Previously read: December 2005
Reread: December 2020

The Tides of Time: The Complete Fifth Doctor Comic Strips from the Pages of Doctor Who Monthly
by Dave Gibbons, Steve Parkhouse, Mick Austin, Steve Dillon, et al.

This volume represents a new approach to the Doctor Who Magazine strip, one that pretty much comes to dominate it for much of its run. Steve Parkhouse writes what are ostensibly six separate stories, but each one builds on the previous one, and runs into the next-- and that's a series of linkages that even continues on either side of this collection. Its first story follows up the last story of Dragon's Claw; its last story sets up the first story of Voyager. That said, though I like the idea of an ongoing story in principle, and I remember Scott Gray being a strong practitioner of it during the eighth Doctor years, the way it's done here is pretty slipshod at best...

Timeslip, from Doctor Who Weekly #17-18 (Feb. 1980)
plot by Dez Skinn, script & artwork by Paul Neary

This little story wraps up the appearances of the fourth Doctor in these graphic novels (for now, anyway; I think he'll be back during the "multi-Doctor" years). I don't know the circumstances of its creation, but it feels like someone whipped it up real quick when The Star Beast was delayed or something. It's much more continuity-focused than most other DWM strips, actually (albeit barely) explaining where Romana is, and giving a footnote about the randomiser. Most notably, the Doctor degenerates because of an alien influence, quickly passing through Jon Pertwee and Patrick Troughton again before spending four pages as William Hartnell. Unfortunately for the long-term fan, all of the Hartnell images are referenced from incredibly common publicity photos, which stops the art (which I would say otherwise looks quite nice, especially its vast cosmic horrors) from having any sense of life.

from Doctor Who Monthly #63

The Tides of Time, from Doctor Who Monthly #61-67 (Feb.-Aug. 1982)
written by Steve Parkhouse, artwork & lettering by Dave Gibbons

This story starts off pretty neat: time disturbances interrupt the Doctor's cricket game, so he goes back to Gallifrey to check out what's going on, only to learn that all reality is at stake. Steve Parkhouse and Dave Gibbons make Gallifrey seem amazing by basically ignoring the way the tv show approached it. Rather than talk to Time Lord officiants, the Doctor goes into the Matrix, ostensibly "home of the Celestial Intervention Agency"-- which I guess is headed by Rassilon and two guys named Morvane and Bedevere (whom the Doctor supposedly already knows), and they all hang out with "High Evolutionaries," which are highly advanced specimens of other races, including Merlin from The Neutron Knights. Like, this is nothing like what we saw on screen, but hey, it gives the whole thing a great sense of grandeur. Gibbon's art for Gallifrey is amazing, looking nothing like how it appeared on screen, but like an epic sci-fi city-- I love it.

The trip to Gallifrey is followed by a surreal visit to another dimension, which Gibbons handles real well... and after this, The Tides of Time totally fizzles out. The Doctor mostly stands around as people deliver exposition and Shayde does all the work. Literally the Doctor's only contribution to this whole big story is to fly Shayde into position. It looks cool, but once the whole thing is over, it seems faintly pointless.

Sir Justin and Shayde are the Doctor's companions for this story. The idea of Sir Justin is fun, but he doesn't have much to do other than stand around and be baffled up until his heroic sacrifice; I found it difficult to summon up much feeling at that point. I don't know if I would count Shayde as a companion at this point, but he does look cool, a Matrix construct with a (detachable!) black globe for a head. We'll be seeing more of him going forward.

from Doctor Who Monthly #69

Stars Fell on Stockbridge, from Doctor Who Monthly #68-69 (Sept.-Oct. 1982)
written by Steve Parkhouse, artwork & lettering by Dave Gibbons

