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Doctor Who Graphic Novels: The Eighth Doctor #3
Doctor Who: Oblivion
The Eighth Doctor clashes with a new host of enemies in this latest collection of classic adventures! This volume features seven amazing stories: "Ophidius," "Beautiful Freak," "The Way of All Flesh," "Children of the Revolution," "Me and My Shadow," "Uroboros," and "Oblivion!" Includes a newly-extended conclusion to the poll-winning Dalek strip "Children of the Revolution," a bonus strip ("Character Assassin") featuring the Doctor's arch-enemy the Master, plus a fascinating, 22-page, behind-the-scenes feature in which writer Scott Gray reveals background information on the stories' origins, alongside never-before-seen sketches and character designs from artists Martin Geraghty, Lee Sullivan, John Ross and Adrian Salmon.
228 pages, Paperback
First published October 12, 2006
112 people want to read
About the author
Scott Gray
113 books16 followersScott Gray, born Warwick Gray, is a comic book writer from New Zealand who lives and works in the UK.
There is more than one author with this name
There is more than one author with this name
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Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews
July 3, 2023
This is where I originally fell out of love with the DWM strip a little, the same way I did circa 1988. I got my Doctor Who fix from elsewhere: the revitalised TV show in 1988 and the book range at the turn of the century. The inner Luddite that bedevils all of us probably resented the move to colour too - which I always felt daft for, but to a degree it’s a preference for form and likely my upbringing on Mills, Grant, Ridgway, Parkhouse and monochrome Marvel UK reprints.
Anyway… might not be my thing but Gray and his cabal of artists have a ton of fun experimenting with how they can use colour in the script; both the colouring and lettering work across the strips is exemplary. And plenty of Gray’s concerns feel strikingly modern: celebrity historicals, the human tendency to look to authoritarianism in a crisis and even the first same sex kiss from a visually based incarnation of the show. There’s a good argument for this as pioneeringly queer with Gray’s body swap storyline arguably readable as a trans analogy, a reading that for me adds to the argument that Beautiful Freak is the high point of his work on the strip; a resonant character piece which uses the comic medium to great effect.
Elsewhere, the scale of ambition is admirable, with living snaky spaceships, Lovecraftian monsters and creatures seemingly as constructed from colour and effects as Douglas Adams’s Hoovooloos. It comes with a tendency to melodrama and what feels like narrative cheats, and when it avoids grimness it’s thoroughly entertaining. Beautiful Freak aside, the highlight for me is The Way of All Flesh, a nifty treatise on art and grief featuring Frida Kahlo and Diego Rivera. Sometimes the price of ambition - and Gray and rest of the team are relentlessly ambitious - is that you don’t quite hit the mark, but that ambition makes moments where a story doesn’t quite work much more forgivable. It’s still a fine reminder of the strip’s last truly vital days, where it was the main visual medium for Who rather than subservient to the returned show: well worth a look and a contemplation of how Who might look if it had been a Marvel originated strip in the first place.
Anyway… might not be my thing but Gray and his cabal of artists have a ton of fun experimenting with how they can use colour in the script; both the colouring and lettering work across the strips is exemplary. And plenty of Gray’s concerns feel strikingly modern: celebrity historicals, the human tendency to look to authoritarianism in a crisis and even the first same sex kiss from a visually based incarnation of the show. There’s a good argument for this as pioneeringly queer with Gray’s body swap storyline arguably readable as a trans analogy, a reading that for me adds to the argument that Beautiful Freak is the high point of his work on the strip; a resonant character piece which uses the comic medium to great effect.
Elsewhere, the scale of ambition is admirable, with living snaky spaceships, Lovecraftian monsters and creatures seemingly as constructed from colour and effects as Douglas Adams’s Hoovooloos. It comes with a tendency to melodrama and what feels like narrative cheats, and when it avoids grimness it’s thoroughly entertaining. Beautiful Freak aside, the highlight for me is The Way of All Flesh, a nifty treatise on art and grief featuring Frida Kahlo and Diego Rivera. Sometimes the price of ambition - and Gray and rest of the team are relentlessly ambitious - is that you don’t quite hit the mark, but that ambition makes moments where a story doesn’t quite work much more forgivable. It’s still a fine reminder of the strip’s last truly vital days, where it was the main visual medium for Who rather than subservient to the returned show: well worth a look and a contemplation of how Who might look if it had been a Marvel originated strip in the first place.
