Confessor
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Post by Confessor on Nov 18, 2015 3:19:45 GMT -5
A very good friend of mine had the first Daleks' hardcover annual from 1964 as a kid. He's not as old as all that though, so I think he must've inherited it from an older uncle or something. This is the one I mean...  Apparently this was the first Dr. Who-related hardcover annual published...before there had even been a Dr. Who annual proper. My friend lent me this book in the mid-90s and I remember how amazing the painted artwork of Richard Jennings was. Pure eye candy. It's very much in the same vein as Frank Hampson's Dan Dare strip that ran in Eagle comics, in terms of the painted art style. Yep, one of the very earliest pieces of Who related merchandise, from 1964. The Dalek World followed in 1965, and The Dalek Outer Space Book in 1966. Later, four Dalek Annuals appeared between 1975 and 1978, but of course by then, the Doctor who Annual itself had been around for awhile (I'll get to those in a bit, as they're kind of a treasure house of forgotten Who comics material). And yes, that painted artwork was amazing, and there was a lot of stuff in that style in British comics back then. The Trigan Empire springs to mind as another good example. I'd never heard of The Trigan Empire before, but a quick Google shows me that, yes, the artwork has a very similar appearance. Note to self: must re-read my Dan Dare hardcovers again soon. |
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Post by tingramretro on Nov 19, 2015 2:53:28 GMT -5
Back again after a minor delay caused by a 24 hour outage at Photobucket... The arrival of the third Doctor marked a significant change in the TV show, as what had until then generally been regarded as a childrens show began to consciously aim for a significantly older audience, taking its cue from the likes of the classic Quatermass serials. This change was not, however, reflected in the strip in TV Comic; the Doctor remained permanently Earthbound and was working for the Brigadier, as on TV, but the actual stories (still drwn by John Canning, whose whimsical style had been perfect for the second Doctor but seemed out of place when applied to the third) were still charmingly silly. That all changed in 1971, though, when publishers Polystyle launched Countdown, a big, glossy. and correspondingly expensive title aimed at slightly older readers (the young readership of TV Comic probably wouldn't have had the pocket money to afford it) which had the interesting gimmick of numbering its pages in reverse order, so that each issue was an actual "countdown" to the last! Most of the new title's content was based on the characters created by Gerry Anderson, such as Thunderbirds and Captain Scarlet, but it was evidently felt that the Doctor in his current incarnation would fit in better here than in his traditional home. And with his new, markedly less dumb, adventures now beautifully illustrated by the likes of Harry Lindfield, Frank Langford and Gerry Haylock, the Doctor's comics career entered its first real golden age!  Countdown art by Harry Lindfield... ...and by Gerry Haylock. Countdown proved highly popular, though its title was changed more than once in the course of its 132 issues, first becoming Countdown: the Space Age Comic, then Countdown for TV Action, TV Action in Countdown, TV Action & Countdown and finally, just TV Action! The Doctor remained a constant presence throughout, though.   Unfortunately, while undeniably beautiful to behold, TV Action's price ultimately proved too much for the pockets of kids in 70s Britain, and it bit the dust in August 1973. The Doctor would have no choice but to return to TV Comic. |
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Confessor
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Not Bucky O'Hare!
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Post by Confessor on Nov 19, 2015 9:39:47 GMT -5
Lovely artwork from both Haylock and Lindfield there.
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Post by tingramretro on Nov 19, 2015 14:14:47 GMT -5
Some of the Doctor's Most Fearsome Foes from TV Comic and Countdown
These are just a few of the fearsome terrors from the depths of space that our hero faced courtesy of the 60s and 70s strips...how did he ever manage to survive!!? The Go-Rays
 Bizarre, wheeled creatures that looked as though they'd escaped from a 19th century childrens book. Presumably, their preferred method of attack was causing their victims to die laughing...
The Kleptons
 Three foot tall aquatic creatures with noses like trumpets. Oh, dear...