Dave Gibbons's lengthy run on the strip finally comes to an end here with a neat little two-part story. Here we learn that the village from The Tides of Time where the Doctor is hanging out and playing cricket is Stockbridge, and we meet one of its inhabitants, Maxwell Edison. Maxwell is a UFO and conspiracy nut who ends up drawn into an adventure with the Doctor; the Doctor takes him up into a mysterious spaceship orbiting the Earth. It's a foreboding, atmospheric tale, and I enjoyed it a lot. Undoubtedly the best adventure in this volume, with a charming ending.

from Doctor Who Monthly #73

The Stockbridge Horror, from Doctor Who Monthly #70-75 (Nov. 1982–Apr. 1983)
written by Steve Parkhouse; pencils by Steve Parkhouse and Mick Austin; inks by Paul Neary, Steve Parkhouse, and Mick Austin; lettering by Steve Parkhouse, Mick Austin, and Steve Craddock

This story, to me, entirely reads like Steve Parkhouse made it up as he went along. It starts out about mysterious goings-on in Stockbridge, including the TARDIS making its own trip to the Carboniferous Period, but then becomes about the Doctor battling a strange elemental on the TARDIS. Shayde turns up to do the actual defeating of the elemental while the Doctor just watches; then the Doctor's being attacked by the Time Lords, then Rassilon and the other Matrix Lords are putting him on trial for some reason, but he gets off because Shayde destroys the evidence. (Apparently a society of time travellers can't travel back to when the evidence still existed.) It doesn't settle on any one thing long enough to be effective, and despite some cool concepts, the Doctor once again feels like a side character in a story about how cool Shayde is!

Also this story introduces SAG 3, an elite UK military unit who do exactly nothing.

from Doctor Who Monthly #77

Lunar Lagoon, from Doctor Who Monthly #76-77 (May-June 1983)
written by Steve Parkhouse, artwork by Mick Austin, lettering by Steve Craddock

This feels a bit like one of Parkhouse's fourth Doctor tales: a downbeat story of an ineffective Doctor. He's trapped on a Pacific island with a Japanese soldier who's been there for a long time; despite the Doctor's efforts, the soldier dies... partially because of something the Doctor does to defend himself. I'm not sure what I think of it, to be honest. I think it's well done for what it is... I'm just not sure this is what I want Doctor Who to be doing! I didn't care for Fuji's stilted dialogue or the weird proportions Mick Austin gives him, but otherwise he is a pretty well-drawn character.

from Doctor Who Monthly #83

4-Dimensional Vistas, from Doctor Who Monthly #78-83 (July-Dec. 1983)
written by Steve Parkhouse, artwork by Mick Austin, lettering by Steve Craddock and Jerry Paris

Another Steve Parkhouse Time Lord epic, another load of nonsense. Like most of them, it's got some good ideas (the way the Monk and the Ice Warriors work together to make a giant crystal by just waiting is neat), but the overall story is random junk again. The Doctor is joined by Gus, the American pilot who killed Fuji, and realizes he's in an alternate timeline where World War II continued until at least 1963 (though in Lunar Lagoon we're told it's 1983). Trying to figure out what's going on, they discover airplanes are vanishing and the Meddling Monk is there and there are Ice Warriors and SAG 3 is back and... stuff... look, I don't even know how or why.

We also learn the Time Lords sent the Doctor to Stockbridge to figure out the time anomalies resolved in this story. So, 1) why was he always trying to play cricket and/or fish, and 2) why did the Time Lords get mad at the Doctor for hanging out in Stockbridge back in The Stockbridge Horror. Like I said, Parkhouse tries to pull all these tales together, but it's nonsensically done. (The Doctor says that he never went back to the real Earth after leaving it in The Stockbridge Horror, which is plainly not true; he must have been on the real one to see Shayde destroy the evidence of the malfunctioning TARDIS.)

