Script: John Carnell Art: Andy Lanning, John Higgins, Kev Hopgood, Dougie Braithwaite & Dave Elliott
A New Challenger Incoming by Noe Geric 22/9/25
As the Seventh Doctor adventures began on TV, it was time for the Official Magazine to take things in hands. As Season 24 was (and is still) judged as one of the worst things to ever touch our screen, only the comic strip could save the show's credibility. But as the budget was being reduced even for our dear magazine, they tried something bold and risky, something the show had never tempted before... Trying to regain the readers' faith, they devised an epic crossover, the most epic of them all. For a brand-new original adventure, our favorite Time Lord will fight one of his deadliest enemy across time and space with the help of not one, but two heroes walking past the boundaries of two universes to make this an epic adventure on multiple scale... the Sleeze Brothers!
...who?
Okay, they appeared in a small series that ran for nearly a year (thank you, Wikipedia) and it was a stupid idea to add them to a strip that was losing its readers. But, putting that aside, the story in itself is quite shit. Yeah, it's bad. From the title, you can see it'll try to be funny but will miserably fail. It has everything to make a good Season 24 episode, and there's even the most laughable incarnation of the Monk ever seen. Good Lord, is he walking around with roman sandals? Is his TARDIS really flying around disguised as a toilet cabinet? (The One Doctor did it better)... Are the Sleeze Brothers the most annoying people in the whole universe?
As the Monk materialises on the road and destroys Deadbeat and El Ape's car, the Doctor materialises and ohgoodlord his face has literally melted or... no, just crap artwork. Then the evil Monk runs away, and the Doctor is forced by the Sleeze Brothers to chase him across time and space, landing on the Titanic and in the Bermuda Triangle, in all sorts of places in which the art seems to have been drawn by fifteen different guys. Going from ''all right'' to ''painted by a poor blind old man with arthritis kept in the DWM office's basement''. There's nothing right in this strip. The Titanic crashed because the Monk TARDIS was the iceberg, but as the comic doesn't have any budget (what?!) they can't show that impressive panel and just get Deadbeat (or was it El Ape?) describing it.
The Doctor is more clownish and Season 24 than ever, and even if I suspect some photo reference here and there, the artists had the skill not to make it too obvious. Nonetheless, I won't recommend anyone reading this, it's poor quality stuff. There's one or two jokes that works. But not much. 2/10