So long, Ten (again)
While it may appear that the Tenth Doctor has had more swan songs than Cher on her 278th good-bye tour, today is the day we finally bid adieu.
No, really.
IDW’s monthly Doctor Who comic ends its Tenth Doctor run with today’s release of Doctor Who Ongoing #16. Written by Tony Lee with art by Mathew Dow Smith, the issue is the final installment of the four part arc “Final Sacrifice”. In a February 2010 guest column at MTV’s Splash Page Mr. Lee talks about “shaking the toy box” of an established story but making sure nothing is left on the floor at the end of the day. The Doctor Who Ongoing has done plenty of shaking with appearances of characters from both the new, classic and Big Finish series. I can’t wait to see how he scoops everything back in the toy box to fit within televised canon.
For those that are worrying about getting your comic fix, don’t worry. The Doctor Who monthly will resume in 2011 featuring the Eleventh Doctor. Tony Lee will once again man the helm with an art team consisting of Andrew Currie, Richard Piers Rayner, Matthew Dow Smith and a few special guests. For a sneak peak at the upcoming art, check out today’s Splash Page interview with Tony Lee at the recent New York ComicCon.
If you’ve missed the individual titles, issues 1-6 have been collected in Doctor Who Volume 1: The Fugitive; issues 7-12 in the newly released Doctor Who Volume 2: Tesseract. The final four issues will be collected in Doctor Who Volume 3: Final Sacrifice scheduled for release in February 2011.
Now if you’ll excuse me, I have a comic run to make.
Posted by Deborah on Wednesday, October 20 at 4:45 pm
6 Comments...
But remember - don’t download illegally kids! We need to support the comics if we want them to continue!!!!
Posted by Barnaby @ DWNY on 10/20 at 09:12 PM
Welcome aboard Deb!
As I indicated in the comics essay I did last year, I can’t stand Tony Lee’s Doctor Who work. Great writer… but on Who it’s as though he can’t resist writing lowest-common-fan-denominator. It’s continuity porn of the sort I thought we abandoned with the new series. I had to buy the issue with Tennant wearing all his predecessors costumes in the TARDIS wardrobe just so I could throw it across the room in disgust. That’s the sort of fan art I did when I was 15.
I thought Doctor Who comics were going to be like mini-episodes of the new series, full of invention and excitement. Tony Lee’s work reads like Big Finish audios circa 2001. This is not a compliment.
Posted by Graeme on 10/21 at 12:29 PM
Barnaby - Absolutely! It’s less than the cost of a latte and lasts a lot longer.
Graeme - Thank you! And I’m chuckling at the image of you carefully unwrapping your purchase with the sole purpose of throwing it across the room. That’s passion!
The things that you don’t like are exactly the things I did. Being that my history is a bit more shallow than yours I spent a lot of time on WikiTARDIS chasing down references. It was comic Easter Eggs but I never felt it distracted from the story. Ah well, vive la difference.
I am curious to see how the 11th Doctor run plays out since Tony Lee said in his interview that rather than it being structured in long RTD-ish arcs it would be more self-contained.
Hopefully it won’t make you throw anything.
Posted by Deborah on 10/21 at 01:16 PM
That cover art is dreadful. That’s the best we can do for a DW comic book? Jeeesh… me and my money are happy not to be parted.
-Rod (judging books by their covers since 1972)
Posted by Rod on 10/22 at 02:09 AM
It’s Tony Grist, Rod, who is actually a highly regarded artist in his own right (and whose series Jack Staff is very Who-ish in its own way). Not to everyone’s taste, I admit, but I’m a fan.
Posted by Graeme on 10/22 at 02:44 PM
But I would argue, Deb, that a Doctor Who comic should work on its own merits rather than being a mystery tour of Who lore. I find Lee’s stories so slight that the continuity porn is not just a distraction but where much of his focus is.
It’s a shame as the one-shots IDW put out last year were so good, especially The Whispering Gallery and Room With a (Deja) View—stories that were solid and dramatic and maybe one or two references at best.
Posted by Graeme on 10/22 at 02:47 PM
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