Tony’s converted.
Mad Chinese dragon-style
mood-dogs. David Bowie as a Tardis traveller (or near as dammit). A regenerated
Uber-Bessie. Robert ‘sold his soul to the Devil’ Johnson. A black, female
Eleventh Doctor. A companion made of what looks like Silly Putty. An entity
that can give you whatever you desire. The theme park of death. A war between
two races rapt in wonder. The Doctor turning evil. World of the happy smiley
zombie people.
If you’re just joining us
in the adventures of the Eleventh Doctor in Titan Comics, that’s just a quick
summary of some of the stuff you’ve already missed.
About that whole ‘book
early to avoid disappointment’ thing.
Fortunately of course,
Titan’s a full-service bunch of groovers, and when enough issues of a Doctor
Who comic have been released and you’ve either bought them or somehow missed
them, the company releases a collected edition. So you can still catch all the
mood-dog, David Bowie, Robert Johnson Uber-Bessie, Evil Doctor, female Doctor
Silly Putty theme park of happy smiley zombie people death action in Volumes 1
and 2 of the collected editions of the Eleventh Doctor comic-book.
And now there’s another
one.
Bet you’d like to know
what’s in that one, wouldn’t you?
Let’s see – it’s difficult
to pick a headline, really. God-fearing, vision-showing Cyber-armies? The first
Christian Roman Emperor, and why he changed the world? A self-writing
story-virus? The Tardis splitting in four? The Tardis locking the Doctor out
and disappearing into time and space. The Doctor’s mother popping back to
remonstrate with her errant son?
All that and more is here
in Conversion, the third collected edition of Eleventh Doctor comic-books, and
the one that finally, no, really this time, puts the cork in the bottle of the
ServeYouInc storyline that took so gorgeously long and twisty a path to tell,
you could mistake it for a Moffat season of hardcore Matt Smithery.
In fact it’s no
exaggeration to say that you might well gain a clearer appreciation for all the
subtlety and nuance of the Matt Smith Doctor from reading these comic-books
than you’d get from rewatching his on-screen seasons. The whole reality of the
tireless work he put in during his time in the Tardis is somehow clearer in
this two-dimensional format than it is on-screen, the strands less cluttered
and yet equally or sometimes more rewarding, frenetic, and powerful. Perhaps
that’s the ultimate accolade: You’ll know and understand the Eleventh Doctor
better reading these comic-books.
The storyline here
involves quite a lot of travelling through space chasing something
enigmatically called The Entity, in the intimate company of its detached brain
(did we mention the comic-books are able to take more creative risks than the
on-screen show, being limited only by the imagination of writers and artists?).
Along with someone who’s David Bowie in all but lawsuit and a library assistant
from Hackney, London. The main thrust of the story involves a Doctor trying to
recover from an episode of selfishness, and the struggle of those around him to
try and trust the bow-tie wearing young professor of time and space again. The
most action-packed episodes include an enormous Cyber-invasion of the Earth,
with Cybermen enhanced by the power to show you the things you want most in all
the world. That’s where we meet Constantine the Eventually Great, as he becomes
both a Christian and the undisputed Emperor of Rome. The Doctor’s response to
that threat is what gives us the idea of there being a bunch of Cybermen
somewhere in the galaxy fervently believing in a Cyber-God (Oh please let that
be a future on-screen story), but it’s also another black mark of mistrust for
Captain UltraChin, and it’s an action that makes the Tardis run off and leave
him to think about his actions, stranded in fourth century Rome, while another
of his friends is in mortal danger and apparently beyond his help.
The writing, from Al Ewing
and Rob Williams, is almost ridiculously good. Honestly, you’ll read it and
your mouth will drop open, as you ask why they don’t write for the on-screen
Who. Certainly, knowing what we know about the on-screen version, these two
have got an impeccable ear for Matt Smith’s Doctor, because his lines are
crafted in such a way that there isn’t one of them that goes into your head
without a Smithian voice track. Meanwhile, Smith’s Doctor is clearly eminently
drawable, beyond ‘Big chin, floppy hair,’ because Simon Fraser, Boo Cook and
Warren Pleece render him in all his moods in very recognisable ways here –
again, reading this comic-book will help you identify everything you know about
Matt Smith’s Doctor but had never particularly thought about – there’s the
bandy-legged Chaplin walk, there’s the pointy-finger, there’s the considering
face, there’s the rage, there’s the suddenly intent stare, there’s the
collapsed-souffle face of realisation that something bad is happening – all
nailed into two dimensions for you, and accessible in a much more immediate,
intelligible way: the comic-books allow you to recognise these things as
‘things’ – parts of the Eleventh Doctor’s make-up, where on screen, they can
sometimes pass you by as part of stories.
In particular, apart from
the Cyber-story, look out for Chapter 11 here, called Four Dimensions. This
allows Boo Cook on artwork and Hi-Fi on colour to really show off their skills,
with pages split beyond the normal panel-structure, and sections delivered in
monochromes, to indicate four separate environments. Beautiful, evocative
stuff. There’s beauty of another kind too in later panels of the Doctor’s sadness
and contrition, which takes the story full circle to when Alice Obiefune first
met the Doctor, as he crashed colour into her ash-grey life of mourning for her
mother. She’s able here to repay the favour when he loses the Tardis (to his
mother – we mentioned that, right?), and feels entirely unable to move forward
again. If the ultimate test of a companion is the effect they have on the Time
Lord, then all three of the members of this Tardis team have done excellent
work – there are plenty of occasions throughout the long story arc of
ServeYouInc where they have saved the Doctor in some way or other, but this
last one from Alice is particularly poignant, galvanising the Doctor for a
moment of older man self-definition and surety, defeating his own self-doubts
and guilt with the help of her belief in him.
Conversion is a must-have
for Collected Issue fans, but it’s also pretty special if you’ve been
collecting the issues one by one – not only is there a sense of more permanence
having the collected issues on your shelf, but (and this was a delicious
surprise), you also get the ‘Free Comic Book Day’ release, Give Free Or Die,
which you’ll have missed if (like us) you were simply going issue by issue.
So update your complete
collection – get Conversion today.
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