The 40 Years of Comics Project - Day 1409: Doctor Who (1984) #1, October 1984

Doctor Who Weekly #19, from which part of today's comic is drawn, is perhaps the comic I have that is the one that I remember having read the longest. It came out in February of 1980, which means I very likely had it while I was still in England. "The Starbeast," the story featured in today's reprint comic, is permanently emblazoned in my brain, along with the Wrarth Warriors and the Meep. And, of course, Sharon, who I've just confirmed is the first POC companion in the series history. Only took 17 years :D.

What's kind of cool about this reprint is that it's been coloured. The original weeklies were all in black and white, so I've always envisioned the Meep as being white, but he's apparently blue. I suppose that makes sense, given that he's got green blood. White would not be a natural colour for him. I guess. I don't know why I'm trying to figure out alien physiology from a single re-coloured panel of a Doctor Who comic.

The other neat thing about this issue is that in the text feature that gives some background on the Doctor, there's an amazing picture of the fourth Doctor and the second Romana by Walt Simonson. It's a bit of a revelation for me, but I can't imagine a better-suited artist. Mr. Simonson's incredible command of movement in his panels would be a brilliant fit for the Doctor and his adventures. Sadly, these appear to be the only illustrations of the Time Lord that he's done, all reprinted from Marvel Premiere #60 (which I read yesterday).

More to come...

The 40 Years of Comics Project Friday Magazine 28: Doctor Who Summer Special, 1980

Thinking about it, it's entirely possible that I actually brought this comic with me when we moved to Canada in 1980. We emigrated in July of 1980, so there's a good chance I'd been bought the Summer special to read on the plane. I'm going to have to headcannon that one - my memory doesn't stretch that far back (except in those strange, dream-like flashes that accompany early memory - this is one of those comics that helps me to understand Benjamin's "Unpacking My Library," in that I can almost hear and see myself as a six year old, based on my knowledge of how they act - I have very vague remembrances of the woman sitting beside me, upon whom I think I vomitted - I remember being at the very front of the 747, moved there because my Mum needed a crib for my youngest brother, barely 6 months old - my Mum, who travelled to Canada, a month behind my Dad, with a 6 year old, a 3 year old, and a 6 month old, is as close to a superhero as any of us are every going to see - how many times have I opened this comic in the last almost-40 years?).

The special reprints the first adventure of the Doctor in his weekly comic, and I just love this story. I've been reading it for so long that it's ingrained on my brain. Reading it again, encountering the Iron Legion again, after so many years, was like meeting up with old friends, and you pick up a conversation like no time at all has passed. I missed Morris, and Vesuvius.

Onward.

The 40 Years of Comics Project Friday Magazine 2 - Doctor Who Classic Comics #1, December 1992

Doctor Who comics, in the weekly iteration of the magazine, were amongst the earliest comics I ever read. I like to boast that this means I was reading Alan Moore comics almost as soon as I could read, which, if you've ever met me, explains a good deal about the person I am, I think. But the comics I cut my teeth on certainly weren't the first comics based on the venerable science fiction series. As the editorial in this magazine notes, "it was less than a year after the series's...debut on television" that a comic strip started running in the appropriately named TV Comic magazine.

I only have three issues of this series, but I'm glad to have a chance to read some of the older Doctors' tales in comics. Aside from the annoying habit of actually referring to The Doctor as "Doctor Who," the stories contained herein are pretty cool little pieces that capture the flavour of the television series quite nicely. The longest of the stories, "Timebenders," deals with a Nazi teleportation experiment that accidentally pulls the Doctor back to the Second World War, where he has to stop the Third Reich from gaining time travel tech. Classic Doctor Who.

One of the other features in the comic is one of my favourite bits of Doctor Who comics, "The Daleks." The Doctor's nemeses get their own story told, from their beginnings as organic beings to their eventual attempts at universal conquest. The Daleks may look slightly silly, but when they're handled well, they're terrifying. These comics, published in the 60s originally, were also reprinted in the main DW magazine, and I always looked forward to the next installment of a series where I could, much of the time, root for the baddest of bad guys. I don't know if it's ever been collected, but if not, it should be.

