The 1995 Yearbook

Marvel Comics The Naked Flame The 1995 Yearbook

Published

1994

The fourth Doctor and Sarah Jane return to Vortis, where flower forests now bloom.

• Return to Vortis 4.0 by Noe Geric

Return to Vortis 4.0 by Noe Geric 20/9/20

After only one really dull appearance on TV, the planet Vortis was used in many Novels/Audios/Comics for some dark reasons. Perhaps because some fans liked that world, or perhaps because of the different and ''interesting'' aliens species that lived here, the planet came back with more dull and uninspiring stories. The Naked Flame is one of these. Of course, nobody can espect a masterpiece in 8 pages, but this comic is one of the most useless I've seen.

The Fourth Doctor and Sarah Jane arrive on the planet Vortis, now a sort of jungle. They find a Menoptera and must fight a sort of crystal that feeds on the Menoptera. The crystal was banned a long time ago by the Animus, but now it's back. The crystal can talk and is evil, that's all that defines it. Is there only evil or blank creatures on this planet? And the Doctor doesn't do anything special to destroy the crystal: he uses his sonic screwdriver. The writer even knows that resolution was easy and comments on how dull that enemy was. Sarah Jane is useless and stays in the background, the Menoptera are pure idiots, and there's an unexistent sub-plot about one of them being rejected because he can't fly, but it goes nowhere.

A nonexistant story, no characterization, and, most of all, TERRIBLE DRAWING. The Naked Flame looks as though a sixyears old had taken his pen and drawn the fourth Doctor and Sarah Jane with some funny butterfly and a big crystal. The colours are so flashy they make me blind, and the onomatopoeia are so badly inserted in the drawing that I doubt a professional did this.

Clearly, this is the second comics strip in that Yearbook, and it's even more dull and useless than Blood Invocation. Fanwank never bothered me as long as the story was okay, but here there's no story, just fanwank. The resolution is so simple and the characters so boring that I would recommend this to no one still alive. This one is just there and does nothing. 4/10