https://fromtheheartofeurope.eu/operation-volcano-by-ben-aaronovitch-and-andrew-...

A collection of Seventh Doctor stories first published in 2018 as a three-shot series and then collected as a graphic novel. The majority of pages are taken up with the title story, by no less than Andrew Cartmel and Ben Aaronovitch, which takes the Doctor and Ace to Australia for an adventure of alien infiltration with Group Captain Gilmore. It’s a well done, densely written adventure, which perhaps shows that the comics medium does not suffer the same limitations as the screen.

There are also three shorter stories in the volume. “Hill of Beans”, by Richard Dinnick, takes the Psychic Circus from The Greatest Show in the Galaxy to a planet ruled by a president who looks just like Donald Trump. the art is by Jessica Martin who played Mags in the TV story and whose character features here. I’m afraid it did not really work for me.

“The Armageddon Gambit”, by John Freeman and Christopher Jones, is a less ambitious but more successful Doctor-and-Ace-outwit-the-aliens tale. Given that it is the third story in the book, I’ll give you its second frame as well.

Finally, an unexpected treat: a six-pager from Paul Cornell and John Stokes, “In-Between Times”, which explores the relationships between Ian Chesterton, Barbara Wright, the First Doctor and the Doctor’s granddaughter Susan. Rather lovely; and I suspect it may be the most recently published new First Doctor comic as of the time of writing. ( )

This is Titan's first and last The Seventh Doctor volume (they have by this point stopped optimistically putting "Vol 1" on every title page), collecting a three-issue miniseries. The miniseries is written by Andrew Cartmel and illustrated by Christopher Jones (who illustrated Titan's Third Doctor series); Ben Aaronovitch is credited as "executive producer" but there's no indication of what this might actually mean even though he gets first billing on the cover! Anyway, I went into this not quite sure what it would be like. On the one hand, I suffered through Cartmel's attempt to recapture this era in his execrable Big Finish Lost Stories; on the other hand, I recently read Cartmel's early 1990s DWM comics for the first time, and found them really interesting and striking.

This is somewhere in between. Cartmel's not interesting in pushing the boundaries of Doctor Who or comics like he was thirty years ago, but this does a much better job of pastiching his own era than the Lost Stories did. It's a fun, if somewhat underdeveloped and simple story, about the Doctor, Ace, and the Intrusion Counter-Measures Group (of Remembrance of the Daleks fame) dealing with a crashed alien spaceship in the Australian outback. It has a sense of scale tv wouldn't have attempted in the 1980s, but I did feel that something thematically interesting could have been done that didn't happen here. Christopher Jones does a lot to enliven the material; he's a good tv tie-in artist, in that he can do both likenesses and action well.

The collection includes some other things, foremost among them the "Hill of Beans" back-up strip about the Doctor and Ace meeting Mags the werewolf from The Greatest Show in the Galaxy again... with the gimmick that the story is illustrated by Jessica Martin who played Mags! Since her acting days, she had actually become an independent comics artist. It's okay; it's a bit jumpy and incomprehensible at times, which I blame on both writing and art. My guess is that sci-fi action does not play to Martin's strengths as an illustrator. But hey, I do like Mags, and this probably does better by her than her incompatible reappearances in Big Finish's trilogy.

Finally, it contains two things I've reviewed elsewhere, so I won't go over them again: the Seventh Doctor strip from 2018's Free Comic Book Day issue and the First Doctor story "In-Between Times." Except that I will complain that the FCBD issue is a prologue to Operation Volcano but for some reason collected all the way at the end of this volume!

Titan Doctor Who: « Previous in sequence | Next in sequence »

Na door enkele Doctor Who stripboeken erg geschrokken te zijn van de slechte tekeningen, zet ik me nu bij een nieuw stripboek altijd eerst even schrap. Wordt het weer zo tenenkrommend of kan ik rustig genieten van deze uitvoering?

Op de eerste bladzijden werd het al gelijk duidelijk dat de tekenaar er veel werk van heeft gemaakt en de sfeer van de zevende Doctor en Ace heeft getracht te vangen. Dat was voor mij het teken dat ik mij kon ontspannen, ook al is het niet altijd even goed gelukt.

Het verhaal zelf speelt zich tegelijkertijd in verschillende tijdvakken af waarbij op het einde het allemaal samen valt. Een bekend concept maar wat voor mij wat dit verhaal betreft niet echt had gehoeven. Het maakte het voor mij als lezer eerder onnodig ingewikkeld om het te volgen. En het verhaal op zich is sterk genoeg zonder zo'n verhaaltruc uit te halen.

In mijn uitgave zaten ook nog enkele korte verhalen.

Eentje met de zevende Doctor die qua tekenstijl snel bij mij afviel omdat het niet mijn smaak is. Te weinig gedetailleerd om interessant te zijn en te lelijk om er van te kunnen genieten. Het verhaal zelf was voor mij te voorspelbaar. Zelfs zo voorspelbaar dat ik het eerst niet durfde te geloven.

De tweede was ook met de zevende Doctor en gelijk goed getekend. Dat maakte dat ik er ook gelijk inzit. Het verhaal zelf was oké.

Als verrassing was het derde korte verhaal met de eerste Doctor, Susan, Ian en Barbara in zwart-wit. Dit begint gelijk met de leuke woordgrap waarbij op een schoolbord in de TARDIS de woorden geschreven staan: BARBAR-A-IAN. Dat dit niet veel eerder gebruikt is. Verder ook prima getekend. Leuk! ( )

The three parts of this Titan comics miniseries include two different stories. "Operation Volcano" takes up most of the pages with "Hill of Beans" filling out each volume.

"Operation Volcano" is set in 1967 when a hydrogen bomb exposes an alien craft in the Australian desert. RAF Group Captain Gilmore - a character introduced in Aaronovitch's Remembrance of the Daleks - calls in the Doctor and Ace to investigate. Subsequent issues reveal a horrifying snake-like species that can attach itself to humans and tap into their consciousness. But all is not what appears and the Doctor knows more about these aliens than he lets on. Can his plan prevent the destruction of Earth by nuclear weapons, and how does Gilmore end up in the future with a snake on his back? There's a strong UNIT/spy thriller feel and the artistry captures the 60s style (write up to the illustrator lovingly detailing the women's breasts and short-shorts in the classic style). This is faithful the Seventh Doctor stories as portrayed by Sylvester McCoy and the Virgin New Adventures and I could see it succeeding as a tv adaptation.

"Hill of Beans" catches up with Mags, the werewolf from The Greatest Show in the Galaxy, and the physic circus. She's under threat as her planet Vulpana is under fascist rule and rounding up werewolves and other noncomformists. Eerily, the villain looks like Donald Trump and says "fire and fury." The art style is softer and works to capture an 80s aesthetic. Being the shorter of the two stories, it is very bareboned, and everything gets resolved rather easily. Again, though, it could be fleshed out into a tv show or book. ( )