Doctor Who: A Cold Day in Hell!

Doctor Who Magazine Comic Collections #11

by Mike Collins (Writer), John Freeman (Writer), Alan Grant (Writer)

Comprising every Seventh Doctor adventure across the issues 130-150 inclusive, the collection also includes the Doctor's first encounter with Death's Head.

The collection includes the following:

• “A Cold Day in Hell” by Simon Furman, pencils by John Ridgway, inks by Tim Perkins
• “Redemption!” by Simon Furman, pencils by Kev Hopgood, inks by Tim Perkins
• “The Crossroads of Time” by Simon Furman, art by Geoff Senior
• “Claws of the Klathi”! by Mike Collins, pencils by Kev Hopgood, inks by Dave Hine
• “Culture Shock!” by Grant Morrison, art by Bryan Hitch
• “Keepsake” by Simon Furman, art by John Higgins
• “Planet of the Dead” by John Freeman, art by Lee Sullivan
• “Echoes of the Mogor!” by Dan Abnett, art by John Ridgway
• “Time and Tide” by Richard Alan (writing as Richard Starkings) and John Carnell, art by Dougie Braithwaite and Dave Elliott
• “Follow that TARDIS!” by John Carnell, art by Andy Lanning, Kev Hopgood, Dougie Braithwaite and Dave Elliott
• “Invaders from Gantac!” by Alan Grant, pencils by Martin Griffiths, inks by Cam Smith

Genres: Doctor Who, Graphic Novels, Comics, Science Fiction, Graphic Novels Comics, Fiction, Comic Book

184 pages, Paperback

First published May 1, 2009

Reviews

[Angela · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is the first collection of the 7th Doctor comic strips. As such the character of the Doctor varies somewhat, as not much information had come out yet. However, don't let that put you off. Frobisher appears in the first story, along with Ice Warriors. Planet of the Dead, is a really decent story that sees the Doctor meeting former companions and Doctors. A good read

[Rick · Rating 4 out of 5]

I just purchased a copy of this collection. I had already read the material in another format, but now I was able to get through the introduction and contributor's commentary (which is always fun). These are some wonderful stories, also some silly ones, but over all a great collection of adventures featuring the seventh Doctor.

[Shannon Appelcline · Rating 3 out of 5]

Cold Day in Hell (130-133). I'm not convinced that this first story was meant to be about McCoy. It features the Doctor and Frobisher still angsting about Peri leaving, then Frobisher leaving himself. As such, it would have worked much better in continuity as a Colin Baker story set after Trial of a Time Lord. With that said, this is still a cool story because it has the Ice Warriors — even if we've seen most of the ideas before, like a group of Ice Warriors going rogue because they don't like peace and them making a planet particularly cold. I also appreciated the continuity with the Galactic Federation, which continues right on into the next story [7/10].

Redemption! (134). The idea of a companion gone bad is a good one, but it's all a bit sudden and thus the story is pretty shallow [6/10].

The Crossroads of Time (135). A battle between the Doctor and Death's Head is a cool bit of fun, especially as it's a pivotal event in Death's Head's chronology. Unfortunately, the continuity of this story as a Doctor Who offering is awful with a "Time Warden" who watches the paths of time and the Doctor willing to try and kill Death's Head almost instantly [4/10].

Claws of the Klathi (136-138). What an entirely bizarre strip, with some convoluted and irrelevant backstory and a whole bit with aliens traveling as a freak show. I didn't find it very interesting, nor did I find this Seventh Doctor very dark, despite the author's claims to the contrary. The story did have some great Victorian setting, but that wasn't enough to make it good [5/10].

Culture Shock! (139). Grant Morrison's story is fun just because it imagines a totally weird SF idea [8/10].

Keepsake (140). This story is really shallow, but fun for how it shows the Doctor being both silly (like the early 7) and also manipulating someone into doing something for him (like the late 7) [6/10].

Planet of the Dead (141-142). So this story has old companions and old Doctors, introduced for the purpose of an anniversary, but used really, really shallowly. Despite that, it's fun, especially in the interactions between the Doctors, which is spot on. The relation to the history of the Whifferdils is fun too [7/10].

Echoes of the Morgor! (143-144). Nice to have Abnett writing a story. This one is as thin as most of the stories in this volume, but still offers up an interesting mystery that's fun to read. However the old memories imprinted on crystals feels very overused, especially since it appeared in the "Dragonsfire" episode right around the same time [6/10].

