I have been reading some posts here and there and while the forum have been going through the Titan comics in the Comic Club, there is not much discussion about the DWM end of comics… Which I find a pity! They did some of my favourite Doctor Who ever, so I wanted to share some love for them.
Also, I have been reading through them in release order and right now I’m in the middle of Sixie’s era. So it’s a good time for me to talk about them. I also previously read the entirety of the Eighth Doctor strips, and they are fantastic.
They’ve built their own continuity through the years and have a huge amount of recurring characters, locations and ideas that I honestly love. Scott Gray is a particularly fantastic writer, and I am so excited to get to his 11, 12 and 13 runs, plus rereading his ternure on Eight.
Some favourites of mine are “The Tides of Time”, “Stars Fell on Stockbridge”, “Voyager”, “Wormwood”, “The Fallen”, “The Glorious Dead”, “Character Assassin”, “Beautiful Freak” e “Children of the Revolution”. Among these are, in my opinion, two of the best Master stories ever, and my favourite Dalek tale.
I have read around 10-20 of them but I was not that imprest by them. The ones I read feelt like it where too short to tell a good story and the format with cliffhangers every 4 pages is not that good when you want a story that is not just fun.
Have you read any from Eight? The strips get some more pages throughout the years (7-8 during the 90s up to 12 during Eleven’s era) and so the stories get more time to breath. And that era is very well structured - there are four arcs, seasons even, that also builds upon a coming-of-age arc for their original companion, Izzy. It’s very rewarding to read this era.
(Plus it’s also a interesting read because it heavily influenced New Who and RTD)
You’re absolutely right we should have a thread about these @NobodyNo-One - there are some absolutely brilliant stories in the run, especially with the 8th Doctor. The Flood is amazing.
Shout outs also to Hunters of the Burning Stone and The Chains of Olympus.
Izzy is one of my favourite companions and her debut story is excellent.
Nice reviews! I haven’t read any from Eleven yet, but both of the runs in his era look very good. I am excited to get to them in time. I’ll write some reviews of my own when I have some time, I have so many mixed feelings about the Fourth Doctor stories.
I have mixed feelings about The Star Beast too, haha. To be fair, I do prefer Beep the Meep as he is pictured there, and I find the Wrath Warriors more interesting too. It also works as a setup for Sharon as a brand new companion… but it frustrates me because I strongly dislike almost every single decision regarding Sharon after this. Dragon’s Claw is perhaps the only other story from this duo I like.
It’s not really The Star Beast’s fault that everything involving Sharon after is so poor handled, but it makes a very frustrating story in retrospect because she is well characterised there. The main pro of the TV version is that the emotional beats work better, but I prefer the antagonists and the conclusion of the comic.
Looks like I’m out on a limb with this one but it’s been quite a few years since I read the Sharon strips - they were some of the first DW comic strips I read!
I really don’t like what they do with Sharon . But I was a bit unfair saying that I only like Dragon’s Claw, The Time’s Witch and Dreamers of Death are good too.
The strip I dislike the most from Four must be The Life Bringer. I can see Paul Magrs doing a story like that and it working. The writer sadly wasn’t Paul Magrs.
Plus this era has what I call the 2000 AD syndrome. A lot of writers and artists that worked on 2000 AD and Judge Dredd worked in the early strips, and it’s easily noticeable in stories like City of the Damned or The End of Line… but sometimes it doesn’t feel very Doctor Who to me. The comics were still trying to find their identity back then, I guess.
While I haven’t read many of the TV Comic/Coutdown/TV Action First/Second/Third/Fourth Doctor strips, I’ve heard The Doctor’s Beard Podcast talk about them on their Patreon episodes. And from what I’ve heard, I can definitely say that the DWM comics are so much more better written and logically compatent and more like the Doctor than the eariler strips.
I recently read Volumes 2-4 of the Eighth Doctor DWM comics and the first three Eleveth Doctor ones. Both have great arcs and I really wish someone would pick up the continued adventures of Eight and Destrii after they walked off into the sunset at the end of The Flood.
The Monster Makers part three was an excellent continuation of what is shaping up to be a very good story.
Just one thing I loved about it was THE MIND PROBE! I loved seeing the monsters from 15’s TV era and previous DWM strips, plus some other monsters I haven’t seen before. Are they from the novels?
Oh, yeah, no doubt. That prehistoric era of multimidia content was very, very weird and not in a good way. I am on the “it was a dream all along” train that The Land of Happy Endings (and The Five O’Clock Shadow) set for us. I have heard some good about some Third Doctor strips tho.
. But I was a bit unfair saying that I only like Dragon’s Claw, The Time’s Witch and Dreamers of Death are good too.