My involvement in that podcast led producer Rob Irwin (creator of the long running "Who Wars") to invite me to be part of the main "Doctor Who Show" when it commenced monthly transmission in January 2016. The difference here was that I would be part of an international team in a magazine style format podcast, covering not just fan opinion and reviews of the television show, but also current and historical merchandise, books, magazines audio releases and comics. When I mentioned to Rob that I have a long and varied history with comics, including buying that first ever issue of "Doctor Who Weekly" back in 1979, he offered me a slot in the comics review section, which I gladly accepted.
It's a really diverse group of people that has been assembled - Iain (Five Minute Fiction) has a humorous take on the A-Z of Doctor Who, Jim (Krynoid Podcast) and Bob (Progtor Who) transform into the Letter Lords and use the "Doctor Who Magazine" letters page as a springboard for their discussions, and Rob himself conducts a regular hour long interview with fans and writers plus hosts the merchandise segment "Whotiques Roadshow".
In the 'TARDIS Library' section, Matt (Blue Box Podcast), Mark (Idiot's Array podcast) and Lex (Who Wars) perform duties on the Ninth, Tenth and Eleventh Doctor comics series, so it's down to me to read and review the Twelfth Doctor ongoing series published by Titan Comics - plus the Fourth and Eighth Doctor miniseries.
So that's what I have been doing for the past six months. Between ten and twenty minutes a month on the latest published issues - my thoughts on the covers, script, artwork, connections to the TV show, etc, etc. It's been a lot of fun and I've had some nice comments.
You can catch up with all six episodes released to date at thedwshow.net.
New episodes appear around the 25th of every month.
The thing is, I'm more naturally a "writer" than a "presenter", so I found myself writing a lot of bullet point notes as I read through the comics and using them as the basis for my recording. Over time that developed almost into a 'script' with a few ad-libs in between - and then a thought struck me -I could use these notes for a blog post! A quick e-mail exchange with Rob Irwin to check he was okay with it, and here we are. Not only does it allow for more published content in what has admittedly been a very sparse 2016, it also gives some nice cross promotion opportunities.
But why start with Episode 6? Well, that's the most recently released podcast that came out only a few days ago, plus it's the one where the notes are freshest in my memory. In a typical Doctor Who-like way, I'm going to publish my reviews backwards over the next few weeks / months until they are all on the blog. Going forward I'll release my written version a few days after the audio on the podcast, so Episode 7 will be out around the end of July. Hopefully both mediums will be of interest to people.
One quick note - these reviews were developed for audio, so by their very nature they are quite descriptive, whereas in a normal blog post I could have just shown the image to illustrate my point. However, I do think that part of the joy of reading comics is experiencing the artwork for yourself so I have included just a couple of images here and there. Be warned though - I do talk about the plots quite a lot so if you want to come into the comic spoiler-free, you might want to skip those bits.
Having gotten all that out of the way, let's crack on...
----------
Fourth Doctor mini-series #3 (of 5):
"Gaze of the Medusa" Part 3. Writers: Gordon Rennie & Emma Beeby. Artist: Brian Williamson
Despite my personal dislike of them, it looks like variant covers are here to stay on these titles, so l thought I'd take a slightly more detailed look at the four covers available for this issue. They really are quite different this month.
First up we have the regular cover from series artist Brian Williamson, which sees a petrified stone Sarah Jane in the grips of a green scaly clawed monster. In the background stands the Doctor, armed with a round shield. Now it doesn’t represent any scene that actually occurs in this book but it’s a nice moody shot which clearly pays tribute to the original, and best, "Clash of the Titans" movie from 1981 - the one with a Ray Harryhausen animated Medusa and Laurence Olivier as Zeus - not the 2010 remake with Ralph Feinnes in a dodgy beard.
Second up is the Photoshop cover from Will Brooks, with mad, google eyed Tom about to be grabbed from behind by a pair of three fingered claws. There is some nice use of colour and overlay effects, but it's spoiled slightly by the obvious cut out lines around the Doctor and the fact that he and the claws just don’t seem to be in the same shot. I've seen Will do better.
Our third cover is from long time comics artist Warren Pleece, who has been around since the days of the UK's Harrier Comics in the late 1980s - and who I've come across more recently in the pages of 2000 AD and titles from Vertigo. We have the Doctor wandering along a dockside while a lamp bearing Sarah Jane looks apprehensively behind her at some dodgy looking workmen hiding in the shadows. I'm not a huge fan of Warren's art but it's nice enough - although it does look more like a panel lifted from a story than a cover image. Plus the Doctor looks like he is constipated, or about to cry - I'm not quite sure which.
Finally we come to perhaps the most interesting of the four covers which is from Robert Hack, who has done lots of Doctor Who variant cover work before for the IDW line - but whom I know primarily as the artist on the excellent "Chilling Adventures of Sabrina" from the Archie Comics horror line.