The Trods
 Let's not pretend: these generic robot conquerors were only created because TV Comic didn't have the rights to the Daleks, which didn't stop them returning to plague the Doctor time and again with their moronic plots. Until TV Comic finally got the Daleks, anyway, and promptly had them exterminate the Trods...
The Quarks
 These guys were actually from the TV show, though when TV Comic did a deal to acquire the rights they basically ignored the continuity established in 1968 serial 'The Dominators' and turned the dull aliens' mindless robotic servants into independent, thinking creatures with an evil agenda all their own. As a result, they were considerably more of a threat in print than they ever were on TV.
The Ugrakks
 These things were supposed be aliens with the power to control any form of vegetable life, and were actually designed by one of Countdown's readers, for a competition. If he's still out there somewhere, maybe Ian Fairnington can explain why they look like bipedal elephants?
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Post by tingramretro on Nov 21, 2015 3:59:35 GMT -5
Continuity with the TV series had never been a major factor for the comics. Yes, companion Jamie had accompanied the second Doctor, and we'd seen the occasional TV monster (mostly the Daleks, but also the Cybermen and those tiresome Quarks). And the third Doctor's brief tenure in TV Comic had featured the Brigadier, although he'd been dropped without explanation when the strip shifted to Countdown (instead, the third Doctor seen in that title appeared to be working as a kind of freelance consultant for the British government, operating out of a cottage in the country; oddly, the Doctor's cottage appears to have stuck in the minds of several later writers of his life, showing up in the AudioGo series of audio adventures starring Tom Baker a few years back, and more recently in Titan's eighth Doctor limited series). But for the most part, the strips did not reflect the TV show at all (and come to think of it, the TV show directly contradicted the comics at least once, since the Vogans seen in 1975's Revenge of the Cybermen definitely aren't the same Vogans seen in Countdown's own The Vogan Slaves and its TV Comic sequel The Wreckers).  The Vogans (no relation)
When the Doctor returned to TV Comic though, now in his fourth incarnation and initially still drawn by Gerry Haylock, and later Martin Asbury, there seemed to be a conscious attempt to remedy this. The Doctor still frequently 'sounded' more like Pertwee than Baker, but he was at least now accompanied by TV companion Sarah Jane Smith, and the stories seemed somehow a little closer in tone to what was been seen on BBC1, even if there were still occasional clashes (the Doctor's home planet of Gallifrey is for some reason called 'Jewel' in the strip a couple of times).  Woden's Warriors, from the TV Comic Annual 1976
Unfortunately, the strip's fortunes would soon suffer a serious downturn. Asbury departed after just two beautifully drawn stories to draw the adventure strip Garth in The Daily Mirror, and with no suitable artist to replace him, the editor pulled in old standby John Canning, whose comedic style was less than perfect for this new incarnation, and lacked the polish of his earlier work.  John Canning returns to the strip
 From 'The Mutant Strain', with one-off companion Tom Lambert
The strip limped on for some years, Sarah eventually being replaced by Leela (who had to swap her trademark skimpy animal skins for jeans and a sweater in this kid friendly take on the series) but from #1385 onwards, no new Who strips appeared; instead, TV Comic readers were 'treated' to the cost saving exercise of old Patrick Troughton and Jon Pertwee strips by Canning being reprinted, relettered and with Tom Baker's head and scarf drawn in over the original artwork! It was ludicrous, and it couldn't last. The Doctor departed from TV Comic's pages for the last time on 12th May 1979, and his career in comics seemed to be at an end after 15 years. Luckily, a man named Dez Skinn had other ideas... |
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Confessor
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Post by Confessor on Nov 21, 2015 20:39:59 GMT -5
Sarah eventually being replaced by Leela (who had to swap her trademark skimpy animal skins for jeans and a sweater in this kid friendly take on the series) Booooo...!   |
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Post by tingramretro on Nov 28, 2015 3:34:58 GMT -5
