Script: Robert Shearman Art: Mike Collins and David A. Roach
A Review by Finn Clark 1/9/06
The Cruel Sea feels very typical of Robert Shearman, but in a good way. As with Andrew Cartmel's 1990s comic strips, it's emotionally deeper than usual. Vikki is lovely, getting more depth in almost no screen time at all than Izzy got in six years as the 8th Doctor's full-time companion. Rose gets a fascinating "What If?" The villains aren't a bunch of "bwahahaha"-ing aliens, but the personal harem of a sick old man who stripped their individuality away from them. They even lost their names. They're just "wife number 19" or whatever. That's already interesting, but Robert Shearman goes further by showing us the real people underneath. Some are sociopaths, while others genuinely loved their husband.
Of course it's typical of Robert Shearman in another way too. His work for Big Finish was highly acclaimed, but it tended to keep exploring the same ground. The Holy Terror, The Chimes of Midnight... a less talented writer would have long ago been pilloried for self-plagiarism. What saves Shearman is the quality of his work. He's exploring character and theme, not just trotting out plot devices. The Cruel Sea resembles his Big Finish plays by being set in a claustrophobic world with rubber reality, a sleeping ruler and a cast of characters who seem remarkably unconcerned about being killed off. However a more obvious comparison is with Pitter-Patter, Shearman's story for the 2006 Doctor Who Annual, which had almost the same monster. They're only different underneath, The Cruel Sea feeling like a deeper treatment of the idea. Pitter-Patter was a vignette. This actually has a plot, with twists and antagonists. They're very different in tone and both well worth reading, even after you've noticed the similarities.
Unusually for DWM, it's not blatantly built around its cliffhangers. I read this in its "Ninth Doctor Collected Comics" version and in a couple of places only identified the cliffhangers by flipping back and counting pages. I liked that actually. I wouldn't claim that "wow kewl" moments don't have their place in comics, but I've grumbled before about how heavily they'd been allowed to dominate the storytelling.
I like the visuals. Robert Shearman crafted some eye-grabbing notions, but furthermore for the first time it feels as if DWM's 9th Doctor art team have come to the party. The Love Invasion (DWM 355-357) and Art Attack (DWM 358) felt too jolly and lightweight to give me a sense of Eccleston's Doctor. However here the story forces Mike Collins and David A. Roach to take the character somewhere darker and you can really feel them pushing harder than before. By the time we hit episode four, they've lifted their portrayal of Eccleston from a mere likeness into a vivid hero who lives and breathes on the page. He's fantastic and it's a real shame that the 9th Doctor's run in the comic strip was cut short just when his artists had finally nailed the character.
It also helps that the story includes old people! Wrinklies are so much more interesting to draw than pretty A-list mannequins. The examples here are lively and a lot of fun.
There's some juicy dialogue, with the regulars sounding authentically like the Doctor and Rose. I like the moral of the story. Refreshingly it's also the first DWM comic strip in donkey's years not to be penned by one of the usual cabal, if you don't count the previous month's Art Attack. That was written by Mike Collins, although firstly he was the incumbent artist and secondly that was actually his ninth Doctor Who comic strip over a period covering twenty years and four or five Doctors.
I liked this story a lot. It's not the second coming of Alan Moore, but it's easily DWM's best story so far this century. The script is strong, the artists build up a real head of steam and overall there's a depth of which I'd like to see more. It would be nice to think that these days even the Cliffhanger Brigade might find themselves forced to dig a little deeper with nine or ten inconvenient pages to fill between the splash pages. It's also encouraging that in contrast with BBC Books' policy, the arrival of the new series seems to have prompted Panini to look beyond their usual stable of first-choice hacks. Refreshing. More, please.