Panini Publishing The Iron Legion A Graphic Novel Collection

Written by	Pat Mills, John Wagner & Steve Moore
Drawn by	Dave Gibbons
Published	2004
ISBN	1 904159 37 0

• A Review by Rob Matthews
• A Review by Finn Clark

A Review by Rob Matthews 18/5/04

Perhaps unusually for a Who nut, I don't ever read DWM. I figure the frequently updated Ratings Guide really oughtta be enough for me to get my fix of reviews and stuff, plus I get to chime in with my own opinions too. As a result of this I haven't read a Doctor Who comic strip in positively yonks - I remember a few featuring Frobisher from my kiddyhood (there was one called Polly the Glot, right?), there was something involving a 'Dalek Death Wheel' and Abslom Daak, and I did own a colour reprint of The Iron Legion many moons ago, but that's more or less my only experience of these strips, and it was quite a while back. So when I heard about this volume I thought I'd check out just how Doctor Who fares in the comic book medium.

The answer is, fortunately since I spent fifteen quid on it, very well. In terms of good, imaginative storytelling and just plain old having fun there's much in here that the makers of the TV show could often have learned from, circa those fallow periods like seasons 15 and 20. And Tom Baker's Doctor transfers brilliantly to the comic strip panel, looking right at home with speech bubbles jauntily poised atop his head and his scarf swirling about him with the same blithe disregard for physics as Batman's cape.

These tales are from a comic that was originally intended for kids, of course, and I daresay Who comic strips will have grown up over the years just as Who has in other media, but they're an enjoyable way to spend a couple of hours. Longer than that if, like me, you tend to really savour really good comic artwork. These strips have that in spades; Dave Gibbons' work is gorgeous. In fact occasionally I found it difficult to move from one panel to the next, I ended up savouring them like I was in an art gallery. And like with the best TV Who, the lack of condescension to a young audience means it's enjoyable for readers of all ages. That's the story I'm sticking to anyway. The only recurring problem I noticed is that the lettering on the exclamations tends to be just that bit too big and bold, you know, in a sort of 'Oh no, IT'S THE DALEKS!!!! way - slightly patronising. But perhaps I'm just prissy about lettering.

So!

The Iron Legion
Finn Clark beware, it's an alternate Earth story... Not the usual 'What if the Nazis had never been beaten' affair, though, rather a 'What if the Roman Empire had never fell and had then been manipulated by demonic aliens' tale. Makes a change. As a comic strip it's fantastic, full of scope for stylised visuals - Ironicus, the Ecto-Slime, the Hans Moleman-like robot Vesuvius... and the slinkily satanic Malevilus are as scary as hell. The writing perfectly evokes the incongruity and irreverence of Tom's Doctor too, with his Zaggan pound notes, his 'Parrot-face' remark, his threatening Ironicus with... 'Ants in your pants!' and his suggestion to Magog that she eat him with ketchup. As a story this is actually just middling and has a convenient 'Doctor-saves-the-day-with-TARDIS-gadget' ending. And why the the robotic soldiers need to attack a small rural corner shop on a planet they've long since conquered is anyone's guess. But it's wonderfully stylish, and Morris and Vesuvius are fun as the pseudo-companions. These days. I guess my biggest gripe would be that this premise is so loaded with epic potential and cool characters that it seems squandered in so short a strip.

City of the Damned
By contrast this a story nicely tailored to the short-ish length of these stories. A familiar enough dystopia trope - a 'perfect' society that's not perfect at all, in this case one where stability has been achived by the amputation of all human emotion -, it's nicely spiced up by the idea of the offbeat rebels each struggling to achieve a single designated emotional state, and more viscerally by the inclusion of a swarm of... flesh eating bloodbugs!!! Because despite what fretful adults may like to think, kids just love that sort of thing. Even if I did misread at one point and develop the impression the creatures were named 'Barbara'... Best single panel in the story is the one depicting a man and his wife ('A and B') sitting down to dinner in a kicthen swarming with these nasty fat maggoty creatures and unable to feel the fear that would send a normal person running for the hills. It's really unsettling! The anti-bureaucracy sticking-it-to-the-Man theme is very true to the Who ethos, as is the effort not to totally demonise the government of Zom, and explain what circumstances could have led to the evolution of such a debased society.