I do like how Mick Austin draws the time vortex.

from The Official Doctor Who Magazine #86

The Moderator, from Doctor Who Monthly #84 / The Official Doctor Who Magazine #86-87 (Jan.-Apr. 1984)
written by Steve Parkhouse, artwork & lettering by Steve Dillon

It's interesting, reading all of these, and realizing for all his weirdnesses as storyteller, Steve Parkhouse got one thing right about the fifth Doctor as a character: he is knocked about by tragedy to a degree not true of previous incarnations, something we saw on screen most prominently in Earthshock, Warriors of the Deep, Resurrection of the Daleks, and The Caves of Androzani. The different between the strip's approach and the show's approach, though, is that the tv fifth Doctor would still get these moments of triumph, either within the stories, or in the other stories, but the comic fifth Doctor rarely feels like he's accomplished anything. This is all brought to its utmost in The Moderator, where Gus is gunned down at the moment the Doctor returns him to his own time as a punishment for the Doctor mouthing off to a reprehensible villain.

Here it worked for me, though. Maybe it's the black comic touch of the titular Moderator himself. Maybe it's the slightly unusual structure Parkhouse employs. (The story bounces back and forth between the Moderator hunting the Doctor and the Doctor and Gus on an adventure, but the Moderator is hunting the Doctor for something the Doctor does at the very end of the adventure.) Maybe it's the delightful despicability of Josiah W. Dogbolter. This story is dark, but it feels meaningful in a way some of Parkhouse's other dark tales (like End of the Line or The Neutron Knights) did not. There's tragedy, but also the Doctor and Gus stand up for something despite it all.

Stray Observations:

• Something I like is that the strip kind of doesn't even care that there's a tv show. Oh, it picks up references to it, obviously (the Doctor is seemingly president of Gallifrey because of the events of The Invasion of Time, or maybe The Deadly Assassin), but this is a continuous run of stories for the fifth Doctor where the first one picks up from a fourth Doctor tale and the last one leads into a sixth Doctor one. Which makes no sense from a continuity standpoint! There's no sense at all that these slot in between tv episodes or even really care about the existence of contemporaneous tv episodes, except that the Doctor's appearance (almost incidentally) changes between installments.
• I like the way that the DWM fifth Doctor is kind of, but not quite, the character played by Peter Davison. He occasionally gets lines you can perfectly imagine Davison delivering (his exasperation at a running-away Max in Stars Fell), but the whole idea that the Doctor really just wants to hang about playing cricket (or fishing) seems much more influenced by the Doctor's costume than anything else! He's also more... morose than the tv fifth Doctor; there's a bit where he almost commits suicide when he thinks he's lost in the wrong dimension! Again, not the tv version, but an interesting incarnation of the Doctor of his own. It's a shame Big Finish's Comic Strip Adaptations line seems to have ended after a single box set; I'd've liked to have heard Peter Davison tackle this slightly different take on his character.
• Apparently Gallifrey's military is normally completely separate from the Time Lords (the Doctor says, "What's a Time-Lord doing slumming around the military? Good heavens...you'll be in politics next!"); that they have a TARDIS and Tubal Cain is assigned to them is depicted as abnormal. The way time torpedoes work here would be used in the audio adventure Neverland.
• Steve Parkhouse seems to think all TARDISes look like police boxes.
• Toby Longworth's performance as Dogbolter in The Maltese Penguin and The Quantum Possibility Engine has indelibly impressed itself upon my mind; I can't not imagine him delivering the lines.
• After inaugurating the DWM strip with a three-year run, Dave Gibbons would go on to do a lot of work for DC on lower-tier superhero comics such as Legion of Super-Heroes, L.E.G.I.O.N., JSA, Rann-Thanagar War, and something called Watchmen.
  

