Script: Mike Collins Art: Mike Collins, Dylan Teague, Roger Langridge
A Review by Finn Clark 20/8/05
Mike Collins isn't one of DWM's more famous names, but his involvement with the comic strip goes back a long way. Before both writing and drawing Art Attack (DWM 358), he'd written three stories and drawn five more, for a total to date of 153 comic strip pages and twenty episodes. He's created strips for all the Doctors since Colin Baker. What's more, he's one of a rare breed... a genuine all-rounder. Apart from him, DWM's only real writer-artists have been Steve Parkhouse, Sean Longcroft and Paul Neary.
The stories he's drawn are:
Doctor Conkerer! (DWM 162)
Party Animals (DWM 173)
The Good Soldier (DWM 175-178)
The Nightmare Game (DWM 330-332)
The Love Invasion (DWM 355-357)
Art Attack (DWM 358)
And those he's written:
Profits of Doom! (DWM 120-122)
Claws of the Klathi! (DWM 136-138)
Slimmer! (The Incredible Hulk Presents
11)
Art Attack (DWM 358)
Even at the new length of ten pages, one-episode stories like this are unlikely to be substantial. The format has thrown up some wild experiments in the past (The Fangs of Time, The Land of Happy Endings) but this isn't one of those either. It's not life-changing or anything... but it is quite good.
The TARDIS lands in the 37th century... and it's not just any old futuristic setting. Oh no. It's a transdimensional art gallery and the latest in a long line of the comic strip's wild and wacky visual treats. However in the light of Russell T. Davies's comments about making the new TV series a visual experience, Art Attack's Escheresque setting doesn't merely hark back to the fecundity of imagination of a Gibbons or a Ridgway. For once this kind of thing feels faithful to the TV series too. It's easy to imagine the Slitheen's designers getting enthusiastic about Cazkelf the Transcendent.
It's witty! There's Doctor-Rose repartee and some nice little gags. Trust an artist to have things to say about the Mona Lisa...
The story itself is likeable. Curiously we've now had two Eccleston comic strips and in both of them the evil alien invader... well, wasn't. The plot moves at a good pace, it has a nice twist or two and doesn't feel bland. The art is solid too. It looks nice on the page, with particularly good likenesses of Rose. (Eccleston looks okay, but personally I think he's deceptively hard to draw. He's not craggy, if you know what I mean. He's not as difficult as Davison, but he's no Hartnell or Pertwee.)
There's continuity and worldbuilding. World War Five, which by all accounts sounds pretty extreme, happened recently (this is the 37th century) and there's an Alpha Centauri in a wig. What's more there's a reference to the Doctor being the last of his people. That's obviously a nod to the new TV series, but it also had me thinking back to that throwaway line in The Curious Tale of Spring-Heeled Jack (DWM 334-336): "A dull grey world in a bottle he couldn't wait to break". In 2003 that was merely a olive branch to the books which only confused things. Did the comics come before, after or during the 8DAs, then?
However today the situation is a lot more complicated. When it comes to blowing up Gallifrey, the 8DAs are no longer the only game in town. To me this almost looked like a comics reference... we've got the TV series, the 8DAs and the comics, none of which fit together without a little work. Interesting!
Overall, this is a nice little story that's good for a laugh and never seems to be wasting your time. We've all read much worse!
Attack of the Art by Noe Geric 1/9/19
Back in 2005, the Ninth Doctor was the regular Doctor in the comic strip of Doctor Who magazine. His run was nearly perfect: from the traditional The Love Invasion, to the disturbing The Cruel Sea. But among this short, and excellent, run, there's one big flaw. And this horror is: Art Attack.
The Doctor and Rose arrive in a transdimentional gallery on Earth, where they expect to find the Mona Lisa. But an alien is trying to use peoples minds to (apparently) prepare an invasion. But this is not an invasion, the alien is a member of a race of artists, and he just want to get back home. And that's all. The first page show him as a cliched bad guy, and after that he's a nice and touching alien. I know this is supposed to build suspense, but contacting your race then they can take you back home isn't a ''great evil scheme''. When I send a mail, whatever means I use, it isn't a great masterplan. It's just a mail.
And that's the main problem, the first half tries to show us that the alien (called Cazkelf) is an evil creature with a nasty plan. But the second half depicts him as a poor creature who just wants to come back home. Where's characterization? Rose and the Doctor seems to have the worst accents in the universe; they aren't bad but their manner of speaking is irritating. They do the usual stuff, saving the day with the sonic screwdriver and the TARDIS. Because in Art Attack, the sonic screwdriver itself stops Cazkelf plan, and the TARDIS does the rest by taking him back to his home planet. That couldn't have been much simpler as a resolution.
The plot is by Mike Collins who also did the drawings. And... whatever happened to him?! Everything is disproportioned. Drawing a transdimentional gallery is a difficult job, and he managed to do it perfectly. But the characters' features change size at every page. The Doctor looks like a lunatic, and sometimes Rose barely looks like Rose. His job on The Cruel Sea was excellent, but here it seems he rushed to do it. The script isn't really good, but the drawings are terribly odd. Collins should just have made the art, and somebody else should've done the story. For some reason, there's also a cameo of an Alpha Centauri who seems to have hair.
Art Attack is a short and ugly piece of work. The characters are just OK, and the plot is really thin. Nothing sensational here: 5/10. It's just meh...