Simon Fraser (5) (1969–)

This volume opens "Year Three" of Titan's Eleventh Doctor ongoing, and as always, I find it excellent stuff. The opening two-parter, "Remembrance"/"The Scream" by returning writer Rob Williams with artists I. N. J. Culbard, Leandro Casco, and Wellington Diaz, takes the Doctor and Alice first to the funeral of their old friend John Jones, and then to a trap laid for them by a Silence who's so good at being forgotten that not even his own people remember who he is. As always, it's full of show more bonkers, delightful, dark stuff that is both very Doctor Who and nothing like the tv show. (Well, actually, it reminds me a lot of the first half of series 6's opening two-parter; "The Impossible Astronaut" is a delightfully disconcerting opening that I felt "Day of the Moon" didn't really capitalize on, and this pushes out even further in that direction.) My only complaint here is that what actually happened to the memories of the Doctor and Alice is a bit nebulous; their quest to regain them seem to be the Year Three arc, but it also seems that they remember most things!

As always, Rob Williams trades off his stories with another writer; in this case, newcomer Alex Paknadel writes "The Tragical History Tour" with returning artist Simon Fraser. Again, this is a story with an off-the-wall concept: time on Earth becomes spatialized, so you can get from one year to the next just by walking. The late 1960s start invading future years to take their stuff; the Doctor, Alice, and the Sapling bump into Alice's neighbor Kushak, all whose past selves are taking refuge in his 2015 apartment. So the Doctor, Alice, the Sapling, and all the Kushaks pile into a bus and drive back to 1968 to figure out what's going on! I enjoyed it a lot, though I did wish it was a three-parter as I felt the character(s) of Kushak kind of got lost in the midst of everything else. But this is a series that never does three-parters really, and is probably better for it; The Eleventh Doctor rockets through concepts that other Titan ongoings would probably drag out to tedium, always chasing the novelty that makes it always the best of the ongoings.

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This volume solidified my belief that The Eleventh Doctor is far and above the best of Titan's three ongoing Doctor Who comics. Alice continues on as a companion from "Year One," but two more are added: the Squire and Abslom Daak of Doctor Who Magazine fame.

The invocation of Daak is more than a surface-level continuity thing; I actually think it reveals something important about the creative team's intentions. Coincidentally, I started reading through the Panini collections of the DWM comic show more strip around the same time I started this, and The Then and the Now reminds me of the classic fourth Doctor run by Pat Mills, John Wagner, and Dave Gibbons (I haven't actually gotten to Daak yet; his material is reprinted in one of the seventh Doctor volumes) in that it doesn't read like an attempt to imitate what the tv show does in comics form, but instead it takes what the tv show does and filters it through a comics prism. Si Spurrier and Rob Williams and their artistic collaborators are doing their own thing that draws on stuff the tv show did... but is really nothing like it in terms of tone and affect.

The story focuses on the eleventh Doctor's guilt over what he did as the "War Doctor" during the Time War; he's being hunted by a bounty hunter (the Then and the Now of the title) for a crime he doesn't remember committing... but is perfectly willing to believe he committed. He and Alice are joined by the Squire, a companion of the War Doctor he doesn't remember, and Abslom Daak, who finds himself at loose ends as a "Dalek killer" with no Daleks to kill. Each story here sees the Doctor retracing his steps through the Time War as Alice has strange visions ("EXTERMINHATE") and we get glimpses of the War Doctor and a mysterious child. There's lots of great stuff here, both horrifying and gentle, and never for a moment do you feel like you're watching the tv show. I like this portrayal of a guilt-wracked Doctor; I like the new weird TARDIS team he has inadvertently assembled; I like the guesses and glimpses we get of the Time War (once again demonstrating that Big Finish Time War is the least interesting Time War). My only complaint would be that Alice herself feels a bit lost in the epic Doctor angst of it all, compared to how much her character was foregrounded in "Year One" (her visions feels more like a plot device than a character point), but I am hopeful that future volumes in "Year Two" will remedy this.

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This book wraps up the SERVEYOUinc storyline that's been running through these Eleventh Doctor comics, though first there's a cute story about an alien overlord who tries to take over the Earth by writing free comic books. The remainder of the book is pretty dramatic, grim stuff, though, with the Doctor working hard to make good for his guilt over what he did during volume two when he took over SERVEYOUinc. Stories include the TARDIS crew being split into three different dimensions, Cybermen show more intervening during a civil war in ancient Rome, and the Doctor facing down his mother. They're weird, off-kilter stories, and all the better for it. There's no point where this ever feels like it's trying to be the telly version! The Doctor's guilt is a strong thread here, and one I enjoyed: I don't think Matt Smith every played it quite this way in tv, but I think he could have, and quite well. This is a baggage-ridden Doctor, full of self-loathing, a characterization that occasionally lurked in the background; Ewing & Williams yank it into the foreground to good effect. Jones and ARC are written out in the this volume (I like how Jones went), and the ending promises that Alice will stick around for the next volume, which is good because I like her.

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As of this writing, I've dipped into Titan's offerings for the tenth, eleventh, and twelfth Doctors; The Eleventh Doctor series is my favorite of the three. In my review of the first Tenth Doctor volume, I said it did what a lot of good tie-in fiction does, and hit the nostalgia button. After Life goes one better, and does what the best tie-in fiction does, which is offer nostalgia and the new. The writing of Al Ewing and Rob Williams captures Matt Smith's voice, and the art of Simon Fraser show more and Rob Williams gets his crazy kineticism across on the comics page.

On the other hand, it's hard to imagine Steven Moffat pairing Matt Smith's Doctor with a grieving middle-aged librarian, much less adding two more companions who are a David Bowie riff and a shapeshifting service robot. But Alice is a great companion, and while Jones is often more of a joke than a character, he's a funny joke, so I'll allow it. (ARC doesn't make much of an impression in this volume, to be honest.) And while Revolutions of Terror was often (though admittedly not always) trying to be tv episodes on the comics page, the stories in After Life feel like they are told like comics. I especially appreciated their usual done-in-one nature; this volume collects five issues but four stories, whereas Revolutions of Terror did two stories in six issues.

The stories are vibrant and dynamic and out there, but also emotionally true. My favorites were the opener, "After Life," with its focus on depression, and good use of color, and the batshit insane "What He Wants..." (#3), where Alice and the Doctor accidentally pluck Alice's mother's favorite pop star out of time at the beginning of his career and transport him to 1931 Mississippi, leading to a series of escapades that results in Bessie (in the form of a monster truck!) careening through the delta while a blue musician blasts a crowd of zombies with his guitar. Oh my god, what? So good, and the kind of rapid-fire invention that one reads Doctor Who comics for. (I find it interesting how this comic is written. In this collection, Ewing & Williams co-write the first issue, but take turns on subsequent stories; Ewing goes on to write #2 and 4-5, while Williams pens #3. Maybe not coincidentally, I found the two solo-penned by Ewing more traditional, though still strong work.) And even though these are mostly done-in-ones, the writers are clearly working through a long-term plan, I look forward to seeing it unfold...

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