loved this!!! can't wait to read least 2 ( )

So basically all my friends are whovians, and my boyfriend and best friend are "classic" whovians at that. I, unfortunately, never quite got into that fandom, but damn, have my friends tried! I think I have seen at least 50 hours of Doctor Who, but ah... it would have been over 100 if I had been able to stay awake. That said, I love the comic book format. I find that I am able to take so much more whimsy, cleverness, and just plain old adventuring if it's drawn sequentially as opposed to acted out on a screen, for no good reason except personal tastes. Like this publisher's Star Trek comics, Doctor Who: Prisoners of Time is so much more than I expected. I admit, I expected a half-assed cash-in, but nearly immediately the quality of the art and the writing dissolved that.

So for Doctor Who's 50th anniversary each Doctor will be getting a comic book issue in a series called Prisoners of Time. Great idea, yeah? So far it has been working great in addition to being a great idea, which is the important part. With my limited Who knowledge, I was able to follow along and be entertained. What more can you ask for, eh?

Well, I didn't really see much to link together the issues, but perhaps it will all be revealed? And personally I prefer comics that I can read as single issues, though it seems a lot of them are written for the trade these days...

I got a digital copy of this volume from netgalley, but haha, I actually already bought and read the issues it covers. ( )

Travel through time with each of the first three doctors. Now I haven't watched more than the BBC's 50th anniversary remembrances of these doctors, and one episode each, so I'm no kind of expert. But I really thought the stories managed to capture the visual style, the acting style, and the script style for each one. And the companions. Fun stuff.

[As an aside, the library had a stack of some new Superman comic books from Free Comic Book Day. Both Tash and I picked one up. As I child I was big in the horror titles, and Archie the Gang, then Mad. I don't remember reading superheroes at all, and especially not Superman, although I knew all about him from TV and movies. So yesterday, sitting on the sofa with an actual stapled comic book in my hand for the first time in at least twenty years, I was overcome by how much they've changed. I remember them being made from cheap newsprint, and being printed in dots with a limited range of colors. The differences somehow didn't strike me in these years when I've been reading graphic novels all along, because those have millions of colors, and quality paper, and they're perfect bound; they are books, not comics.

My thanks to the writers, artists, editors, publishers, and everyone else who made that moment on the sofa possible. It was a good one.]

Library copy ( )

One of the things to like about the 50th anniversary of Doctor Who was how well the timing worked out. There were twelve months and eleven Doctors, which meant a number of different media celebrated by giving each Doctor in turn across the months: audios, prose, and, indeed, comics. Only it's coming from Scott & David Tipton, and though their Star Trek comics can be good, one might suspect that after Assimilation² they shouldn't be allowed anywhere near Doctor Who ever again.

Prisoners of Time isn't quite that bad, but it's not altogether good, either. Volume 1 collects stories featuring the first through fourth Doctors, which sometimes get the feel of the eras, and sometimes do not. The first Doctor one, though, has the laughably basic mistake of the Doctor being able to steer the TARDIS correctly while traveling with Ian and Barbara. (Also, Barbara and Vicki are stared at when they attend a lecture by Thomas Henry Huxley, because women are supposedly an unusual sight in a science class... but that just would not have been true in 1868, I think. Women would be outnumbered, but they wouldn't be absent-- science hadn't been professionalized yet!) The second Doctor one is a pretty solid pastiche of its era, and I liked that the third Doctor one united Sarah Jane Smith and Liz Shaw, though it didn't really do anything with that combination behind have them run around behind the Doctor. The fourth Doctor one has him fighting the Judoon, but isn't as fun as one might hope from that.

As is often the case with IDW's Doctor Who comics, the art is inconsistent. There are no individual art credits in my collected edition, but I'm going to assume that the well-drawn second and third Doctor chapters were by Lee Sullivan and Mike Collins, stalwarts of Doctor Who Magazine who know how to do Who in comic form-- I don't know why IDW waited so long to tap them! The second Doctor chapter is particularly nice, with the characters looking on-model without being overly referenced, and a lot of varied background aliens livening it up.

The first Doctor story is really let down by some awful likenesses, especially as it introduces the recurring threat through this series: an unknown enemy kidnapping the Doctor's companions. This enemy looks at pictures of the Doctor's companions, and you can barely tell which one is which! Or in some cases, I have no clue at all. Thomas Brewster might even be in there (I think), but surely the Doctor would be grateful if he was kidnapped?

2013 marked the 50th Anniversary of Doctor Who, a television show that has quickly captured my imagination in recent years. There was a plethora of anniversary celebrations, including the actual 50th Anniversary episode, several Big Finish audio productions, a collection of novel reprints (1 for each Doctor), a collection of new eBook shorts written by some of the biggest names in YA (again, 1 for each Doctor), and also a comic series from IDW Publishing, Doctor Who: Prisoners of Time. Each of the first 11 issues handles each of the 11 Doctors and their companions, while I'm assuming that the twelfth issue will have a 11 Doctors present. Each issue is illustrated by a different artist, which I found refreshing, giving each Doctor their own distinct style. I feel like the writers got the Doctors pretty spot on with their personalities, as well.

As for the story, there is a mysterious villain who is traveling through the Doctor's timeline and kidnapping his companions. To what purpose is part of the mystery! Each of the issues contains an adventure on its own with the Doctor and his companions, yet by the end of the story, the companions have disappeared much to the Doctor's dismay. I've got somewhat of an idea who is behind the kidnappings, but it's a pretty farfetched theory, so I'm just keeping it to myself for right now. I'll definitely be picking up the subsequent volumes to see how the story plays out.

I think this would be a solid choice for any Whovian. ( )