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October 31, 2022The Doctor Who comic strip goes into colour and the creative team don’t waste the opportunity: from the alien landscape of Ophidius and underwater scenes on Kyrol, to mid-20th century Mexico and the steampunky vistas of Oblivion and the TARDIS itself, page after page displays a rich palette of evocative and frankly gorgeous experimentation with colour. There is even a foray into greys and sepia tones in (appropriately) Me And My Shadow.
It’s not quite enough to stop me missing the intricate detail that has characterised the Eighth Doctor run up to this point, but there’s no questioning the efforts to make the most of the new format, including some special effects that wouldn’t have been possible until this point (most notably with the arrival of the Horde). This is probably also as consistent as the artwork has ever been in any run of Doctor Who comics: Martin Geraghty continues to provide an incredibly strong backbone to the series, his dynamic approach to layouts and perspectives setting the tone for the run and allowing for some astonishing moments of storytelling (the climactic Izzy/Destrii confrontation in particular). It has the effect of making Lee Sullivan’s familiar style feel a little unsophisticated by comparison (though he does draw a good Dalek), whereas John Ross fits into the run perfectly, bring a more angular style at a point where it seems to match the Doctor's spiky mood. Finally, it is a joy (as always) to see Adrian Salmon’s work in the stylish one-off Character Assassin, in which he effortlessly integrates colour into his distinctive visuals.
It feels mean-spirited to point to flaws, but in the aftermath of the groundbreaking and endlessly imaginative Glorious Dead arc some of this does seem like style over substance. Ophidius leans towards comic book sci-fi cliché far more than the strip has done in ages (the Ophidians’ look and plan could have come out of a Dan Dare comic) and the satire of its direct sequel Uroborus doesn’t quite compensate for the plodding narrative; evocative though The Way of All Flesh is, the plot is pretty flimsy and its resolution perfunctory. Where the strength of these stories lie is in their characters – Diego and Frida, the crew of the Argus, Jodafra and the other nobles of Oblivion, are all powerfully realised creations with complex emotional journeys, supporting the depth of the key emotional arc that runs through this cycle, that of Izzy and Destrii.
What Izzy goes through, and what it leads towards in the final pages of Oblivion, is a more sophisticated journey than most TV companions are given (even in these modern times when they’re allowed to emote all over the screen given any opportunity). The success of this storyline reaches its epitome in the exquisite Beautiful Freak, in which the art and writing complement each other perfectly in a moment of pure character-driven reflection. It’s difficult to imagine many other times when the Doctor Who comic strip – when any comic strip, for that matter – would have been able to do something like this.
Developing such a thematically strong series with relatively few words and frames to play with is absolutely masterful, and if the stories themselves don’t quite match the bells and whistles of the previous two volumes, I can’t fault the ambition to take the strip in a more character-driven direction, nor the success with which it is realised. Once again, this feels like a team at the height of their powers: immensely inventive and still able to surprise and unsettle. Doctor Who at its best.
It’s not quite enough to stop me missing the intricate detail that has characterised the Eighth Doctor run up to this point, but there’s no questioning the efforts to make the most of the new format, including some special effects that wouldn’t have been possible until this point (most notably with the arrival of the Horde). This is probably also as consistent as the artwork has ever been in any run of Doctor Who comics: Martin Geraghty continues to provide an incredibly strong backbone to the series, his dynamic approach to layouts and perspectives setting the tone for the run and allowing for some astonishing moments of storytelling (the climactic Izzy/Destrii confrontation in particular). It has the effect of making Lee Sullivan’s familiar style feel a little unsophisticated by comparison (though he does draw a good Dalek), whereas John Ross fits into the run perfectly, bring a more angular style at a point where it seems to match the Doctor's spiky mood. Finally, it is a joy (as always) to see Adrian Salmon’s work in the stylish one-off Character Assassin, in which he effortlessly integrates colour into his distinctive visuals.
It feels mean-spirited to point to flaws, but in the aftermath of the groundbreaking and endlessly imaginative Glorious Dead arc some of this does seem like style over substance. Ophidius leans towards comic book sci-fi cliché far more than the strip has done in ages (the Ophidians’ look and plan could have come out of a Dan Dare comic) and the satire of its direct sequel Uroborus doesn’t quite compensate for the plodding narrative; evocative though The Way of All Flesh is, the plot is pretty flimsy and its resolution perfunctory. Where the strength of these stories lie is in their characters – Diego and Frida, the crew of the Argus, Jodafra and the other nobles of Oblivion, are all powerfully realised creations with complex emotional journeys, supporting the depth of the key emotional arc that runs through this cycle, that of Izzy and Destrii.