Sarah eventually being replaced by Leela (who had to swap her trademark skimpy animal skins for jeans and a sweater in this kid friendly take on the series) Booooo...! That's nothing. In a later story, Leela even loses her name, becoming "Miss Young" for no readily apparent reason. |
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Post by tingramretro on Nov 28, 2015 11:15:51 GMT -5
Marvel UK had existed as an imprint of Marvel Comics since 1972, when The Mighty World of Marvel was launched as the first of a line of weekly comics reprinting classic Marvel titles from the 1960s. However, in October 1976 Marvel had gone one step further and launched Captain Britain, a title which, though written and drawn in the US, was produced specifically for the British audience, with material never seen anywhere else. Sales of the book didn't set the world on fire (it only lasted 39 weeks) but the response was positive enough to convince Marvel that the UK audience was one worth tapping into, and so in 1979 Stan Lee hired British comics entrepreneur Dez Skinn to take over the running of Marvel UK and make it effectively a company in its own right, producing a mix of reprinted American material and new material originated in the UK. One of Skinn's first decisions was that Marvel UK needed a home produced title to exploit the then current craze for science fiction which had been sparked off by Star Wars, which meant they needed a high profile SF property to base it on. With Doctor Who now enjoying an upsurge in popularity on TV and no longer appearing in comics anywhere else, it was the obvious choice, and from the very beginning Marvel and the Doctor were a marriage made in Heaven! The first issue of Doctor Who Weekly appeared in October 1979, launching the Doctor (now companionless) into an epic adventure on an alternate Earth where the Roman Empire conquered the stars, courtesy of writer Pat Mills (better known at the time as the guiding force behind Fleetway's now legendary SF anthology 2000 AD) and artist Dave Gibbons (another of the 2000 AD stable) backed up by a strip called Return of the Daleks by Steve Moore and David Lloyd and a reprint of Marvel's adaptation of the classic novel War of the Worlds. There were also a number of short, rather basic features on the TV show, and even an introductory "Letter from the Doctor", in the shape of Tom Baker.  The book was an immediate hit with fans of the TV show: here was the Doctor Who comic we'd been waiting for, not the half hearted hack job produced by TV Comic in recent years, but a title thoroughly true to the spirit of the show. And if Dave Gibbons's fourth Doctor didn't actually look much like Tom Baker, who cared? He did unmistakeably look like the Doctor! Those early issues saw what is now recognised as something of a golden age of Who strips, most of them written by either Mills or his frequent 2000 AD collaborator John Wagner (they actually alternated on the strips, though they were all credited as being written by both of them) with The Iron Legion in particular being popular enough to warrant several reprintings, including in Marvel's first Doctor Who Summer Special.  The backup strips were pretty impressive too, most of the better ones written by Steve Moore, though upcoming talent Alan Moore would also later contribute a few, including the wonderfully creepy Business as Usual, a four part tale (drawn by David Lloyd) about an industrial spy who discovers an alien invasion being planned by the Nestenes and their Auton servants. The early backup strips would also introduce a couple of recurring characters who would become minor stars in their own right-Kroton, the Cyberman with a soul, and perpetually snarling anti-hero Abslom Daak, Dalek Killer, who would eventually transcend the comics themselves, appearing in an original Doctor Who novel in the 90s and finally making it into the TV series itself (albeit in a "blink and you'll miss it" cameo) in 2014! Still, there was something not quite right about the title; as a comic it worked fine, but Doctor Who had a wide audience who were interested in more than just comic strips. Which is why issue #43 was the weekly's last; from #44 onwards, with an increased page count (and price) and more of an emphasis on actual features about the show as well as the Doctor's continuing strip adventures, it would begin to scale new heights as Doctor Who: A Marvel Monthly... |
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Post by tingramretro on Dec 9, 2015 4:16:30 GMT -5
