In Other Media: Doctor Who

If you know me personally, and have read my Heavyink article or my little bio at the bottom of this article, you know I’m a fan of the New Series of Doctor Who. The show is the pure definition of Sci-Fi Epic and Christopher Eccleston, David Tennant, and Matt Smith have all been awesome as the leading actor.  But the question in this article is just how well does the series transfer to the comic medium? It depends on whose writing, to be frank.With the new series, it all depends on who the writer is. It all began in Agent Provocateur, a limited series that was published in early 2008 by IDW featuring the Tenth Doctor and Martha Jones. After this series, IDW began to publish another mini-series: The Forgotten. The Forgotten was written by Tony Lee and the art was by Pia Guerra, my favorite comic artist of all time. The Forgotten was a stellar series that featured the first ten Doctors.

 

After the success of The Forgotten, IDW began to publish a series of six one-shots with two featuring Donna Noble, two featuring Martha Jones, and one with H.G. Wells as the Doctor’s companion.  The one-shots vary in quality. My personal favorite was The Time Machination with Tony Lee writing the tenth Doctor working alongside H.G. Wells, complete with a cameo from another of the Doctor’s incarnations! While the one-shots were still being released, IDW began to release an ongoing series that was creatively called Doctor Who Ongoing which was written by Tony Lee. Are you getting the message?

 

The first Doctor Who Ongoing (there have been two but I’ll get to that) series followed the tenth Doctor near the end of his life, taking place between the episodes Planet of the Dead and The Waters of Mars. This was an excellent series to read, adding more to the frantic sight-seeing and adventure to his life as he tried to outrun those four knocks. It featured some new companions and the comic mainstay, Martha Jones. This series had a very perfect ending, enabling it to transfer to the next series.

And now, we come to Doctor Who Ongoing 2.0. This was launched earlier this year and I was extremely excited to find the first issue. Also written by Tony Lee — the man proves that he has the ability to capture the new incarnation of the Doctor despite a new and very different personality. While most of the series with the Tenth Doctor was him trying to outrun his fate, this series takes it back to the basics with The Doctor, Amy, and Rory just adventuring. Although this series is just six issues in, it’s been a wild run. They’ve already dealt with holographic spam emails, Jack the Ripper, Vikings, AND the Sontarans just showed up.

All in all, the two ongoing series combined earn themselves a solid 8 out of 10. I give it a 9 due to the consistently perfect writing of Tony Lee and his ability to catch the dialogue of both the Tenth and Eleventh Doctors. The deduction of point stems from the series’ art. Both series have a spinning door of artist with a varying amount of talent that can be very hit or miss; one issue will have a superstar like Fables artist Mark Buckingham, and the next issue will have art that’s just sub-par in comparison. It’s all about how much a comic’s art matters to you.

One thing I must mention about this series is it’s availability in the UK. IDW couldn’t get an extended license to publish the series across seas without the prices being outrageous. So what does this mean? They’re more difficult to find. The only store that seems to have them over there is Forbidden Planet International. I encourage all my friends across the pond to try to get their hand on them. They’re a really great read, especially The Forgotten, and it’s something to do that’s Doctor Who related in the FOUR MONTH FREAKING GAP OF SEASON 6.

Special thanks to Hannardynamite for helping me research the British availability debacle.

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2. A Doctor from a Distant Land
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