Onward!

The 40 Years of Comics Project - Day 542: Doctor Who Weekly #38, 3rd July 1980

And so we come to the conclusion of this particular adventure of the Doctor and Sharon. It's a very strange confrontation, as the Doctor demonstrates just how quick a mind he really has, and just how fundamental an understanding of the strangeness of the universe he has. He tricks Brimo into re-imprisoning herself, unsticks the TARDIS from the gap between the universe and the blank dimension, and leaves Brimo there for all eternity.

It's one of those things that they deal with occasionally in the television series, this propensity of the Doctor to not kill, but to occasionally mete out punishments that one might consider worse than death. In particular "The Family of Blood" story with David Tennant addresses this in its denouement, as the villains of the piece realize that he was trying to spare them his wrath by running from them, trying to spare himself having to implement these horrific punishments. Brimo will never, ever hurt anyone again, and she will have eternity to think on that. Chilling.

There's also a cool moment at the end of the story where there's a glitch in the TARDIS's ability to return to normal space, and although it's an instantaneous transition, the inhabitants of the machine age four years each. For the ancient Doctor, this is no problem, but the teenaged Sharon grows into an adult - this presents some problems for her return to her time, and high school, which will be dealt with later in the series. We'll get there eventually.

"Black Legacy," the story of Maxel the Cyberleader and the ultimate weapon also comes to an end with Maxel destroying himself and his ship in order to keep the weapon from escaping the planet and ravaging the universe. The characterization of the villains in these comics is very interesting. In both this story and in "The Dalek Tapes," we see much more emotional reaction to situations than in the television series. Where the Cybermen ostensibly have their emotions removed, it seems that anger and hatred remain, much more like we might imagine the Daleks, really. And the Daleks, in their story, are far more individual than their televised counterparts, having names and drives of their own rather than being the obedient drones we're used to. This is one of the things I love about the idea of transmedial storytelling, the influence of the medium itself even on the characters whose stories we're experiencing. As Maxel and the Dalek Emperor are our focal characters in the stories, there has to be some common link that we can latch onto as we read, even if it's negative emotions.

Something different tomorrow. Onward.

The 40 Years of Comics Project - Day 541: Doctor Who Weekly #37, 26th June 1980

I had a thought this morning that was a bit of a consternation for me. What if, as I was finishing one serial in this series, another began and I had to read the comics for the rest of time? Or, well, until I found a convenient stopping point, at least. But no worries - both "The Time Witch" and "Black Legacy" end with the next issue, so we'll move on to something else from there.

There's a very "Doctor" exchange in this issue, with Brimo yelling for her guard to kill the Doctor and Sharon, and the Doctor yelling for him to make another cup of tea. I have this interesting conversation quite often with my Mum about the Doctor - he's, ostensibly, always the same person, regardless of how he looks, though the whole conundrum of regenerating every cell of his body, including his brain, begs the question of how we define the continuity of this entity. There must be something fundamental on a psychic level that continues. Regardless, every now and again, in both the television show and the comics, I'll catch a moment where I see this continuity, these quirks of personality that prove that this is the same character, regardless of face. The Kill Them/Make a Cup of Tea moment was one of these.

I remember really loving this issue, as it featured lots of cool photos of monsters from the series. When I was first getting these comics, I'd only really seen some of the Tom Baker serials, so there was a vast array of adventures and characters whose only familiarity to me was through information gleaned from this magazine. It's still the case that I haven't seen some of these monsters in the flesh, so to speak, but my knowledge of the series is a slightly more complete than it was for my 7 year old self. I did love the pictures of the monsters, though, even if, seeing them now, they look like amateur cosplay.