Easily the most successful character to come out of the back-up strips in Doctor Who Weekly, Abslom Daak was the creation of Steve Moore and Steve Dillon, in what initially seemed like a one-off story in DWW #17-20, the tale of a sadistic criminal who is given a choice by the court trying him for his crimes: execution by vaporisation or exile as a Dalek Killer, transported to a Dalek controlled sector of the galaxy to take his chances fighting the metal monsters-effectively, a delayed death sentence! In a scene which with hindsight is actually quite disturbing given the child audience the strip was aimed at, Daak elects to take the second option, not because it offers a potential escape but because "vaporisation doesn't hurt"! The twist is that, arriving on a Dalek occupied world, the psychotic Daak ends up falling in love for the first time in his life, with the captive Princess Taiyin-right before she dies under the Daleks' guns! For the first time, the condemned man has a reason for living: revenge...  Daak proved so popular with readers that he returned soon afterwards (DWW #27-30), now a morose drunk carting Taiyin's corpse around because of some half formed hope that it might be possible to revive her. Drawn into the political intrigue on Draconia (setting of the classic TV story Frontier in Space) he befriends a Draconian noble who has been framed for a crime he didn't commit, the unfortunate Prince Salander, who throughout the story just wants to "catch the Emperor's ear" in order to plead his case. This leads to a comedic payoff in the final part when, after a violent confrontation in the throne room, Daak and Salander flee the planet and Daak casually tosses Salander a gift-the Emperor's ear!  As Doctor Who Weekly became Doctor Who Monthly, Daak and Salander appeared in three more strips, a short series called Star Tigers (DWM #44-46), which involved Daak recruiting the Ice Warrior Harma and the Earthman Vol Mercurius (whose left hand Daak had cut off in a previous encounter during a fight over a woman) as a crew for his stolen ship. the Kill Wagon, intending to take the fight to the Daleks ( Steve Dillon was replaced as artist in a couple of the later chapters by David Lloyd). But we would only see the Tigers actually take on the Daleks once, in DWM #46; after that, they simply disapppeared, until late 1989 when they unexpectedly turned up in the main Doctor Who strip in the story Nemesis of the Daleks (DWM #152-155). That tale began with Daak's ill-fated crew apparently dead after a crash and ended with Daak himself apparently dead, having sacrificed himself to destroy a Dalek "Death Wheel". But you can't keep a good homicidal maniac down for long...  In 1993, author Peter Darvill-Evans wrote Deceit, a novel in the Doctor Who New Adventures range for Virgin Books. In a surprising twist, the principal supporting character was Abslom Daak, in a story which directly referenced his comics appearances; Daak had become the first DWM character to migrate to another medium beyond the comics! Ultimately, continuity with Daak's previous history was maintained-this 'Daak' was just a clone of the original. But the real Daak (and his Star Tigers) would resurface once more in DWM soon afterwards ( Emperor of the Daleks, DWM #197-202), rumours of their deaths having proven to be exaggerated. In 2014, in another first, Daak actually made into the Doctor Who TV series itself, in a very brief cameo as a face on a computer monitor in the episode Time Heist, possibly the most obscure treat for hardcore fans ever devised by showrunner Steven Moffat. This small gesture was picked up on by a scarily huge chunk of the audience...  ...which may well be why Titan Comics have since revived him yet again, in the most recent issues of their Eleventh Doctor title, as depicted here by Simon Fraser. Unfortunately, they neglected to check who actually owned the character first, leading to a certain amount of friction with rivals Panini, who actually purchased Daak (and a number of other characters) when they bought DWM in the mid 90s. Luckily, it was all sorted out reasonably amicably in the end, with Titan crediting Panini and thanking them for the use of the character. Abslom, of course, would just have cut them off at the knees with his chainsword...  |
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Confessor
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Not Bucky O'Hare!
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Post by Confessor on Dec 9, 2015 8:39:50 GMT -5
Another great write up, tingramretro. Can't say that I'd ever heard of Daak, Dalek Killer. Fascinating info.