All in all, better than the similiar The Sunmakers. Funny ending too.

The Star Beast
Probably my favourite in this collection, because I love the mixing of the fantastical with the mundane -something that wasn't done nearly enough on television even though us fans have long treasured the idea of the TARDIS showing up on contemporary suburban street corners resembling those of our various childhoods. This was the way the show started with Unearthly Child and - rather symetrically - ended with Survival, yet there wasn't too much of it in the middle (only Sarah's departure springs to mind). And even though there were plenty of Earthbound present-day (ish) stories in the Pertwee era, they were always distanced from us, made exotic, by the whole UNIT thing. The Star Beast is in fact a lot more attuned to its target audience than the show could be sometimes, and Sharon is so much more of an appealing companion character than, say, Tegan, because unlike an arsey air hostess this is someone appealing and who we could have genuinely identified with.

The Star Beast is a fun don't-judge-by-appearances story, and it earns extra points from me because I really didn't see the twist coming - Gibbons goes all out to make the Meep look like the cuddliest wudgiest doe-eyed teddy bear the universe has ever seen, so when he's revealed as Davros by way of a Care Bear it's wickedly funny and smartly cynical, especially since he's written just as overpoweringly vile and murderous as he's drawn overpoweringly fluffy and cute. I'm judging these tales as stories for children, and I think this gives 'em a valuable lesson without getting all preachy about it - for one thing, the reader is sort of let in on the joke by having access to the Meep's thoughts, and made to feel smarter than the poor, naive Doctor and his pals.

The unshockable, uninterested Mrs Higgins is a nice touch too. And against this everyday backdrop Sharon manages to sharply sum up the appeal of the Doctor's lifestyle nicely - 'Blimey, most people have bosses and bills and nosey neighbours. But I can't imagine you with a mortgage!'

The Dogs of Doom
By contrast, the least of the stories here, though not without merit. I rather like the bit where the oddly named Babe Ruth, er, Roth nags her kids via a videolink while battling with monsters. And the idea of the Doctor spending three subjective months in the TARDIS battling off his werewolf infection and trying to concoct a cure is a nice bit of crazy grand guignol. It's quite amusing when Brill doesn't realise the Doctor is bluffing and is all geared up to torture him too. But apart from that it's just a bit of a plodding space action thingy, and makes the mistake of thinking that the shock arrival of Daleks (or should I say DALEKS!) is, like, the coolest thing that could possibly happen. When in fact they bring the story to more or less a shuddering halt several pages before it actually ends.

The Time Witch
A pretty light tale, but all the better for it really, and I think the idea of being in a dimension where you can conjure anything you like out of thin air appeals to kids of all ages (Justin Timberlake! Ashton Kutcher!... aher-ahem.) It's another really good evocation of Tom's Doctor too - even nicking the way he'd repeat a villain's name in utter horror before admitting he'd never heard of them. And he counters the command 'Kill them' with 'Make a cup of tea', which again is almost more deliciously Doctor Who the TV series was a lot of the time. I'm not really sure why Sharon has to rapidly age four years by the end of the story, though - don't tell me it's just that they wanted to start drawing fully developed tits a lot?

Well, I guess I'll find out when I get to volume two: The Swimsuits of Doom!

A Review by Finn Clark 5/7/04

Buy this book now. If you already own a copy, buy another.

In 1979, Dez Skinn at Marvel bought the rights to create Doctor Who comics and initiated the busiest, most creative period in Who's comic strip history. It didn't last. Less than a year later, the Weekly turned Monthly and the comic strips ended up dwindling to their present rate of seven or eight pages a month. Even TV Comic had produced more pages than that, though lately they'd fallen into reprinting old stories with Tom Baker's head drawn over Pertwee or Troughton.

However Doctor Who Weekly was built around its comics. Each issue had two original stories, plus reprints of classic SF adaptations (Wells or Verne) or random non-Who time-twisters. 334 pages of new comic strip exploded on to the world during DWW's 43 issues... and what's more, the list of creators reads like a Who's Who of UK comics heavyweights. Pat Mills, John Wagner, Steve Moore, Steve Dillon, Dave Gibbons, David Lloyd, Alan Moore... more would come later, in the days of the Monthly, but you couldn't get better than what we had for those 43 weeks.