Time & Tide (145-146). There's very little depth to this story, which is all about fate, the inevitable, and aliens having the Doctor for supper. There's meant to be some humor here, but it's not enough to keep the story rolling [5/10].

Follow that TARDIS (147). This is a pretty silly strip too, but at least it's actually funny at times. I also appreciated seeing the Meddling Monk again, and I think his use is right in line with that from the '60s [6/10].

Invaders from Gantac! (148-150). This last strip felt a lot like some of the early DWM strips, and I think that's the 2000AD influence. It's overall an interesting, fast-moving story, somewhat let down by a silly ending where fleas save the day [6/10].

Unfortunately, as a whole I found this a pretty lack-luster volume. As I said, it's often shallow. I also only occasionally got a good sense of McCoy's Doctor, sometimes the clown of the early seasons, and maybe once the schemer of the last season and the New Adventures. This problem was worse in the earlier stories, and may be the result of the authors not yet having seen 7 in action.

I also didn't like the fact that the Doctor was mostly solo and that there's almost no continuity between the strips, making it all around pretty blah. I suspect the rotating cast of writers contributed to that.

[Stephen Theaker · Rating 3 out of 5]

I wasn't reading Doctor Who Magazine when it published these stories, so these were mostly new to me. John Ridgway left the strip after the title story, ending a long period of artistic stability. For the rest of the book the art is all over the place stylistically. As Richard Starkings (now famous for his Comicraft lettering), then editor of the strip, explains in an introduction, that was partly down to a need to cut costs and streamline production, but also an artistic decision - he liked the idea of having different writers and artists for each story, just as each story of the TV had its own writer, director and flavour.

The results aren't quite as bad as I'd expected, though the rotating artists mean none of them get time to develop a good likeness of Sylvester McCoy, leading to some truly grotesque panels here and there. It also leads to inconsistency in characterisation; it was quite a surprise to see the seventh Doctor dropping explosives on "primitives" to create a diversion in Simon Furman's "Keepsake".

One other problem is that Frobisher leaves at the some time as John Ridgway, leaving the Doctor companionless – and thus prone to endless, bizarre monologuing. Maybe that's why he really needs companions: not just to stop him going off the deep end (as posited by the David Tennant episodes), but also because he likes to think out loud and doesn't want to look like a nutcase when he does it!

Still, I really enjoyed this, as shown by the fact that it was a Christmas present and I'd read and reviewed it by the end of Boxing Day! There are very few TV or film characters that have made such brilliant comics characters as Doctor Who, though to be fair very few have benefited from such consistently interesting creators, whether it's Dave Gibbons in Doctor Who Weekly #1, or Paul Grist in #414. As well as Ridgway and Furman, this book features names like Grant Morrison, Bryan Hitch, Lee Sullivan, John Higgins and Dan Abnett. Even at low ebb, this is a strip well worth reading.

[Ben Goodridge · Rating 4 out of 5]

The Seventh Doctor took a little while to find his feet - everyone was expecting a long run out of Colin Baker, and Sylvester's first script was written for his predecessor. Looks like the same thing happened here. The first story was clearly written for the Sixth Doctor, while the remainder feature the Seventh drawn very inconsistently, as the Doctor spent a lot of his first few serials making faces. Still, we've got John Ridgway, Grant Morrison, and Dan Abnett.

I was a little disappointed that Olla didn't stand around, but the Doctor doesn't have a regular traveling companion in this lot. There was an editorial change-over, and concerns that the strip might not continue, given the expense and the fate of the show. The stories themselves are all over the place -some are kind of goofy, some are dead serious. That said, there are some really good stories in here.

[Alex Sarll]

Strips from the early "gurning boob" era of Sylvester McCoy, many of which even their creators seem to have forgotten, and who can blame them? Grant Morrison and Bryan Hitch collaborated on one strip here, while the stories feature everything from Ice Warriors and the Monk to Frobisher and Death's Head - but the DWM comic's ingrained reverse-Midas effect makes sure none of it is better than passable.

[Thomas · Rating 3 out of 5]

Some of the stories are ok and some are forgettable, a few are just excellent and the book can be or should be found on the cheap. Some of the stand outs are: Claes of the Klathi, Culture Shock, and Echoes of the Mogor.