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Post by tingramretro on Dec 9, 2015 11:50:39 GMT -5
Another great write up, tingramretro. Can't say that I'd ever heard of Daak, Dalek Killer. Fascinating info. He was actually one of Marvel UK's more successful creations despite his comparatively few original appearances, since his adventures ended up being reprinted pretty much endlessly due to popular demand, in DWM Specials, in collected editions, and even as a back-up feature in Captain Britain Monthly. He also featured on possibly the most bizarre piece of promotional material ever: the Abslom Daak 7" flexidisc, given away free with DWM #168! Oh, and he also cropped up in a cameo in the Axel Pressbutton strip in Warrior magazine (also by Moore and Dillon). |
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Post by tingramretro on Dec 22, 2015 11:08:46 GMT -5
Sticking with the backup strips for a moment, I'd be remiss in not mentioning the handful of stories scripted for DWM by Alan Moore. These were pretty clearly just fill-in work for Moore, who has stated in the past that he basically had no interest in Doctor Who after the departure of the first Doctor, and his lack of grounding in the subject is nowhere more apparent than in Black Legacy, a tale of the Cybermen in DWM #35-38 (1980) which depicts the metal monsters as being curiously emotional and expressive.  Cyberman on the verge of a nervous breakdown. However, that didn't stop him turning in what I personally think is one of the best stories of his career in Business as Usual in DWM #40-43, arguably the best use of the Autons since their creation in Jon Pertwee's debut story Spearhead from Space (even if the sinister head of Galaxy Plastics, the appropriately named Mr. Dolman, is depicted by David Lloyd more like a standard android than anything else).  Mr. Dolman from Business as Usual.Undoubtedly Moore's most significant contribution to DWM though was the Star Death trilogy, a series of short stories in DWM #47, #51 and #57 in which he and Lloyd explored the origins of the Time Lords and, along the way, introduced us to their agents, the parahuman operatives known as the Special Executive, lead by the laconic lupine Wardog. He and his cohorts Cobweb and Zeitgeist would never appear again in DWM after #57's Black Sun Rising in November 1981, but they were destined to make a surprising return appearance in 1983 in a totally non Doctor Who related strip, Moore's epic Captain Britain series in The Daredevils magazine (drawn by Alan Davis) in which they became prominent supporting characters for several months. It seemed for a while as if Marvel UK had high hopes for the Special Executive as continuing characters, but sadly they managed to fall out with Moore in 1984 over an unrelated matter and they've never been able to use the characters since. With Wardog and Co. consigned rather unfairly to comics limbo, the few later members of the group co-created by artist Alan Davis were eventually retooled as members of Gatecrasher's Technet, who remained recurring members of Captain Britain's supporting cast for years afterwards.  Wardog in Black Sun Rising.
 The Special Executive by Alan Davis (poster given away in The Daredevils magazine). |
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Post by tingramretro on Dec 25, 2015 7:40:07 GMT -5
Purely because it's Christmas...  |
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Post by tingramretro on Jan 24, 2016 7:17:01 GMT -5
The retooling of Doctor Who Weekly as Doctor Who Monthly marked the beginning of a reduction in its comics content, but also saw the strip began to experiment and find its own voice, independent of the TV show. Early stories in the weekly, like The Star Beast (colourised excerpt below) had successfully evoked the feel of the TV series while still creating new characters and concepts, often out of necessity; Marvel couldn't use any of the Doctor's TV companions (except K9), for instance, so they created a new one for him in Sharon Davies, a schoolgirl from the town of Blackcastle who has the distinction of being the Doctor's first non-white companion in any medium (they also gave him at least one enduring recurring foe in the "Star Beast" himself, the cute but homicidal Beep the Meep). However, these stories still felt very much like the stories we were seeing on TV...as, of course, they were intended to!  