The spoiler warning alarm is active, so don't read any further if you want to experience the issue completely cold.
"The Twist" Part 3. Writer George Mann. Artist: Mariano Laclaustra
So what do we find beneath the three covers we have to choose from this month?
If you recall, we left the Doctor, bass player Hattie and Jakob, the guy with the cybernetic eye, at the mercy of the Foxkin. These bipedal vulpines are the intelligent descendants of the original creatures from the colony ship that founded The Twist, but they have been keeping a massive secret about the origins of the human inhabitants - one they can't let anyone reveal.To protect everything, the Doctor and his companions are condemned to a life of permanent imprisonment in the Foxkin city.
And that's where we pick things up. Jakob certainly doesn’t like being locked up. He reveals himself to be a nasty, bigoted piece of work - unable to believe that such "vermin" had anything to do with his birth. It's perhaps a slightly sudden character development, but it does give the Doctor the opportunity to deliver a great sarcastic put down. The racist idiot does prove useful though as his bionic eye finally makes an appearance in the plot and allows the three to escape (I won’t reveal exactly how).
Suddenly they are surrounded by more Foxkin - but these are a different bunch - an offshoot who believe that they should reveal themselves and integrate with the human population. Leading everyone back the the park on the surface, they arrive just in time to see the particular Foxkin Hattie hit with her beloved bass guitar (last issue) being bundled away by the security forces. Armed police and reporters are everywhere and The Twist's own Nigel Farage delivers a speech about the "aliens amongst us - coming to take our jobs..."
It's the vindication Jakob has been waiting for. He goes into full on rant mode, practically frothing at the mouth about destroying the Foxkin. Of course the Doctor knows the truth - he's always known the truth - Jakob is the real monster here and his complete story, including his search for whomever murdered his friend the councilor, has been a pack of lies. The truth is divulged at last - from Jakob's own eye no less - and he runs off into the crowds. I had a hunch something was up with him from the start - the xenophobic nutter knew his way around those underground tunnels a bit *too* well.
So what's the Doctor's solution to how to reveal the Foxkin to the world?
Wait for it....
Yes the Doctor gets to play his funky alien guitar with Hattie's band "Space Pirates" as their fans (who are apparently all political revolutionaries) gather in the park. Transmitting his message of tolerance to the citizens of the Twist, the Timelord urges them to never be cruel or cowardly. The power of rock music unites everyone and both sides greet each other in friendship as the Foxkin step out of the shadows.
All this and Jakob gets arrested.
Hmmmmm…..
No I'm sorry, it's utter rubbish.
It's the worst kind of saccharine ending - up there with "love saves you from becoming a Cyberman" and "thinking hard about the Doctor stops him being Dobby the House Elf". Is this the best that George Mann could come up with? All that build up over the last two issues and it's all over because the Doctor tells them to be nice to each other - as if that's what would really happen if you confronted a human population with the truth than they only exist thanks to some super-intelligent foxes.
Maybe he was trying for a similar feel to the Zygon two-parter from season 9, and perhaps you could wave it away by saying the future is a more enlightened time and everyone is more loving and tolerant - but that's not born out by the behaviour shown on the page when Jakob and his pals are promoting racial hatred.
You know what I'd have liked to have seen? Things go wrong. Give the Doctor his "Live Aid" moment. Reveal the Foxkin. But have the Doctor misjudge things for once. Instead of peace and love you get mass panic and fighting on the streets and mutual mistrust. Have the Doctor struggling to find a cleverer way to broker peace and convince the two populations that they won't kill each other as soon as his back is turned. He's a Timelord. He's got LOTS of time. Make him work for things and have to stay on the Twist for six months and really put some effort in - not swan off after five minutes. No wonder Ashildr had to clean up after him...
Anyway, let's take it as a given that I wasn't fond of the conclusion to the storyline. We do get a new companion though, as Hattie joins the TARDIS (for now anyway). She a bit of a personality vacuum based on her appearances so far, so let's see if future issues flesh out her background a bit more. I just hope its not going to be a constant stream of spot the musical allusion and jam sessions in the TARDIS from now on.
I've not really mentioned the art yet. It’s quality figure work from Mariano and his Argentinian assistants as we have come to expect - solidly building on the previous issues, and the Foxkin probably look their best this time out. There are a few detailed double splash pages for the big scenes, but generally I thought there was a distinct lack of backgrounds in most of the panels. Admittedly there were a lot of talking head shots and close-ups, but it wouldn’t have hurt to put in a few lines to give location context. Carlos Cabrera does his best but just seemed to colour everything a bit…well...…orange. Mariano seems to be at his best in the wide angles and multiple points of view. Next time, give him plenty of alien vistas to draw, along with the talking heads.
Talking of crowd scenes though, there's one image as we flip through multiple locations around The Twist that caught my eye. Amongst a scene of punk rockers giving it their all at the concert in the park is an eerie hooded figure all in white - like a version of Moon Knight has stepped into Doctor Who, or those headless monks from Matt Smith's tenure. It's very out of place and has to be deliberate. I'll keep a look out for other appearances of hooded guy in upcoming comics and hopefully it'll all mean something down the line.
