Titan Comics 2016
Written by Gordon Rennie & Emma Beeby
Illustrated by Brian Williamson
Coloured by Hi-Fi
Lettered by Richard Starkings and Comicraft’s Jimmy Betancourt
The Doctor, Professor Odysseus and Athena successfully infiltrated Lady Emily’s mansion in the hopes of rescuing Sarah Jane, but in the process, the Lamp of Chronos activated, creating a temporal portal and trapping Sarah and the Professor deep in the ancient past! Will the Doctor be able to to use the lamp and bring them back – or is Sarah’s fate now set in stone...?! Worse still, the fearsome MEDUSA lurks nearby…
How much fun is this? I’m enjoying this story immensely and while yes it doesn’t have the same whimsy of watching them on PBS did for me as a kid it’s still fun to see their personalities and the situations they find themselves in bringing right back to those times. I don’t know if folks are intimidated or not by picking up a Doctor Who comic but let me say you can read these without ever having watched this particular Doctor and still enjoy the story, the writing, characterization and the interior artwork.
While the newer series has been more realistic in nature I’m enjoying the nod to the old days here. With Professor Odysseus firmly rooted in academia and not willing to believe in time travel and all that makes for a fun contrast to Sarah Jane. There’s a lot more humour happening here and it’s a great balance with the severity of where and when they find themselves in. I mean Sarah did herself as a stone statue so there’s indeed afoot.
Hello Nurse! Brian’s work here goes above and beyond anything you could’ve hoped for. The statue garden as it were full of those individuals unlucky enough to have been caught by Medusa, let’s face it we all knew she was involved and one look at these statues tells who made them. The attention to detail here is phenomenal and that pin-up page where we see them just is a very big wow moment. Throughout the entire issue his eye for storytelling is one of the things that helps make this as fun and successful as it is, not to mention how uncannily he’s rendered the Doctor to his real-life counterpart. With the folks at Hi-Fi providing the colours and the effects with colouring yeah i’m beyond sold on this.
One of the things you can bank on is that a species isn’t ever just a species. After all Cyclops alone would’ve been terrifying but no they have to be Scryclops. Using their eye as a temporal device to see in the near past or future, to a limited extent. Another thing that makes this just fun because these are the things you get from Doctor Who nothing is normal, sane or predictable it’s a wild mess of fun, odd choices and a miraculous win in the end all the while wondering what the heck is going on. This is what makes this as fun as it is and I wouldn’t have it any other way.
That Titan has expanded the Doctor Who universe to tell the further undocumented adventures of the Fourth Doctor as only they can is truly a wonderful thing.