The Doctor is duped by the malevolent Meep in 'The Star Beast' After the change to monthly frequency though, and probably in recognition of the fact that the book now had a slightly older readership than previously assumed, the strip began to strike out in new directions. First Sharon and then K9 were phased out (K9 had by this time left the TV show, too) and while the Doctor's look was updated to showcase his new burgundy costume from season 18, the actual stories no longer made any attempt to reflect events on the show. The early Dez Skinn scripted tale Timeslip had at least mentioned TV companion Romana, supposedly off on her own somewhere, but the season 18 story arc and the Doctor's new TV companions were never mentioned and the strip began to go in some very odd new directions, with stories like End of the Line, which sees the Doctor conspicuously fail to save the last survivors of humanity in a dystopian future (this story would decades later provide the inpiration for the tenth Doctor TV story Utopia). The biggest change in direction, though, came in the story which introduced the newly regenerated fifth Doctor, as played by Peter Davison, to the strip: writer Steve Parkhouse's surreal epic The Tides of Time (DWM #61-67, 1982), which saw the Doctor pulled away from a well earned sabbatical in the village of Stockbridge (a location which would be seen many times over the coming years, and which was named for "Maxwell Stockbridge", the pseudonym used by several Marvel UK contributors including Alan Moore in the early eighties, on prose strips featuring the vigiante Night Raven) to fight an otherdimensional demon named Melanicus, which was intent on destroying reality itself. The story was a bizarre mix of hard science fiction and fantasy, worlds away from the TV show's more mainstream sci-fi approach, and it introduced another character who would become a recurring ally of the Doctor in the strip for many years, the faceless shadow man named Shayde, an agent of the so-called "Council of High Evolutionaries", which included both the Time Lords' founding father, Rassilon, and the wizard Merlin-the same Merlin who was a recurring character in Marvel's Captain Britain series!  The Tides of Time remains one of the best remembered Doctor Who strips today, almost 35 years after its creation. |
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Post by tingramretro on Feb 9, 2016 11:47:13 GMT -5
Following The Tides of Time, Dave Gibbons would draw only one more strip for the Monthly, Stars Fell on Stockbridge in issues #68-69. He was replaced in #70 (dated November 1982) by Mick Austin, who would prove to be just the first of an ever changing array of artists to work on the title in the decades since. It's probably fair to say, though, that without Gibbons' work on those first few years (in which he drew every lead story, barring the two parter Junkyard Demon by Judge Dredd artist Mike McMahon in #58-59) the magazine may not have gained the audience that has since led to its being the longest running title based on a TV show.  Lunar Lagoon art by Mick Austin, whose style divided readers' opinionsAustin had had little previous experience in comics, his first real break having been the decidely odd SF strip Timesmasher in Marvel UK's Rampage Monthly, and he wouldn't be sticking around for long. His stint on the Who strip would span just three stories ( The Stockbridge Horror, Lunar Lagoon and Four Dimensional Vistas) over a period of fourteen months, Steve Dillon stepping in to draw The Moderator, the final fifth Doctor story, in issues #84 and #86-87; issue #85 featured a reprint of the story Skywatch 7, drawn by Austin but featuring just the Zygons and a group of random soldiers with the Doctor nowhere in sight, which had first been published in two parts in #58 and the 1981 DWM Winter Special. All in all, the fifth Doctor's three season tenure on TV between 1982 and 1984 gave rise to just six serialized stories in the monthly, which actually changed its title to Doctor Who Magazine (the title it has retained ever since) with #85 (February 1984). The fifth Doctor's life in comics would end up being extended somewhat, however, by Marvel's decision in late 1984 to begin reprinting the Doctor Who strips more or less in order of publication (and in colourised form, yet!) in a new monthly title aimed at the US market. Following a successful tryout in four issues of Marvel Premiere #57-60 in 1980-81 (which reprinted The Iron Legion and City of the Damned, the latter rather puzzlingly retitled "City of the Cursed" so as not to offend American sensibilities) the American Doctor Who title lasted 23 issues from October 1984-August 1986, and reprinted every lead strip from the British weekly and monthly titles from The Star Beast to The Moderator, plus most of the back-up strips (the most notable omission being Alan Moore's Star Death trilogy, for reasons I covered earlier).  Junkyard Demon art by Mike McMahon.  Cover art by Gibbons.
The sixth Doctor's arrival would herald a new era for DWM and the Doctor Who comic strip, and one of the most enduring creations in its history: a penguin named Frobisher! |
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