Access a version of the below that includes illustrations on my blog.

Here, we settle into what becomes the structure of the strip for the next several years: thirteen-strip arcs designed to fill out the new, smaller, graphic novel size. This one takes us up until the end of Matt Smith's run, and feels a bit like an appendix to the rest of it, picking up some characters and concepts from the previous volume, but not being as big as what had come before. Which, to be fair, is how Clara's tv run with the eleventh Doctor feels too!

Scott Gray, I think, keeps pushing himself here. It's interesting to read the backmatter, because he's always looking for opportunity to squeeze a bit more characterization; he notes, as I did as a viewer, that Clara feels like a bit of a nonentity during her first series, and so he tries to delve into her a bit more... coincidentally foreshadowing her transition into being a teacher that would come with "The Day of the Doctor"! He also zooms in on the eleventh Doctor's occasional bouts of mopiness, his relationship with the TARDIS as a character, and his self-doubts.

He also keeps on building up the DWM world. A lot of DWM fans say they like the comic's building up of its own world, but I think what they really mean is they like the way the comic did that when they were twelve: they like Maxwell Edison and Stockbridge and Dogbolter and the fact people say "mazumas" and the DWM version of Gallifrey. It would be easy for the strip to continuously go back to these things, as it did during the Izzy era. But Gray and his artistic collaborators (mostly Mike Collins here) keep pushing the DWM universe forward. Here, we get more about the Lakes from The Broken Man and Hunters of the Burning Stone, and more about Horatio Lynk and Cornucopia from The Cornucopia Caper, and we get the addition of Amy Johnson to the DWM recurring cast. It's great stuff, and I love that the strip keeps doing it instead of resting on the laurels of nostalgia. Cornucopia is a great setting.

A Wing and a Prayer
Like Rose and Martha, Clara is introduced into DWM with a fast-paced, lively story with some good moments for her character, illustrated by Mike Collins. It's the only way to do it, I guess! This is a good solid story that one expects from DWM at this point, which makes it easy to overlook how good it is. Good jokes, good characterization, neat concepts, and an excellent climax. An enjoyable take on the celebrity historical with a delightful ending. If they were all like this, we'd be in great hands.

Welcome to Tickle Town
Now, it pains me to say this, because normally I have nothing but praise for him (indeed, I own a piece of his original artwork, the only comics artist for whom that is true), but... I don't think Adrian Salmon was the right person to draw this story. Tickle Town is a Disneylandesque amusement park, only its inhabitants have been held captive for twenty years, kept in line by cartoon characters. Salmon of course draws great cartoon characters: the frog cowboy is a particular highlight. But it seems to me the power of the story visually comes from the contrast between the cartoons and the real people, but Salmon's style is sufficiently realist to make it work. Maybe with regular DWM colourist James Offredi it would have stood out more? But I can't help thinking there's a better version of this out there, where (say) Martin Geraghty draws all the human characters and Salmon the cartoons, and the contrast is striking.

But still, it's decent fun, particularly the song about the world being a nuclear wasteland set to the tune of "It's a Small World, After All."

John Smith and the Common Men
Back in the Paul McGann days, once senses Scott Gray tearing his hair out trying to come up with new premises for anniversary strips. In 2013, he had to come up with two! Hunters of the Burning Stone was a fiftieth-anniversary story, and now we have a one-off for the anniversary itself. I have fond memories of this one from back in 2013, a sort of sideways take on the concept: less about Doctor Who the show with its characters and aliens, and more about Doctor Who at its core: the values it promotes. John Smith is a government drudge who can't help anyone even when he wants to; the story depicts his slow awakening to something being wrong in the world and how he stops it. David A Roach excels on art, giving us an army of bow-tied bureaucrats, and an atmosphere of all-consuming drudgery. A clever idea for an anniversary story, not derivative at all, and well-executed.

Pay the Piper / The Blood of Azrael
Pay the Piper is a short, seemingly standalone story that ends up leading into a bigger story to come. In the backmatter, Scott Gray calls Pay the Piper a "Utopia"... but of course DWM was doing this kind of thing long before the television programme was (e.g., Stars Fell on Stockbridge, Darkness, Falling, The Keep, Me and My Shadow). Pay the Piper is fun at first: the Doctor and Clara at an auction in cyberspace complete with comedy alien cab driver, then kind of horrifying when the Doctor gets "erased" and it turns out genocide and cannibalism are on the menu. Then it shifts again and you learn that two different guest characters are members of MI-6's "Wonderland" project from Hunters of the Burning Stone... and there's a hell of a cliffhanger when the Doctor accidentally sells the TARDIS!

This all leads into The Blood of Azrael, another Cornucopia-focused story that brings back Amy Johnson, Annabel Lake, and Horatio Lynk, all becoming firm favorites, and gives Matt Smith's Doctor some really interesting stuff to do when he's rich but TARDIS-less. Gray shows real insight into the character of the Doctor, and the story itself is a decent one, with some good twists and nice themes about xenophobia and money and amazing visuals from Mike Collins and David A Roach. The bit where Amy goes to her death is genuinely emotional! She does not die, but I did not remember that.

The complaint I have is a bit unfair: it's just not as good as Hunters of the Burning Stone! I think this is down to the characterization of the climax; the Doctor apologizes, and... that's it, the TARDIS accepts it. I kind of wanted more of a reckoning... but that's probably outside the scope of what the strip can actually do. The last page, with Matt Smith dancing is celebration, is excellent.

Sometimes DWM is superior to the television programme. That was not the case during the Christopher Eccleston or David Tennant eras, even at the strip's best. But I think we actually got pretty close to that again during this latter-era Matt Smith run. It might be dancing in show's shadow... but boy can it dance like no one else.

Stray Observations:

• The relationship between Clara and Amy (not that one) had romantic/sexual chemistry in my opinion, Scott Gray picking up something that I don't think was really hinted at on screen until series eight!
• I like Cornucopia as I said above. One of the benefits of evolving a setting in a comics medium is that every time the artist changes, the world expands. Dan McDaid's Cornucopia is not Martin Geraghty's is not Mike Collins's. But they all coexist. On the other hand, in retrospect it seems like Gray made a slight mistake in removing the "crime is legal" schtick from Corncuopia's first appearance. It's a bit less interesting without it! I like that we get a return from those of those crimelords here.
• Scott Gray notes he considered having Annabel disguise herself as Majenta Pryce in Pay the Piper. I see why he didn't, but what a twist it would have been!
• Whoever wrote the Tardis wiki article on Amy Johnson didn't read all the way to the end of The Blood of Azrael, because it claims she dies!
• "JUST A TRACER" WATCH: We have cover credit! Yes, for the first time, after eighty-eight previous artistic contributions to Doctor Who Magazine in ten previous graphic novels, David A Roach has finally got his name on the cover! Is it because inking has finally been recognized as a valid part of the comics experience? Well, no. It's because he pencils and inks one strip here. Pencilling one strip > inking eighty-eight. I'll be continuing to monitor this key facet of DWM.

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My review of this book can be found on my Youtube Vlog at:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2d1ISzcuXU4

Enjoy! ( )