This post is the fourth in a series about the Doctor Who Magazine comic strip and Marvel UK. The next installment covers The Transformers Classics UK, Volume Two. Previous installments are listed below:

1. The Iron Legion
2. Dragon's Claw 
3. The Transformers Classics UK, Volume One
   

The Transformers Classics UK, Volume One (From Stockbridge to Segonus: A Doctor Who Magazine Comics Marathon, Part 3)

Collection published: 2011
Contents originally published: 1985-86
Acquired: November 2020
Read: December 2020

The Transformers Classics UK, Volume One

editorial notes and assistance by James Roberts

Written by Steve Parkhouse, Simon Furman, James Hill, and Mike Collins
Art by John Ridgway, Mike Collins, Jeff Anderson, John Stokes, Barry Kitson, Mark Farmer, William Simpson, and Geoff Senior
Colors by Gina Hart, Josie Fermin, Steve Whitaker, Scott Whittaker, John Burns, and Stuart Place
Letters by Richard Starkings, John Aldrich, Annie Halfacree, and Mike Scott

In the 1980s, Marvel UK wasn't just the publisher of the Doctor Who magazine, it also published its own, original Transformers strip, which wove in and out of the events of the US Transformers comic. Doctor Who and Transformers didn't cross over per se, but there were some elements that crossed from the one to the other, so I decided-- because there's no marathon I can't make more complicated-- to alternate collections of the Doctor Who strip with collections of the Transformers one up until I reach the point where they interact. IDW has collected the first few years of the UK strip in a series of volumes with commentary and interviews by More than Meets the Eye/Lost Light scribe James Roberts. They are out of print and horrendously expensive, but you can get them off comiXology for pretty reasonable prices. This volume collects issues #9-21, 29-32, and 41-44 of the UK comic (the other issues were reprints of US material), along with the 1985 Annual; the stories take place in between the US stories collected in vol. 1 of IDW's The Transformers Classics. Someday I'd like to read the US and UK stories in an integrated order,* but for now, I'm just depending on my memories of the US comic, plus Roberts's helpful editorial commentary.

As a result, it's something of an odd read-- no cohesive story, and because the stories are the work of four different writers, no cohesive vision, either, though near the end of the collected stories, one begins to emerge. First, Steve Parkhouse (writer of the Doctor Who strip during the fourth, fifth, and sixth Doctor eras) gives us "Man of Iron," a grim and serious tale of the Transformers coming to an English village; I've previously reviewed it as part of The Transformers Classics, Vol. 3 (the US comic reprinted it as a flashback story).

You don't talk to strangers, and you don't get in strangers' cars... but should you talk to car strangers?
from The Transformers #10 (script by Steve Parkhouse, art by John Ridgway)

"Man of Iron" sets a very distinct tone for a Transformers story, with the Transformers themselves often silent and mysterious, the way robots in disguise might seem to human beings. None of the other UK stories do that, being more in tune with the US style, but there is a more character focus than I remember from Bob Budiansky's US tales. This makes sense: the big events of the ongoing narrative being driven by what was happening in the US issues, the area the UK comic could really work was in expanding character moments. So we get stories that focus on Brawn, Starscream, Ravage, Grimlock and the Dinobots, Ratchet, Bumblebee, Circuit Breaker, and even Optimus Prime himself.

I always like a bit of Ratchet.
from The Transformers #31 (script by Simon Furman, art by Barry Kitson)

 
They're all pretty solid (with the exception of "Decepticon Dam-Busters!" and the two by James Hill), but the standout character for me here was Ravage, someone I hadn't really given much thought to before (though I think he did get a nice issue somewhere in James Barber's Transformers run). In some continuities (including, I think, Marvel US), Ravage is silent, but that's not true here, where he pursues his own agenda-- one of utterly ruthless loyalty to Megatron. I liked the straightforwardness of his duplicity: he will do anything except betray his leader.

Ravage might be awesome, but Windcharger is pretty meh.
from The Transformers #20 (script by Simon Furman, art by Mike Collins & Jeff Anderson)

Plus there's a great bit where Grimlock tests a replacement hand by punching out Ratchet.