It's very much in a similar style to that comic with scratchy line work and a washed out brown-toned colour pallete as the Doctor is watched by a skeletal female figure. For me it's one of those pieces of art where you don’t like it at first and then, the more you look at it the more you see the skill and detail - the large confident brush strokes in the background, the wrinkles on the Doctor's jacket, etc.
I'm somewhat reminded of the work of Guy Davis from the wonderful "Sandman Mystery Theatre" series written by Matt Wagner (which funnily enough Warren Pleece worked on as well). I really wasn't keen on Davis's work initially but grew to love it. It does make me wonder what Robert Hack could do with a full horror themed issue of Doctor Who...
On to the meat behind the covers. Last time we ended with Sarah Jane and Professor Odysseus James, and a cyclops creature, transported to the ancient past by the strange 'Lamp of Chronos', leaving the Doctor and the plucky Athena in Victorian London to figure out a way to get them back.
Those two plot strands move along quite briskly. On one hand you have the Doctor tinkering around with bits of technology to get the Lamp of Chronos working again, all while fending off the evil Lady Carstairs as she makes a bid to recover the lamp, assisted by her time sensitive henchmen - who now have a nifty name - the Scryclops.
Meanwhile back in the fifth century BC, Sarah Jane and the Professor explore the underground cave system they have been dumped in, which is full of more petrified humans from the Victorian era and other time periods. They then find the poor Scrylops that was transported with them, also turned to stone. Something else is there, slithering about in the dark...
It's not really spoiler territory to say that the Doctor manages to open a gateway to the past using the lamp and that Sarah Jane meets a stony fate from the gaze of the monster in the depths.
The first had to happen in plot terms - although why the Doctor didn’t just use the TARDIS I'm not sure - maybe he had to find out *where* in time Sarah Jane went, and only the lamp could do that? The second was telegraphed way back in part one (and on one of the covers of this very issue), plus the storyline *is* called "Gaze of the Medusa".
No the real fun to be had is the dialogue and character interaction, which has built on the successes of the last two episodes. In ancient times Sarah Jane is shown to be the one in charge and displays all the feistiness and investigate skills that’s we've seen in the character on television. She certainly puts Professor James in his place on more than one occasion. Speaking of the Professor, am I the only one who is getting a little fed up with the constant tiresome literary quotes every time he makes a new discovery? It's my least favourite aspect of this storyline so far.
There are some lovely Tom Baker-ish moments when the Doctor tries (and initially fails) to get the Lamp of Chronos working again. He even considers Athena as potential companion material - and she gets a short hop in the TARDIS. Personally I find her a bit bland at the moment, but maybe that will improve.
On the art front, it's good news because there are far fewer of the jarring and obvious photo references from Brian Williamson. One or two still creep in but its more subtle. There are also a couple of nice unusual panels - both of which involve the Scryclops - one where we see the Doctor and Athena through its eyes and another where its sort of targeting the fleeing pair as they prepare to enter the timestream. Elsewhere, Williamson is a bit limited with what he can do with the endless cave backgrounds, so the colourist is doing a lot of the heavy lifting in those scenes.
So then we come to the "Medusa" monster itself . It was probably the right decision to steer away somewhat from the classic snake-headed female design that everyone knows from movies and literature. We still have thick "tendrils" for hair, malevolent eyes and a long tongue, but we also get a snake-like body with a clawed hand at the tip, some mandibles that are a little reminiscent of an insect and… four arms - of which the lower set seem able to bend at rather unnatural angles. Maybe that’s just the drawing. It's not a particularly awe inspiring design, but it's still quite scary looking in the final full page cliffhanger.
With two issues still to go in this mini-series, there is a lot of ground left to cover and quite a few unanswered questions:
How will Sarah Jane be returned to her natural form?
What will the Doctor and Athena find when the step out of the chronostream?
Is the Medusa the same creature that Lady Carstairs made a deal with and if not, where does *it* fit into all of this?
Will the Professor do something useful?
There's plenty of scope for a few more twists in this story and its shaping up very nicely so far. One final niggle though, why put the title and credits page halfway through the book instead of at the start or the end (as usual)? It's very jarring and takes you right out of the story.Maybe it's just my digital copy…
----------
Twelfth Doctor #2.5
"The Fourth Wall" Writer: Robbie Morrison. Artist: Rachael Stott
I've less to say about the covers for this title, as two are simply - admittedly very nice - shots of the Doctor and Clara peering out over the sonic shades. Maybe like in previous months they are an album cover homage, but if so, it's not one I can easily recognise. There are a couple of nice touches with the pair reflected in each others glasses and the pattern on Clara's dress seemly made up of the cogs from the TV show title sequence.
The third cover is the Photoshop one with Clara in various costumes and all the Doctors she has appeared with in Gallifreyan time screens behind her. The last by Rachael Stott is the most impressive, with its red background blending into the Doctor jacket as he reaches out a hand towards the reader, inviting them in. Its quite apt considering the subject of the story within.
In my review for issue #2.4, I complained that the Sea Devil story was a little dull and predictable and didn’t take advantage of the comics medium. How Titan should be doing " stories too broad and too deep for the small screen", as the blurb on the back covers of the New Adventures novels used to go. Well it looks like I have to eat my own words because Robbie Morrison and Rachael Stott have done just that with this comic.
