Doctor Who: Supremacy of the Cybermen #2 - A Review

Banished from Gallifrey by The Doctor's Twelfth incarnation, the Time Lord President Rassilon has formed an unthinkable alliance with The Cybermen. Granted the power to travel through time, The Cybermen have begun to propagate themselves through time and space, threatening prehistoric Earth, the Sontaran Empire and even Gallifrey itself! Thankfully, The Doctor has a habit of arriving wherever and whenever he's needed... but now the universe needs four Doctors to save it!




The good news is that the artwork in the second issue of Supremacy of the Cybermen is far more consistent than it was in the first issue. The bad news is that the artwork is now consistently awful.

Ivan Rodriguez is easily the worst artist to be employed on any of the Doctor Who comics since Titan Comics took over the licence. At best, his artwork resembles off-model coloring-book pages. At worst, they resemble animation cels from The Legend of Zelda CD-i games. Colorist Nicola Righi doesn't help matters, with her bright-hued palettes being so inappropriate to what is meant to be a dark, disturbing story that it makes even those pages handled by Walter Geovani look terrible!

The most damnable part of this remains that there is a great Doctor Who story underneath all the rushed, shoddy artwork. George Mann and Cavan Scott are two fantastic writers and it's a damn shame they couldn't be teamed with artists who could match their vision. Maybe we'll get lucky and Walter Geovani will pencil the next issue by hmself?

Doctor Who: Supremacy of the Cybermen #1 - A Review

In 2006, The Doctor and his companions Rose Tyler and Captain Jack Harkness return to the London of Rose's time to find The Cybermen are three days into an invasion of Earth...

Meanwhile, in a null zone in 24th Century Deep Space, The Doctor and his companions, Gabby Gonzales and Cindy Wu, discover that the largest shopping mall in the universe has been taken over by cyborg Sontarans...

Earlier, on a prehistoric Earth, The Doctor and his companion Alice Obiefune - in the middle of retrieving some long-extinct fruit for The Doctor's friend Madame Vastra - learn that The Silurians of that time have become physically enhanced by some kind of technology...

And near the end of Time itself, The Doctor arrives on the planet of Karn, seeking a path to Gallifrey in order to investigate what is causing tsunamis that threaten to pull apart the whole of the space time vortex...



The first chapter of Supremacy of the Cybermen proves to be something of a mixed bag. The script by George Mann and Cavan Scott is fantastic, establishing the setting and the various Doctors and their companions with great efficiency. The action sequences are all thrilling and the dialogue is true to form for all the characters involved.

The problem lies in the artwork, which I'm sad to say is mediocre at best. With three artists and two colorists at work on this book, there's very little sense of uniformity between the various sections. This would be bad enough with great artists utilizing dissimilar styles but the sections involving the Ninth and Eleventh Doctors are outright amateurish. The characters look off-model, continually caught with their faces in odd expressions, with Jackie Tyler looking the same age as her daughter in some panels and like a melting wax figure in others!

Is it worth suffering through for a good story?  So far, yes. But art snobs may do well to avoid this trip on the TARDIS.

Doctor Who: The Four Doctors #5 - A Review

Ripped from time by a future incarnation of The Doctor, who had been driven mad by betrayal and bonded with the hive-mind race known as The Vrood, things were looking bleak for The Tenth, Eleventh and Twelfth Doctors and their companions.  However, a twist of fate and a bit of wibbly-wobbly timey-wimey stuff have bought them the chance they need to escape the future Doctor's time-trap. Now if only they can work out how to set-up their escape without breaking all causality in the process...

The conclusion to Paul Cornell's latest Doctor Who epic is something of a headache to navigate. Despite this, it's an enjoyable Gordian knot most Whovians will enjoy unraveling. And Ninth Doctor fans can rejoice, for while their favorite Doctor doesn't quite take part in the action, Cornell reveals a fantastic reason for why he and Rose Tyler didn't show up in this adventure.