What Izzy goes through, and what it leads towards in the final pages of Oblivion, is a more sophisticated journey than most TV companions are given (even in these modern times when they’re allowed to emote all over the screen given any opportunity). The success of this storyline reaches its epitome in the exquisite Beautiful Freak, in which the art and writing complement each other perfectly in a moment of pure character-driven reflection. It’s difficult to imagine many other times when the Doctor Who comic strip – when any comic strip, for that matter – would have been able to do something like this.
Developing such a thematically strong series with relatively few words and frames to play with is absolutely masterful, and if the stories themselves don’t quite match the bells and whistles of the previous two volumes, I can’t fault the ambition to take the strip in a more character-driven direction, nor the success with which it is realised. Once again, this feels like a team at the height of their powers: immensely inventive and still able to surprise and unsettle. Doctor Who at its best.
April 12, 2024
Oblivion - 4.5/5
So Oblivion, Series 3 of the 8th Doctor's DWM Comic Stories.
I genuinely love this series: it takes the unrestrained nature of comics and runs with it, letting the series go from meeting Frida Kahlo in 1920s Mexico to a what felt like a genuinely original Dalek story set on an ocean world, before moving on to a Gormenghast inspired sci-fi court setting with catpeople and fishfolk. But within all of that there's such a consistent commitment to focusing on character, specifically the companions the series introduces, that it feels like a dry run for the Revival in 2005, and at times works far better than that show ever has. Izzy Sinclair goes through a lot here, both in terms of personal growth and physical change (let's just say that there's a reason the strip chose Kahlo to focus on as a historical figure), that really test what a Who Companion can deal with and it comes out feeling so well done that I just love her all the more. We also see the return of Fey, reintroduced whilst fighting Nazis, and whilst she's a secondary concern for the story she gets some great material here too.
However, I do think the strip falls down a little when characterising the Doctor. Eight has always been fairly hard to characterise in expanded media, the audios are anchored in McGann's performance but the comics and books always seem to struggle to find an individual voice for him in the way the other Doctor's have, usually relying on his Edwardian Romantic look and fey style from the movie to portray him (although some of the books lean hard into the queercoding depending on the author). That's a fairly serious issue here. Eight has all the basic Doctor characteristics here and a great sense of anger at some of the things happening in this set of stories but nothing stands out as intrinsically relying on this being an Eight story. That's a bit of a worry because he'll seemingly be alone for the next few stories so I'm concerned that with no Companion he might fade a fair bit.
So overall this series is well worth checking out. It also really illustrates how the Who EU was the template for the Who revival (I know Russell was a big fan of this strip), and it's often more consistent than that revival series is, both in terms of story quality and characterisation. If you can track it down definitely do so.
I'm gonna take a break from the series for now before coming back to the fourth and final volume, The Flood.
So Oblivion, Series 3 of the 8th Doctor's DWM Comic Stories.
I genuinely love this series: it takes the unrestrained nature of comics and runs with it, letting the series go from meeting Frida Kahlo in 1920s Mexico to a what felt like a genuinely original Dalek story set on an ocean world, before moving on to a Gormenghast inspired sci-fi court setting with catpeople and fishfolk. But within all of that there's such a consistent commitment to focusing on character, specifically the companions the series introduces, that it feels like a dry run for the Revival in 2005, and at times works far better than that show ever has. Izzy Sinclair goes through a lot here, both in terms of personal growth and physical change (let's just say that there's a reason the strip chose Kahlo to focus on as a historical figure), that really test what a Who Companion can deal with and it comes out feeling so well done that I just love her all the more. We also see the return of Fey, reintroduced whilst fighting Nazis, and whilst she's a secondary concern for the story she gets some great material here too.
However, I do think the strip falls down a little when characterising the Doctor. Eight has always been fairly hard to characterise in expanded media, the audios are anchored in McGann's performance but the comics and books always seem to struggle to find an individual voice for him in the way the other Doctor's have, usually relying on his Edwardian Romantic look and fey style from the movie to portray him (although some of the books lean hard into the queercoding depending on the author). That's a fairly serious issue here. Eight has all the basic Doctor characteristics here and a great sense of anger at some of the things happening in this set of stories but nothing stands out as intrinsically relying on this being an Eight story. That's a bit of a worry because he'll seemingly be alone for the next few stories so I'm concerned that with no Companion he might fade a fair bit.
