It’s honestly a crime that in almost twenty years we never got a continuation to Destrii’s story. It feels unlikely now that the pages have gone down to six per month again, but it could work as a backup strip.
(Or somebody please give Scott Gray his own Doctor Who ongoing to do whatever he wants!)
I’m immediately in love with the art here, that '80s (I know it’s '79 but close enough) black and white British comic aesthetic is great, and it’s put to incredible use here depicting the robots and future tech of this parallel Rome.
The Iron Legion leap out of the page from panel one, giving an incredible Judge Dredd/Warhammer 40K vibe, and I loved the art for every single panel. Specific kudos to the horrifying image of skeletal Tom Baker.
Unfortunately though, despite absolutely adoring the art, I found the story itself a little lacking. The cliffhangers every four pages weren’t the worst most of the time, though there were a few times where it felt just very jarring. The plot itself also felt a little lacking, almost emulating the classic-who runaround, jumping from one location to the next in this parallel world, but you don’t really get the chance to rest and take in any of the locations which is a real shame.
The ending also fell a little flat for me, I mean they did basically have only three pages to do it, and I think they did well with what they had, but that doesn’t stop it from being a shame.
Honestly what comes to mind everytime I think about The Iron Legion is that I totally understand why Big Finish chose to adapt it. It has its flaws - the villans are kinda bland and the four page limit gives it a weird pace -, but it’s full of imagination, good ideias, have an epic scope and is a fun run around with some cool characters.
100% agree with you on that, and I’d definitely be interested to hear the adaptation
Just saw the first page of City of the Damned, and what I’m getting from this is that these writers really had some incredible ideas, the level of worldbuilding I’m seeing from one page here is great, and again, god, the art is just so so good
This is what I LOVE about the Cybermen, the idea of them as an inevitability is just so interesting to me, wherever there is humanity there’s Cybermen.
I mean we’ve got what, three origins for them with a fourth coming out next year (albeit one that’ll likely contradict another, but still), and then this and The Sky Man both giving us cyberman-adjacent societies/monsters
Honestly this is half for that first part alone, that’s genuinely haunting, it’s like The Happiness Patrol dialed up to eleven.
The worldbuilding and haunting imagery that comes with it would already be enough for this story to be great, The Doctor bringing emotion back to an emotionless world is a great premise, but then it goes and does even more with it than I’d expected.
The ZEPO are admittedly a little silly, but Doctor Who is at it’s best when it’s silly, and I think they’re a really interesting part of the story. A people who’ve been forced to live without emotions, knowing that they want to feel, but not understanding how to, so each of them choosing just a single emotion to take on and keep alive. It’s a great bit of worldbuilding that paradoxically makes somehow makes the resistance feel even more real through how cartoonish they are.
And then they use this as a commentary not only on the need for emotions, but the pain they can cause to others as well with Big Hate releasing essentially a biblical plague on the city out of frustration towards the moderators. The Doctor gives people back their emotions which conveniently stops it, but in that attack so many people are killed, there’s a haunting panel showing how for some it came just too late, a man violently squishing the bugs as his wife’s skeleton is covered in them in the background. Imagine your first emotion being that mix of grief and rage, it’s just brilliantly written.
The black and white art style as well works perfectly, I’ve had a quick look at some of the colourisations, and while I think it adds a little to The Iron Legion, it just takes away from this story, the almost clinical nature of the monochrome art adds so much to the world of the story.
Also couldn’t find anywhere else to mention it, but the designs of the Brains Trust are just so good, I love it so so much.
Thought it was a good time to start with the reviews. I am still reading Sixie era, but I have a lot to catch up.
The Iron Legion - ★★★½☆
What makes The Iron Legion such a good first story for the Magazine is how full of wonder it is. It has a lot of creative, engaging ideas that come to life quite well with a gorgeous art; it never loses steam and is fun the whole way through. There a quite a lot of colorful characters, my favorite being the old robot Vesuvius.
The Iron Legion starts when the Fourth Doctor encounters the titular characters slaughtering an entire village. The first page alone is very evocative. The Doctor then is caught up in an interdimensional conflict when he finds out the Iron Legion came from an alternative Earth that never saw the fall of the Roman Empire, which is now determined to conquest all things.
The quick pace is both a blessing and a curse. I have come to appreciate it because these comics reminded me how much you can fit in so few pages, but we are still in the early days of the strips - we have only four pages per part, which establishes a weird pace to the story (I much prefer the 8 to 12 pages we get with later Doctors) and don’t let all of the wonderful locations we visit be exploited to their fullest. The ending is also a bit rushed. I do think the villains are a cool idea - demon-like aliens influencing time itself by manipulating ancient history is quite fun - but I’m not in love with the execution. They end up just a little bland.
Just a few tweaks and The Iron Legion could be an absolute classic. It kind of is already, to be fair. Weirdly enough, there are quite a lot of ideas not completely realised here that a future DWM story would use wonderfully - how religious devotion can turn out a tragedy and justify horrors, a city made a hellscape by that belief, a “cult” bent in bringing the “end of the world”, and an even bigger menace behind it all just waiting to take its chance at the Doctor. Still, I like it for what it is. It’s worth a read.
Comparing this to the TV story that adapts it is a real struggle, I think the plot itself is better here, but because of the format it does lose out on some of the charm, and this is the first of the Doctor Who Magazine comics where I feel the art is really working against the story rather than adding to it.
The Meep looks as cute as he can with the art style, but I can’t help but wonder if a different style would be able to create an even better contrast between him and the Wrath Warriors or even just both sides of him.
I also think the Doctor Who comics are at their best when telling stories you can’t imagine being done on screen (or at least not at the scale they’re done on the page), and nothing here particularly stands out as impressive for me on that front here, I could definitely see this being a story they tell on TV, not only because of the obvious, but even just, I can imagine them telling this story on TV back with Tom Baker.
Overall, this is a strong 6/10, but it doesn’t do enough for me personally to push it over to a 7/10