The artwork continues to impress, though Neil Edwards does seem rushed at times in this final chapter. There are some points where the inks are too heavy and the details a little indistinct - though this critic suspects the latter may be due to a printing error in his copy of the issue.  Regardless, there is more good than bad in this issue's visuals and it proves a wonderful conclusion to a great story. The Four Doctors is a must-read for all Doctor Who fans!

Doctor Who: The Four Doctors #4 - A Review

In a far future, a probable Doctor driven mad by loneliness allowed himself to bond with the alien hive-mind known as The Vrood.  Now, as part of a plan to ensure that his past comes to pass, he has captured Three Doctors and one companion in order to assure his timeline becomes the accepted one. Two of The Doctor's companions remain free but are their destinies already set in stone?


The artwork on this series continues to impress. This is some of the finest work Neil Edwards has ever produced from the character designs of the cast to the layouts of the action sequences. And the colors by Ivan Nunes prove the perfect finishing touch.


As for the story, he plot thickens further in this latest issue and it does so in some truly surprising ways. I must say again that Paul Cornell has truly outdone himself with this series. Next week's conclusion cannot come fast enough!

Doctor Who: The Four Doctors #3 - A Review

The three Doctors and their companions have escaped from The Reapers but now they face a greater problem. Despite Clara's best efforts to stop them from walking into a trap, they've walked into a trap. Because regardless of the incarnation, The Doctor's first response to being told something is a trap is to find a big stick and poke it.

Unfortunately, this trap turns out to be a Continuity Bomb - a piece of Dalek technology that rips the victim out of space and time and deposits them in an alternate reality changed by a single decision. Thankfully, the bomb was unable to focus on one Doctor. Unfortunately, this still leaves everyone trapped in limbo, seeing a number or horrifying alternate pasts rush by as The Doctors must make a horrible and risky choice... choosing which reality to make real in the hope of escape!


The idea of The Continuity Bomb is precisely the kind of novel touch I expected Paul Cornell to introduce in this series. Such originality is Cornell's bread and his butter is an encyclopedic knowledge of the Doctor Who mythos. Fans of the show will be particularly interested in this issue's brief glimpses of the universe where The Tenth Doctor rules all reality as The Time Lord Victorious, the timeline where The Eleventh Doctor allowed River Song to save his life by making all of time happen at once or the dark future where The Twelfth Doctor has been driven mad by loneliness and distrust...


Neil Edwards continues to impress.  The artwork on this series has looked amazing in every respect, from the likeness of the established cast being captured to the panel flow of the action scenes. The colors of Ivan Nunes complete things perfectly.

Doctor Who: The Four Doctors #2 - A Review

Clara Oswald's efforts to prevent a meeting of The Tenth, Eleventh and Twelfth Doctors that would end the universe only seem to have brought it about. And a sudden short when Ten and Twelve touched one another has summoned The Reapers - the antibodies of reality, who eat paradoxes out of existence. Only for some reason they seem to be more interested in Eleven than anyone else...


It's no surprise that Paul Cornell's script for this issue draws deeply from the well of Doctor Who's rich mythology. After all, Cornell co-authored The Doctor Who Discontinuity Guide back in the BI (Before Internet) days and has a knowledge of the show's history that is second to none.  Yet Cornell also sprinkles the book with the goodly helping of humor common to his stories, finding unexpected angles such as the playfully loony Eleventh Doctor being forced to be the responsible one as Ten and Twelve start arguing and Twelve lamenting that he's now "Scary Doctor" to Ten and Eleven's Posh and Baby.


Neil Edwards proves a perfect playmate for Cornell.  This is a manic energy to Edwards' action sequences and he perfectly captures the likenesses of the characters from the show. All in all this comic is a must-read for all Whovians.

Doctor Who: Nothing O'Clock - A Review

While the Time Lords of old were big on non-interference, there were some threats to space and time they did take seriously.  One of these threats was The Kin - a species who moved through time like sharks move through oceans.  The Time Lords constructed a special prison - one that would contain The Kin for so long as there were Time Lords to guard against them.  Unfortunately, there is now but a single Time Lord who knows nothing of The Kin's existence or their desire for revenge...