The art is interesting-- based more often on the actual toys or their package art than the character models used by the US comic. In the case of some characters, this means they have the spindly look of cheap toys; supposedly strong Brawn looks like you could break him in half. But I did like the comic's weird, unique look for Optimus. And Circuit Breaker looks a lot more curvaceous than I remember! There's real talent here, of course: John Ridgway, Mike Collins (of Darkstars fame), Mark Farmer (who later worked on Alan Davis's Killraven). I hadn't even known that Barry Kitson (whose work on L.E.G.I.O.N. and Legion was excellent) was British, much less that he'd started out here! I don't think anyone would call this his best work, but still.

I liked Warparth (the tank guy) and was a bit bummed to learn this is considered out of continuity because of him (he didn't actually debut until after this supposedly takes place).
from Transformers Annual 1985 (script by Simon Furman, art by Mike Collins & Jeff Anderson)

There are also some nice pieces of backstory, like "And There Shall Come... a Leader!", which delves into Optimus's life on Cybertron. In these days, "Prime" isn't a title, but just part of his name. I also really enjoyed "Plague of the Insecticons!", where the Autobots attempt to reach out to President Reagan, but things go terribly wrong.

Like, why is his face all blue?
from Transformers Annual 1985 (script by Simon Furman, art by Mike Collins & Jeff Anderson)

 
On its own, this is a weird set of stories, maybe, but I can see how it will be the foundation for the UK's own distinct take on the Transformers mythos, and I look forward to seeing where it goes.

* For the stories contained in this volume, I suggest the following: US #1-3, UK #9-21, US #4-8, UK #29-32, US #9-12, UK #41-44. (The annual stories are outside of continuity by and large.)

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

1. The Iron Legion
2. Dragon's Claw
   

Dragon's Claw (From Stockbridge to Segonus: A Doctor Who Magazine Comics Marathon, Part 2)

Collection published: 2004
Contents originally published: 1980-82
Acquired: December 2013
Read: November 2020

Dragon's Claw: Collected Comic Strips from the Pages of Doctor Who: A Marvel Monthly
by Dave Gibbons, Steve Parkhouse, Steve Moore, et al.

This volume transitions us out Mills & Wagner era into that of first Steve Moore and then Steven Parkhouse; at the same time, the Doctor Who magazine goes from a weekly to a monthly, and the stories decrease in length. I'm guessing this is because it's one thing to serialize a story in eight parts when that means it takes eight weeks, and another when when that means it takes eight months! Later the mag would reverse this decision-- which I think was the right call, based on this volume.

Dragon's Claw, from Doctor Who Weekly #39-43 / Doctor Who: A Marvel Monthly #44-45 (July-Oct. 1980)
written by Steve Moore, artwork & lettering by Dave Gibbons

This is the last of the big fourth Doctor comic stories; in a way, it feels like Steve Moore's attempt to do a Mills & Wagner, so to speak. Interesting setting, big enemy, long-form storytelling... yet this never clicked for me. I'm not sure I could say why. (Dave Gibbons actually says something similar in the intro to Iron Legion.) Maybe it's because the Doctor and Sharon and K-9 spend most of the story sitting around? For a story about ninja warrior monks (there's your RTD connection again!) and Sontarans, it's surprisingly light on action; compare this to The Iron Legion or The Dogs of Doom, which are constantly moving moving moving. The stakes feel very abstract too. I guess the emperor is threatened, but so what? Anyway it seems to me that this story marks the beginning of a slump for the strip. The Time Witch was a wobble, but could have been an aberration; this story confirms it.

from Doctor Who: A Marvel Monthly #46

The Collector, from Doctor Who: A Marvel Monthly #46 (Nov. 1980)
written by Steve Moore, artwork & lettering by Dave Gibbons