One more issue of Doctor Who Weekly, and then on to other things. I've got a couple of theme weeks coming up, and hopefully a return to some longer pieces on a weekly, or bi-weekly, basis. Onward!

The 40 Years of Comics Project - Day 540: Doctor Who Weekly #36, 19th June 1980

When I teach comics, and specifically trade paperback collections of monthly comics, I tend to remind my students that the end of each chapter is also the end of a comic, and that, in most cases, there's a tendency to hit a mildly climactic moment, in order to draw readers back a month later. I'm assuming that these weekly installments of the serials in Doctor Who Weekly are composed in much the same way, but the climactic moments are slightly less....elevated, I suppose. I could see these exciting moments at the end of each installment as simply moments at the end of a page that entice you to turn to the next one. For instance, at the end of today's installment of "The Time Witch," the Doctor's cup of tea is shattered by a lightning bolt from somewhere off-panel. I've little doubt that the source of it (likely Brimo, the witch, herself) will be revealed at the beginning of tomorrow's comic, and though it's exciting, it's hardly the kind of cliffhanger that would keep one wanting more for a whole month.

I'm kind of fascinated by serialized storytelling, and how it affects the ways in which a story is told. The "Black Legacy" Cyberman story by Moore and Lloyd that rounds out these magazines is told in 2-page portions. 2 pages! It's a testament to the skill of the creators involved that they can get anything accomplished in such a small amount of space, and still be able to offer these mini-climaxes at the end of each section. When considering these comics for my daily read, I had thought that maybe I should read whole stories ("The Time Witch," for example, runs 4 installments of 4-5 pages each, so pretty much equivalent to a single monthly comic) rather than individual issues. But that wouldn't have really fit with the project, so serialization it is. The long and short of this little musing on serials is that these weekly ones, and the monthlies I love so well, offer a remarkable proof of McLuhan's aphoristic pronouncement that the medium really is the message.

Tomorrow, the Doctor and Sharon meet Brimo (I assume). It occurred to me that having Sharon, a high-school aged young lady, as companion in these comics puts the comic stories in a much closer vein to the current television series than the shows that were airing at the time of the magazine's publication. But I'll have to think on this a bit more.

Onward.

The 40 Years of Comics Project - Day 539: Doctor Who Weekly #35, 12th June 1980

I was inspired by my thinking yesterday of these old comics, and decided to read a few. I have a number of them set aside in my active magazine collection (time for another metadata post, I think...) because they feature very early work by Alan Moore, along with other British luminaries such as Steve Moore, Dave Gibbons, and David Lloyd. I was talking yesterday with my Mum about these comics, and how the stories have been collected into trades that I think I may have to pick up. I'm not sure what it is, in contrast to the newer Who comics that I haven't enjoyed that much, that draws me to these little snippets of tales. There's probably a heavy dose of nostalgia involved, though there's also the fact that the time in which it was published was a far less continuity driven time, so the stories don't seem to do much to align themselves with the television show. We also have a nice variety of stories in here - the lead one is a typical (if such a term can be used to describe Doctor Who) Doctor Who story, but the other three tales encompass a telling of the ancient history of the Daleks, a reprint (I'm pretty sure) of an old Marvel weird tales-style adventure - this magazine provided my first exposure to both Kirby and Ditko through these reprints - and a Moore/Lloyd horror tale featuring the Cybermen. We definitely see shades, in this last piece, of the kind of horror stories with which Moore would make a name for himself in the pages of Swamp Thing later in the decade.

I think about anthology titles and their relative lack of success in the North American market. I wonder if, in order to maintain the kind of momentum one needs, at least with a serialized anthology, if the weekly publishing schedule is more suitable? With a week between installments, rather than a month, following 3 or 4 different stories, recalling what was happening in each, would not be so hard.

So it'll be a few more issues of this series for the next few days, at least until the saga of the Time Witch has run its course. After that, I guess we'll see, but I do have to say it was a lovely comic to sit and drink my coffee with this morning. Onward!