It should surprise no-one that Nothing O'Clock is as excellent as it is.  Writer Neil Gaiman - who wrote two very well received episodes of Doctor Who - is well familiar with The Eleventh Doctor and Amy Pond and perfectly captures their respective voices.  Also, this is Neil Gaiman writing a Doctor Who story without a budget to hold him back.  Of course this is story is brilliant!.

The best aspect of the story are The Kin themselves.  The Kin are monsters that couldn't possibly be as effective on-screen as they are in-print.  Not even a Hollywood film budget could do them justice!  The description of what they look like seems to have been tailor-made to evoke the nightmarish images born of a frightened child's mind that are Gaiman's stock-in-trade.  That sensation alone makes this story worth the reading, whether one is a fan of the show or Gaiman's work in general.

Doctor Who: Touched By An Angel - A Book Review

In 2003, Rebecca Whitaker died in a traffic accident.  Eight years later, her husband Mark is still grieving and unable to move on with his life.  Then one day he receives a battered old envelope.  An envelope that is addressed to him in his own handwriting!

He has a chance encounter with The Doctor and The Ponds before he has the chance to open it.  The Doctor says that Mark has somehow gained the attention of something called a Weeping Angel.  This means little to Mark until he is touched by a scary statue and suddenly finds himself back in 1994.  It is here that Mark opens the envelope and finds several thousand pounds in cash as well as a numbered list - also in his own handwriting - of things he must be sure to do over the next decade. 

Once he's tracked Mark down again, The Doctor begrudgingly agrees to let Mark remain in the past since the consequences of him not following the instructions on the list could be even more dangerous than not returning Mark to 2003.  But what the The Doctor doesn't know - because the list told Mark not to show it to anyone else - is that the instructions from Mark's future self ended with a simple message.

"You can save her.   Just as I did."




I greatly enjoyed Johnathan Morris' Festival of Death so I thought I might give one of his other Doctor Who novels a try.  I'm glad I did, because Touched By An Angel is easily the equal of Festival of Death in quality.  Indeed, in some respects it is even better thanks to three elements - the clever use of The Weeping Angels, the humor and the wonderful supporting cast.


Morris introduces a new wrinkle to The Weeping Angels with this story - the idea that there are different species of Angel that feed on different sorts of energies.  In this case, the Weeping Angels in this story grow stronger by absorbing the energy generated by paradoxes.  This adds a whole new wrinkle to the usual Weeping Angels story, as The Doctor and The Ponds have to not only avoid turning their backs on The Angels but also in preventing Mark from accidentally altering his own time line and "ringing the dinner gong".

One of the aspects I enjoy most about Morris' writing is his use of humor.  In Festival of Death, he did a fair job of aping the style and cadence of Douglas Adams.  There is very little of that in Touched By An Angel but there are still some funny farcical moments.  The best of these involves an increasingly annoyed Doctor finding himself accidentally interfering with Mark and Rebecca's wedding day while trying to avert a paradox yet slowly digging himself in deeper the more he tries not to get involved. 

What really sells this story, however, is the wonderful supporting cast.  We see all of Rebecca and Mark's relationship play out over the years and Morris does a great job in making us care about them as people.  Indeed, the reader will sympathize with Mark's dilemma and the increasingly destructive actions he takes as he gets closer to his chance to save the woman he loves, in spite of the damage he might cause.  As Rory notes at one point, he'd be doing the exact same thing if he were in Mark's place.

If this novel has a weak spot, it is that Amy - like in many of the Series Six stories - has very little to do.  There's little sign of the Scottish spitfire we're used to, apart from Amy's scorning The Doctor's suggestion that she should do what her husband says when Rory pleads caution.  Still, Rory is in fine form, kvetching as he winds up spending a good deal of the story waiting on Amy and The Doctor (as usual) and you'll likely hear Matt Smith's voice as you read The Doctor's dialogue.

Bottom Line: If you like good Doctor Who stories, you'll love Touched By An Angel.