Thirty years ago (yesterday), Marvel released Doctor Who Magazine Issue 244, priced at £2.95. This was significant in ushering in a new era of their comic, with the Eighth Doctor’s first appearance (though he was partway through his second comic adventure in the short-lived Radio Times offerings, discussed above), in the first part of Endgame, written by Alan Barnes and drawn by Martin Geraghty, Robin Smith and Robin Riggs.
This is a little confusing and feels sort of all over the place… so pretty on brand for a DWM strip really. Very exciting to get back to Stockbridge, and to be reunited with Max? I’ve read the Fifth Doctor’s run, which set up a reunion with him that I first assumed would happen quickly, and then never, but here it is (I’ve only read half of Sixie’s run and none of Seven, so goodness knows if Max or any of the Stockbridge threads are picked up there). It’s really incredibly satisfying for a thread to be tied so much later though There’s some fun here and I’m excited to get to know Izzy. The art’s decent, though I found the writing to be a little wooden, and as for the appearance of the Toymaker… well, I suppose the jury is out on that one. The crossword gimmick is fun but I hope it ends up leading somewhere rather than just being some random guy on the sidelines coming up with answers to helpfully relevant cryptic clues…
There’s not heaps of other Eighth Doctor content in this issue, other than a pretty scathing opinion piece from Matt Jones on how terrible the TV movie is, and a brief mention of the upcoming (as yet unnamed) Eighth Doctor Adventures books that had been announced in the previous issue.