All told, despite the artists best efforts it's a supremely disappointing end to this story. I had my fingers crossed last month that George Mann could pull things into interesting shapes, but sadly he didn't deliver. Next issue he is still around as writer but Rachael Stott is back on art. I'm looking forward to that if nothing else.
--------------------
Still no Fourth Doctor issue 5 at the time of writing but I believe its due imminently, so I'll come back to that next time. Instead I thought I'd take a quick skim through the issues released so far in this years "event" series,
Supremacy of the Cybermen # 1 - 3
Four Doctors, six companions, a bevy of guest star friends and foes and a silver implacable army. Sounds like a recipe for a lot of fun doesn't it?.
It's written by George Mann (yes it's him again which doesn’t fill me with confidence from the start, but we'll see). This time though he's joined by co-writer Cavan Scott. Art is from Allessandro Vitti with Ivan Rodriguez and Walter Geovanni - except for where its by Tazio Bettin on a few odd pages. The colourist is Nicola Righi.
Parts one to three are out so far, but I'm not going to do my usual blow-by-blow in depth analysis of each issue. Instead for now this will be a few random thoughts about what I've seen so far and how it's shaping up.
The first thing to mention is that although we have four Doctors featured in every issue - incarnations Nine to Twelve - none of them meet each other. I guess that may come later, but right now each Doctor is in their own timeline with their own problems to face caused by the Cybermen. Nine is on Earth in 2006 with Rose, Jack and Jackie Tyler, Ten is with new comics companions Gabby and Cindy in the 24th Century and Eleven is with regular pal Alice in the time of the dinosaurs.
It's written by George Mann (yes it's him again which doesn’t fill me with confidence from the start, but we'll see). This time though he's joined by co-writer Cavan Scott. Art is from Allessandro Vitti with Ivan Rodriguez and Walter Geovanni - except for where its by Tazio Bettin on a few odd pages. The colourist is Nicola Righi.
Parts one to three are out so far, but I'm not going to do my usual blow-by-blow in depth analysis of each issue. Instead for now this will be a few random thoughts about what I've seen so far and how it's shaping up.
The first thing to mention is that although we have four Doctors featured in every issue - incarnations Nine to Twelve - none of them meet each other. I guess that may come later, but right now each Doctor is in their own timeline with their own problems to face caused by the Cybermen. Nine is on Earth in 2006 with Rose, Jack and Jackie Tyler, Ten is with new comics companions Gabby and Cindy in the 24th Century and Eleven is with regular pal Alice in the time of the dinosaurs.
Twelve meanwhile is on his own, after the end of "Hell Bent" - and in fact Mann & Scott are picking up on plot threads directly from the last two episodes of that season. They even deal with a little niggle than some fans had about the appearance of a certain Sisterhood...
It's a bold move, especially if Moffat is about to do his own spin on these outstanding points next year. Still if you are going to be writing an "event" series you have to think big - and that’s one thing you have to commend this storyline for - its certainly epic.
The Cybermen are more powerful than ever. Time is being rewritten. The Doctor(s) are fighting for survival on multiple fronts and an old foe is our for revenge. Remember my thing about wanting comics to be more than just normal stories with attractive drawings? (you're probably bored if hearing me bang on about it by now). THIS is the kind of thing I wanted. Okay it's not really innovative in the way that the story from a couple of months ago about living people trapped in comics was, but there is certainly no way that this tale could be told on our TV screens - even with a very generous television budget.
Both writers are obviously having fun here - cherry picking bits and pieces from the past six decades of the series and expanding things in new directions in some cases. We get a Sontaran leader with a grey beard, the return of a giant creature not seen since Christmas 2008 and a location from "The Five Doctors" even makes an appearance. Plus, you can tell from one especially nice page in issue three that this is truly a story that affects ALL of the Doctors throughout time and space.
In fact this has actually surprised me because I genuinely don’t know where the storyline is heading.
I'm a little dubious about turning one character into such an out-and-out bad guy and there seems to be a lot to deal with, being that there are only two issues remaining, but…..please….don't let me down George. Not again.
What about the art? Well Allessandro Vitti is not the greatest at likenesses of the actors - with Doctor Ten and Jackie Tyler coming off the worst, but you can tell who's who. He's far better at the big images like the Sontaran imperial flagship or dozens of Cyber vessels crowding the sky or a rampaging dinosaur. It's certainly full of life, backgrounds teeming with detail, almost frantic in places, as if his pen (pencil? tablet stylus?) was struggling to keep up with the action, The double page where we first meet the Ninth Doctor, with its multiple vertical panels and quick cuts, is particularly worth of praise. Plus who doesn’t want to see a giant Cyberman head in space?
As for the work by Nicola Righi? Its certainly very colourful, even lurid at times. Dayglo pink and deep red backgrounds cast multi coloured shadows on characters faces. Prehistoric Earth is verdant green and a cyber conversion chamber glows with an eerie light. Somehow it feels like it harks back to the four colour world of early comics, but with a modern sensibility. This is not the real world. I really liked it a lot.
So three issues down, two to go. Maybe time for a little more direct menace from our silver big bads (who have not been front and centre quite yet) and hopefully a couple more twists and turns (and maybe some further incarnations of the Doctor), but so far Supremacy of the Cybermen is immensely enjoyable.
Right that's me done for another month
As my favourite alien comics editor likes to say - Splundig vur Thrigg Earthlets !