This one starts out pretty good: the Doctor and Sharon land in Blackcastle, but get sucked to an asteroid by a guy who's been kidnapping humans and putting them on display for centuries. Trying to get him free from a deranged computer, the Doctor accidentally gets him and K-9 killed... so he just goes back in time and undoes it, the end. Sure, there's some bafflegab to justify why he can't always do this, but it's a big cheat regardless. Plus he never actually sets the victims of the Collector free! (The bit of bafflegab is lettered in a slightly different hand, which makes me think it was added at the last minute when someone objected that the Doctor would do this all the time if it were possible.) I think it debuts a formula we'll see through the rest of Steve Moore's time on the strip: more on that later.

from Doctor Who: A Marvel Monthly #48

Dreamers of Death, from Doctor Who: A Marvel Monthly #47-48 (Dec. 1980–Jan. 1981)
written by Steve Moore, artwork & lettering by Dave Gibbons

The TARDIS lands on an Earth colony planet where the Doctor has some old friends; the use of alien creatures to create shared dream experiences has become all the rage since his last visit. Well, it turns out the alien creatures are evil. You probably could write an interesting story about this concept, but this isn't it; the dream stuff is abandoned in favor of the creatures merging into a giant devil-shaped gestalt creature and stomping through the city. The Doctor defeats it with a hose.

This is Sharon's last story; suddenly she's decided to start a new life with a guy she meets in the story, even more sudden than Leela falling in love with Andred, which is saying something. It's disappointing but not too disappointing because introductory story and maybe Dogs of Doom aside she's never really had much to do except stand there while the Doctor explains things. She feels a very RTD companion, like I've said, but without storytelling actually focused on her as a character, she quickly becomes generic. The idea that she could go straight from 14 to 18 raises more problems than it solves... and now she's settling down!? It's all a bit weird. (Sharon says there's nothing for her in Blackcastle now that she's grown up... yet in one of these stories, she mentioned having a father! I am pretty sure Big Finish made her into an orphan.)

from Doctor Who: A Marvel Monthly #52

The Life Bringer! / War of the Words / Spider-God, from Doctor Who: A Marvel Monthly #49-52 (Feb.-May 1981)
written by Steve Moore, artwork & lettering by Dave Gibbons

Here we settle into the Steve Moore pattern (into which you could also insert The Collector and, to a lesser extent, Dreamers of Death): mediocre sci-fi adventures that feel like rejected Twilight Zone scripts with some kind of sting in the tail. In The Life Bringer!, the Doctor meets and liberates Prometheus. Is he the real god? At the end, Prometheus heads to Earth to make life. Is this the origin of humanity in the distant past, or its resurrection in the distant future? I feel like the end wants you to go "spooky..." but frankly I didn't care.

War of the Words is about aliens fighting over a library; it has a pretty dumb resolution. Spider-God is about a weird alien biology, where the whole story is built around a twist ending that feels like it comes from a mediocre American sf story of the 1930s. At least Dave Gibbons draws the hell out of everything!

from Doctor Who: A Marvel Monthly #55

The Deal / End of the Line, from Doctor Who: A Marvel Monthly #53-55 (June-Aug. 1981)
written by Steve Parkhouse, artwork & lettering by Dave Gibbons

Here is the debut of Steve Parkhouse as strip writer, who quickly makes his style known: bleak stories of an ineffective Doctor. In The Deal, the TARDIS and an alien soldier get stuck on a battlefield, and team up to get off, but the Doctor ditches the soldier and he dies when the Doctor realizes he's a monster. In End of the Line, the Doctor faces zombies in a ruined cityscape; he helps some survivors escape but the story ends with him realizing there's no place for them to escape to... and they all die en route anyway! Ouch, geeze, way to cheer me up, New Steve. The dark brooding cityscapes of End of the Line are pretty neat, though.