The Iron Legion (DWW 1-8) was the opener, a riot of non-stop adventure and exuberant invention. Set in a parallel universe where Rome never fell and instead conquered the galaxy with its robot legions, Pat Mills creates an astonishing parade of new monsters, villains, robots and more. Vesuvius the oil-based dodderer and Morris the cybernetic galley slave are still two of the strip's most memorable characters, and that's without taking into account the Malevilus, General Irongron, the Bestiarus, the Ectoslime and an Iron Legionnaire invasion of our reality! Still more impressively, there's a powerful and dynamic story driving everything, so The Iron Legion never feels overwhelmed by its own imagination. Despite hot competition, this might be my favourite of the stories in this volume.

(Incidentally the village where the Doctor lands initially is probably Stockbridge, the comic strip Doctor's home from home in The Stockbridge Horror, The Stars Fell on Stockbridge and Endgame. It's Izzy's home too. The village isn't named here, but the church is the same.)

City of the Damned (DWW 9-16) came next, written by John Wagner and heavily inspired by his famous creation, Judge Dredd. Moderators rule the City of the Damned and have outdone even The Happiness Patrol by banning emotion. Show fear, pleasure or anything else and you'll get brain-scrubbed by the Harmoniser or simply pushed off a building. Ranged against them are ZEPO (the Zom Emotional People's Organisation), the most crackpotted bunch of freedom fighters you ever saw, and the rebel splinter group of Big Hate. Worst of all is Barabara, the Blood Bug!

City of the Damned is less inventive than The Iron Legion, but that's not saying much. In fact it's the most focused story in this collection, giving us a violent struggle for freedom between heroic lunatics and an army of evil bastards. It can be read as an alt-universe Judge Dredd, but it's Whoish to the core in its celebration of eccentricity and compassion. (Incidentally the American market renamed it City of the Cursed, presumably to avoid the appearance of bad language. Personally I prefer the original name.)

Timeslip (DWW 17-18) doesn't appear in this collection, being a brief fill-in by neither the regular writers or artist. Drawn by Paul Neary and written by Dez Skinn, it's a fannish sneeze in which the TARDIS gets trapped by a time-eating amoeba and the Doctor starts regressing through his past incarnations. I've always liked it, though.

The Star Beast (DWW 19-26) seems to be everyone's favourite. Its villain, Beep the Meep, has come back time and again in recent years... and it must be said that only the comics could have realised him so perfectly. He's incredibly cute, but incredibly evil! Hunting him down are the Wrarth Warriors, but best of all is the setting: contemporary Northern England. It's the (fictional) industrial city of Blackcastle in the 1970s, and you won't read a funnier Doctor Who story this year. The culture clash between alien technology and stolid locals is killing.

"Get him from the pet shop, did you, Fudge?"

"No, he's from another galaxy, mum."

"Oh, that's nice, dear."

The Dogs of Doom (DWW 27-34) is almost two separate stories. The first half is about the lycanthropic Werelox, then the second half becomes a Dalek story as we discover who's at work behind the scenes. I love this story too, if only for Joe Bean's dialogue! Brill is awesome too.

The Time Witch (DWW 35-38) is the last story in this collection and only half the others' length. These strips were produced with an eye to US reprinting and so they collect into 17-page chapters, each beginning with a splash page. This is the first single-chapter story and it's obviously less complex than the others, but good for a laugh anyway.

It's hard to imagine a more definitive reprint of these stories, unless you're desperate to see them colourized. The US reprints were comprehensive but pretty uninspiring (smaller pages, not always good quality paper, simplistic colours) and the computer colouring of Classic Comics didn't do much for me either, though I admire the painting in the 1985 Iron Legion Summer Special. Even the original Weeklies can't be in great condition after twenty-odd years! Finally some of these stories have been reprinted more than others; I imagine most fans have seen The Star Beast or The Iron Legion, but I believe the only previous reprint of City of the Damned was in Marvel Premiere 59-60.

There have been other Doctor Who graphic collections, but this is the biggest and best-produced to date. Admittedly it's "only" black-and-white, but that's how these strips first appeared. Counting comic strip pages:

When I was a nipper, these stories were my Bible. Viewed through adult eyes, they're still bloody impressive and a whole barrel o' fun. And I haven't even dribbled yet over the magnificence that is Dave Gibbons's art...