It starts with the Doctor directly addressing the reader, urging them not to read any further - "This comic could destroy the world" he says "Don’t turn the page". Breaking that invisible barrier between story and reader is a literary device that’s been tried several times before (Grant Morrison I'm looking at you) and there have been some novels have have used it as well - not forgetting the First Doctor wishing "A Merry Christmas to all of you at home" at the end of episode 7 of "The Dalek Master Plan".
Of course we do turn the page, and are confronted by a a full page image of a twisted deformed face and some kind of protoplasmic hand reaching out to us. We then cut to the room of a teenage girl who experiences the same unnatural sight from one of her own comic books, just before she vanishes. It turns out she is trapped in the pages, hands rattling the panel borders in desperation.
Meanwhile the Doctor and Clara land in central London - asked by UNIT to investigate a spate of strange disappearances and some unusual energy fluctuations. The readings lead them to Shaftsbury Avenue and the doorway of the "Forbidden Planet" store - except in the Doctor's universe its called "Prohibited Sphere". Is this it's first comic book appearance since the Denmark Street store cameoed in those classic Captain Britain stories?
It turns out that Clara is a bit of a comic book geek. There's some nice, if a little heavy handed, chat about diversity in comics and why the Doctor doesn't regenerate into a woman, before he discovers that he himself is the subject of one of the titles - the humorously named "Time Surgeon".
When the Doctor vanishes suddenly in the middle of a rant about the inaccuracies of his comics book portrayal, it's left to Clara to wheedle the truth out of the store employees - the comics have been "eating people". The two members of staff prove their claims by taking her to a store room and showing her the books they have kept where previous customers are now trapped inside. In a sudden moment of insight, Clara works out she has to open up her copy of "Time Surgeon" - and there is the Doctor, glaring up from the page and demanding that she "Buy this comic immediately, my life depends on it!".
Before she can take this all in, the male employee starts to get sucked in as well, and as a creature emerges from the pages, Clara sees who is responsible - it’s the Boneless, the two dimensional monsters from series eight's "Flatline".
What follows are the two parallel stories - one with Clara and the female employee frantically trying to escape the clutches of the Boneless, and the other with the Doctor inside the comic book world. Here he meets Natalie - that girl from the start of the book - that’s who his opening warning was directed at.
We get some fantastically imaginative spreads as the Doctor shatters the confines of the page (a classic nine panel grid) and the pair escape into the realm between the panels - a realm where endless comics books exist - many containing other trapped humans. Panels from the Doctor's own past adventures swirl round him as they step through the multiverse. There's even time for a "Silver Silver" surfer joke.
The Boneless are invading the Earth, via our comic books, one reader at a time. It seems hopeless, as our trapped three dimensionals are dragged closer to the home of the 2D creatures - until the Doctor realises that the disparate panels are all connected in a kind of shared universe, via the power of the readers love for the medium - and that power can be harnessed.
Through a combination of the Doctor directing all that reader telephathic energy and Clara using the TARDIS to break the" Fourth Wall" between realities (there is some technobable about a spacial flux) we get a classic Spider-Man "and with one bound they were free" moment as things return to normal and the Boneless are defeated.
So, this is a tale about the power of comics that could only be told through the medium of comics and it's brilliantly done. Rachael Stott's artwork is allowed to shine through her illustration of the gap between the worlds. There is some absolutely beautiful stuff here and her Twelfth Doctor has never looked better. I know she is not illustrating the next storyline, but I hope that she returns to the title very soon.You also can tell that Robbie Morrison belives in the endless possibilities of comics and how they bring joy to millions - the Doctor gets a great speech saying just that towards the end.
If things are let down at all its that there is a little too much time spent with Clara running away and destroying the comic shop in the process. Whereas the Sea Devil story was overlong at four parts, I was enjoying things so much that this feels too short and could have done being a two-parter with a nice cliffhanger in the middle. Our journey through the strange new dimension is over far too quickly. I wanted the Doctor to explore more of the realm of the Boneless and I reckon there were yet more interesting things that could have been done with the structure of comic books if there had been the room to let the creators - and the readers - imagination really run with it.
Last thing to mention is the one page cartoon from Colin Bell and Neil Slorance. It also riffs on the nature of comic books and is a great creepy little read.
All in all it’s a very satisfying issue, and for me a big step up story-wise from the first four. Lets hope they maintain this quality. Highly recommended.
----------
That's the end of the reviews for this month, so it's just left for me to remind people about the audio version on the "Doctor Who Show" podcast. You can listen to it at www.dwshow.net or download it to your mobile device via the usual iOS or Android apps. Please subscribe and support all the excellent stuff coming from my fellow presenters around the world.
You can follow the show on Twitter at @the DWshow or on Facebook at facebook.com/theDWshow. Finally the e-mail address is hello@the DWshow.net.
No comments:
Post a Comment