By this point, things that remind me of the RTD years have largely vanished from the strip... with the exception of the fact that End of the Line is about a bunch of people trapped in a dystopian urban center yearning to get out to an edenic countryside, but who need the Doctor to repair their transport system. So, yeah, "Gridlock" again!

from Doctor Who: A Marvel Monthly #56

The Free-Fall Warriors, from Doctor Who: A Marvel Monthly #56-57 (Sept.-Oct. 1981)
written by Steve Parkhouse, artwork & lettering by Dave Gibbons

This is like one of those episodes of a tv show where the main cast does little except meet some people who are clearly being set up for a spin-off. The Doctor's on vacation, where he meets a science fiction writer named Ivan Asimoff (!). The two of them then meet a group of stunt pilots called the Freefall Warriors (that's how it's always written in the story, though part one is called "the Free-Fall Warriors" and part two "the Free Fall Warriors"). One is a big tiger and is named "Big Cat"; another has a machine head and is called "Machine Head"; one is named "Bruce." You can tell Parkhouse put a lot of work into this. The Doctor and Asimoff mostly sit there while the Freefall Warriors thwart a raider attack in contrived circumstances. I barely get why the Doctor is in this story; the purpose of the Asimoff character is even less clear!

Like I said, it feels like the Freefall Warriors are being set up for bigger things, but if so, they didn't amount to much; Big Cat reappeared solo in the Doctor Who Summer Special for 1982, and there was a four-issue back-up strip in Captain Britain in 1985 showing how they all met. None of this material has been collected as far as I know.

from Doctor Who: A Marvel Monthly #58

Junk-Yard Demon, from Doctor Who: A Marvel Monthly #58-59 (Nov.-Dec. 1981)
written & lettered by Steve Parkhouse, pencils by Mike McMahon, inks by Adolfo Buylla

For the first time in my DWM journey, we have a strip not drawn by Dave Gibbons. (I know he didn't draw #17-18, but I haven't got there yet!) Mike McMahon and Adolfo Buylla have a drastically different style: lots of dark, distorted proportions, sparse backgrounds, detailed mechanics. I love their boggle-eyed Tom Baker. The story is fun, probably the best Parkhouse-written tale in this volume. Actually, the best-written tale in this volume full stop. The Doctor meets some scavengers who repurpose Cybermen as servants; one is accidentally reactivated and it steals the TARDIS, along with one of the scavengers. It's a neat, atmospheric story, slightly injured by some unclear storytelling from McMahon and Buylla; there are times I didn't follow the action right away.

The Neutron Knights, from Doctor Who: A Marvel Monthly #60 (Jan. 1982)
written & lettered by Steve Parkhouse, artwork by Dave Gibbons

The fourth Doctor departs DWM at his most ineffectual in Steve Parkhouse's most depressing tale yet: the Doctor stands and watches as barbaric space knights invade a castle; everyone dies when Merlin overloads an atomic reactor! Wow, Steve Parkhouse really hates happy endings, huh? This one foreshadows The Tides of Time but I didn't think it really worked on its own. Which, to be fair, it's not meant to be read on its own. I might be pausing a bit before picking up my next volume, but back in the day, it was straight from this to part one of The Tides of Time in Feb. 1982!

from Doctor Who: A Marvel Monthly #60

Stray Observations:

• I am reliably informed that The Collector features the introduction of that old Doctor Who comics convention, the use of "VWORP! VWORP!" to represent the sound of the TARDIS materializing. This is a surprisingly hard thing to research on the Internet; I found one article on BuzzFeed that clarified it dates back years... all the way to the Matt Smith era! Wow.
  
• The Free-Fall Warriors features, I believe, the debut of the long-running DWM future space currency, the mazuma.
• Weirdly, The Neutron Knights's narration captions are in the past tense. I feel like this almost never happens in comic stories (unless there's some kind of retrospective frame). I found it jarring, but I think it's just a Steve Parkhouse thing, as I noticed he did this in some of his Transformers strips as well.

This post is the second in a series about the Doctor Who Magazine comic strip and Marvel UK. The next installment covers The Transformers Classics UK, Volume One. Previous installments are listed below:

1. The Iron Legion