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\nBy various (Panini Books)
\nISBN: 978-1-84653-410-2<\/p>\n
\nBy various (Panini Books)
\nISBN: 978-1-84653-410-2<\/p>\n
The British love comic strips and they love celebrity and they love “Characters.”<\/p>\n
The history of our graphic narrative has a peculiarly disproportionate amount of radio comedians, Variety stars and film and television actors such as Charlie Chaplin, Flanagan & Allen, Shirley Eaton (“The Modern Miss”), Arthur Askey, Winifred Atwell, Max Bygraves, Jimmy Edwards, Charlie Drake and their ilk as well as actual shows and properties such as Whacko!<\/em>, ITMA<\/em>, Our Gang, <\/em>(there was a British version of the Hal Roach film sensation by Dudley Watkins in Dandy<\/strong> as well as the American comicbook series by Walt Kelly), Old Mother Riley, Supercar, Pinky and Perky <\/em> and literally hundreds more.<\/p>\n Anthology comics such as Radio Fun<\/strong>, Film Fun<\/strong>, TV Fun<\/strong>, Look-In<\/strong>, TV Tornado<\/strong>, TV Comic<\/strong> and Countdown<\/strong> among others all translated our viewing and listening favourites into pictorial joy every week, and it was a pretty poor star or show that couldn’t parley their day job into a licensed comic property.<\/p>\n Doctor Who launched on television with the first episode of ‘An Unearthly Child’<\/em> on November 23rd<\/sup> 1963, and in 1964 his decades-long association with TV Comic<\/strong> began in #674 with the premier instalment of ‘The Klepton Parasites’<\/em>. On 11th<\/sup> October 1979 (although adhering to the US off-sale cover-dating system so it says17th<\/sup> ) Marvel’s UK subsidiary\u00c2\u00a0 launched Doctor Who Weekly<\/strong>, which became a monthly magazine in September 1980 (#44) and has been with us under various names ever since. All of which only goes to prove that the Time Lord is a comic hero with an impressive pedigree.<\/p>\n Marvel\/Panini is in the ongoing process of collecting every strip from its archive in a uniform series of over-sized graphic albums, each concentrating on a particular incarnation of the deathless wanderer. This particular one gathers stories from issues #130-150, (originally published in the early 1990s) a time when regular artist John Ridgway gave way to a succession of rotating creators as part of the company’s urgent drive to cut costs – although there’s no appreciable drop in quality that I can see. These yarns all feature the Seventh Doctor (Sylvester McCoy – my second favourite after Patrick Troughton – but I’m sure I’ll be advised why that’s so very wrong by somebody in due course…)<\/p>\n This all black and white collection kicks off with the eponymous ‘Cold Day in Hell!’<\/em> by writer Simon Furman, Ridgway and inker Tim Perkins, a four part thriller featuring an attack by Martian Ice Warriors on a tropical resort planet, which leads directly into the moody, single story ‘Redemption!’<\/em> by Furman, Kev Hopgood and Perkins.<\/p>\n At that time and in this book Marvel sanctioned some controversial crossovers with other Marvel UK characters. The first of these was Death’s Head, a robotic bounty hunter from the Transformers<\/strong> comic in Furman and Geoff Senior’s ‘The Crossroads of Time’<\/em> (Doctor Who Monthly<\/strong> #135), but it was back to sounder stuff with the freak-filled three-part Victorian Great Exhibition epic ‘Claws of the Klath!’<\/em> by Mike Collins, Hopgood and David Hine.<\/p>\n Fresh-faced young scribe Grant Morrison wrote the charmingly different ‘Culture Shock!’<\/em> for equally neophytic (no, it means new or fresh) ascending star Bryan Hitch to draw, before John Higgins illustrated Furman’s ‘Keepsake’<\/em>, a classy space opera about an indigent salvage man. John Freeman and Lee Sullivan started their long association with the magazine in the two-part ‘Planet of the Dead’<\/em> (DWM<\/strong> #141-142), which featured an ambitious, spooky team-up of all seven regenerations of the Time Lord on a world filled with the Companions who had died in their service…<\/p>\n ‘Echoes of the Mogor!’<\/em> (DWM<\/strong> #143-144) by Dan Abnett and Ridgway was an eerie chiller set on a mining planet where Earth workers are mysteriously dying, whilst ‘Time and Tide’<\/em> by Richard Alan and John Carnell, illustrated by Dougie Braithewaite & Dave Elliott (DWM<\/strong> #143-144), marooned the Doctor on a drowning world amidst aliens who don’t seem to care if they live or die…<\/p>\n Carnell wrote the other crossover I mentioned earlier, a far less well-regarded romp with the imbecilic detectives the Sleeze Brothers<\/strong>. ‘Follow that Tardis!<\/em>‘ was illustrated by Andy Lanning, Higgins, Braithwaite and Elliot, and the volume’s strip content concludes with Alan grant’s three-part ‘Invaders from Gantac!’<\/em>, wherein a colony of alien torturers invade 1992 London by mistake in a tale as much comedy as thriller, drawn by Martin Griffiths and Cam Smith.<\/p>\n Supplemented with lots of text features, pin-ups, creator-biographies and commentaries, this is a great book for casual readers, a fine shelf addition for dedicated fans of the show and a perfect opportunity to cross-promote our particular art-form to anyone minded to give comics one more go…<\/p>\n