[Marcus Gipps · Rating 3 out of 5]

Lovely reprints of Doctor Who comics. Fine, and contains a couple of fun stories, but suffers from not being as good as some of the previous collections.

[Seth Mottram · Rating 5 out of 5]

A bit Timey wimey

[Yosef Shapiro · Rating 4 out of 5]

A collection of 7th Doctor Comic Strips from their heyday, as originally printed in DWM.

[Domiron · Rating 4 out of 5]

Doctor Who must deliver an Ohmodom to Bonjaxx on Maruthea can he do it????

[DrAshleyWho · Rating 3 out of 5]

Under the wing of Richard Starkings as editor who wanted to inject fresh blood into both the art and storytelling (always a great thing when it comes to Doctor Who), the quality of the DWM strip unfortunately goes all over the shop. There’s some good stuff here - Claws of the Klathi/Echoes of the Morgor are prototype-season 26 in their darker atmosphere and I liked the thematic two-hander of Culture Shock/Keepsake where the Doctor helps himself out of an existential crisis then proceeds to help a lonely salvage merchant find the good in both himself and the universe - but there’s some legit mind-boggling choices Starkings makes like crossing over with obscure Marvel characters at the time like Death’s Head (in a story where the Doctor defeats him via a tissue-elimination compressor and sending him off to a future Earth … was that supposed to be a Master story?) and the Sleaze Brothers (that one’s quite fun if you discount the discrepancy of having five different artists draw the thing), and telling artists to draw aliens like people in rubber costumes (ie Invaders from Gantac, which is like Aliens of London/World War Three done very poorly) which is insane given how comics have an unlimited budget.

But perhaps the most frustrating waste of potential here is the treatment of Olla, who’s introduced in the first story, A Cold Day in Hell (serviceable enough though it’s helped by the well-handled departure of Frobisher). The idea of the Doctor travelling with a person who initially presents herself as a loyal non-human friend with a hardened edge but slowly reveals herself to be a villainous scumbag is a fantastic idea (the closest we’ve gotten is Adam from The Long Game but imagine this stretched out over an entire season’s worth of stories) but the dramatic potential of this is reduced to a single eight-page story that happens immediately after her introduction that blurts out her entire backstory and betrayal without much in the way of suspense or excitement. Having Olla travel with the Doctor with a slow reveal of her true nature could’ve led to this batch of stories having a bit of momentum but instead she joins Kamelion, a similar 80s companion where the writers were clueless on how to capitalise on their amazing and fresh potential.

I wrote a long-form retrospective that expands on my thoughts on the strips presented here on Letterboxd during November of 2022, which you can read by clicking here.

[Arthur B · Rating 3 out of 5]

Rather variable in quality, in part because of the large number of different writers and artists involved, in part because the team in general don't seem to have a strong vision of what the Seventh Doctor is like or where they want to take his comic series. Still, some interesting stylistic experiments result. Full review: https://fakegeekboy.wordpress.com/202...

[Nicholas Whyte · Rating 4 out of 5]

https://nwhyte.livejournal.com/3141430.html

This is a collection of the first eleven Seventh Doctor comic stories that ran in Doctor Who Magazine issues 130-150, from late 1987 to mid 1989. Four of the stories were written by Simon Furman, the others being by Mike Collins (scripting for a change), Grant Morrison, John Freeman, Dan Abnett, Richard Alan (actually DWM editor Richard Starkings) and John Carnell together, John Carnell on his own, and Alan Grant; five different artisis are credited for the second last story, "Follow That Tardis", a sort of jam session for Marvel UK, including Kev Hopgood, who is co-credited on two other stories (with different artists each time). It is all monochrome, which somehow I didn't expect.

Given the reputation of all of those involved, it's good solid stuff, though I found the representation of the Seventh Doctor himself a bit iffy. In the first story, the Doctor says farewell to Frobisher and acquires a non-human companion, who lasts only to the second story, and otherwise travels alone. Possibly the most fannish of the stories is "Planet of the Dead" by John Freeman with art by Lee Sullivan, where the Seventh Doctor encounters first Adric, Peri, Sara Kingdom and Katarina, and then his own previous incarnations. The one I liked most was the fairly understated "Culture Shock", by Grant Morrison with art by Bryan Hitch, in which a demotivated Doctor finds a renewed sense of purpose by helping an alien life form.

[Hillingdon Libraries]

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