So overall this series is well worth checking out. It also really illustrates how the Who EU was the template for the Who revival (I know Russell was a big fan of this strip), and it's often more consistent than that revival series is, both in terms of story quality and characterisation. If you can track it down definitely do so.
I'm gonna take a break from the series for now before coming back to the fourth and final volume, The Flood.
May 31, 2022
This has become a stand-out run in all of Doctor Who for me. Izzy and Fey and Destrii are all fantastic characters, and this is the best the Eighth Doctor can possibly get. You can tell that the entire creative team behind this comic was very excited to use colour, because each story is beautiful and vibrant, even to the point where the Doctor's own costume is changed to look better in colour. Don't forget to read the extra features in the back, they compliment these collections perfectly.
"I demand to die naked!"
"I demand to die naked!"
February 6, 2008
A nice conclusion to Izzy's story, even if the revelations made in her final pages seem to come a bit out of left field. The run of strips compiled in "Oblivion" feel like a complete season arc, although admittedly more of an emotionally-driven one than the previous McGann collections. In fact, the emotions - centering on Izzy's forced body swap with the fish-like alien Destrii - are the best part about the strips, because for once, the longer plots are a touch lacking. There's a lot of content here that could use additional length or depth, especially "Uroboros," which has a great concept that wraps up way too quickly, and "The Way of All Flesh," which renders guest stars Frida Kahlo and Diego Rivera oddly...typical. The stronger strips are the one-shots "Beautiful Freak" and "Me and My Shadow," along with the one solid multi-part strip, "Children of the Revolution." The latter, an unexpected sequel to the classic "Evil of the Daleks," presents the evil pepperpots in a way we've never seen before, but actually works really well - both as a natural development from the classic '60s story and in counterpoint to the comic arc's emotional themes.
The art is also worth mentioning this time around. Aside from the regular artist Martin Geraghty (who *still* veers between capturing Paul McGann dead-on and not at all), Lee Sullivan does some great, classically clean art for "Children of the Revoluton," while my personal favorite is John Ross' stylized art for "Me and My Shadow" and "Uroboros." Adrian Salmon's wonderful colors, starting with "Children," are also worth note - they really bring this first collection of full-color strips to life with a sizzle.
"Oblivion" is a good collection, perhaps the most self-contained of the McGann volumes. It lacks the waywardness of the writing in "Endgame" and the overkill of 'funny' strips in "The Glorious Dead." There are some tremendously strong ideas here, too, and the color is a real book. But the McGann strips have yet to live up to the quality of the Steve Parkhouse days, and with just one collection to go, who knows if they ever will.
The art is also worth mentioning this time around. Aside from the regular artist Martin Geraghty (who *still* veers between capturing Paul McGann dead-on and not at all), Lee Sullivan does some great, classically clean art for "Children of the Revoluton," while my personal favorite is John Ross' stylized art for "Me and My Shadow" and "Uroboros." Adrian Salmon's wonderful colors, starting with "Children," are also worth note - they really bring this first collection of full-color strips to life with a sizzle.
"Oblivion" is a good collection, perhaps the most self-contained of the McGann volumes. It lacks the waywardness of the writing in "Endgame" and the overkill of 'funny' strips in "The Glorious Dead." There are some tremendously strong ideas here, too, and the color is a real book. But the McGann strips have yet to live up to the quality of the Steve Parkhouse days, and with just one collection to go, who knows if they ever will.
February 7, 2010
I first bought this book back in 2006, when it was released, but lost it after reading a dozen or so pages (I think it might have been knocked into the recycling bin). After almost four years of searching I finally gave up and bought a new copy.
This is the first volume in colour, and it really benefits. Martin Geraphy's artwork, which was a bit overwhelming in black and white, looks immensely better here.
Scott Gray's stories are confident and assured, with Children of the Revolution, a sequel to Evil of of the Daleks, especially entertaining. The Way of All Flesh is a celebrity historical featuring Frida Kahlo. In Oblivion he gives Izzy the perfect send-off.
This is the first volume in colour, and it really benefits. Martin Geraphy's artwork, which was a bit overwhelming in black and white, looks immensely better here.
Scott Gray's stories are confident and assured, with Children of the Revolution, a sequel to Evil of of the Daleks, especially entertaining. The Way of All Flesh is a celebrity historical featuring Frida Kahlo. In Oblivion he gives Izzy the perfect send-off.
Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews