Boo CookRezensionen

https://fromtheheartofeurope.eu/serve-you-by-al-ewing-rob-williams-et-al/

Second in the sequence of Titan Eleventh Doctor comics, continuing his adventures with recently bereaved London librarian Alice, anonymous musician Jones and chameleon entity ARC. Alice is much more interesting than the other two and gets much more plot, especially when her dead mother appears to come back. The standout however is the first episode where time starts running backwards – this has been done a couple of times before in Who, but it’s difficult to do well and it is carried off with aplomb.

https://fromtheheartofeurope.eu/after-life-by-al-ewing-et-al/

First of the 2014 line of Eleventh Doctor comics by Titan, this introduces a new companion, Alice Obiefune from Hackney, as a regular Tardis traveller along with invisible musician John Jones and an alien entity called ARC. I like the new dynamic between the primaries, but the other two companions seem a bit superfluous, and the historical story set in the segregated Deep South pulls its punches. Pleasing enough, good art.½

This has a timey-to-the-wimey beginning and a rather scary middle. I like how it throws you into the action and disorients you a bit before putting things back on track. Not as much fun as Vol. 1 but makes up for it in unsettling-ness.

Absolutely loved this. The Eleventh Doctor’s voice and expressions are spot on, and I loved Alice from the get-go, how she took things in stride when travelling with the Doctor. I liked that they time travelled to famous gigs and saw the first gig of a young man who clearly is modelled on David Bowie. His draft version of “Space Oddity” had me cackling, because I am secretly four. I also liked how the chapters built on each other but felt self-contained as well, so that if you’d had to wait a while between issues, there wouldn’t be too much to catch up on. Lovely stuff. Looking forward to Volume 2!

Collecting the first five issues of the Titan Comics run of stories featuring the Matt Smith incarnation of The Doctor this arc serves primarily as an introduction to a new group of companions.

The introduction of the first new companion, librarian Alice, uses color design and humor very effectively to illustrate her challenges, mood changes, and The Doctor’s empathy. But her character arc is overshadowed a few issues later by the arrival of a the second new companion who is clearly an alternate universe proto-David Bowie incarnation. It’s a clever idea, but as it progresses looking for the Bowie references tends to get in the way of the story.

Plot wise there were some good ideas here, but not all of them worked out. A solid start, but nothing spectacular.

Volume 1 en 2 van de 11de Doctor miste in de Doctor Who Humble Bundle waarin ik dit e-boek aantrof.Daarom was ik wel heel blij dat ze de gewoonte hebben om een volume altijd te beginnen met het voorstellen van de Doctor zijn companions en een uitleg met wat er aan dit verhaal vooraf is gegaan. Al werd er gaandeweg het verhaal ook nog eens tig keer op teruggekomen en daar werd ik op een gegeven moment wel en beetje flauw van. Context geven vind ik prima, fijn zelfs maar er kan ook te veel uitleg zijn.

De drie companions die de 11de Doctor op zijn avontuur vergezellen zijn geen bekenden van de televisieserie. Dus het was voor mij als lezer wel zaak om snel kennis met ze te maken zodat het aangenaam was om met hen mee te reizen. Alice, Jones en ARC hebben alle drie zo hun eigen geschiedenis waarbij die met name van ARC al aardig met die van Doctor verweven is in de eerste twee volumes. Ik moest echt aan ze wennen maar op het einde moest ik afscheid nemen van ARC en Jones en zag ze toch met spijt in mijn hart gaan. Oftewel ik was al aardig aan ze gehecht geraakt.

De titel Conversion en de Cybermen op de derde pagina deden mij vrezen dat het een voornamelijk Cybermen-verhaal ging worden. Inmiddels heb ik zoveel verhalen met Cybermen en Daleks ervaren dat ze voor mij de komende twintig jaar wel op de plank mogen verstoffen. Het was dan ook een opluchting dat de Cybermen slechts in een klein gedeelte van deze strip een aandeel hadden.

Zoals ook in een ander Doctor Who-strip vind ik het wel moeilijk dat de Doctors niet zo heel goed lijken op de Doctors die bekend zijn van de televisie. Dat is hoogstwaarschijnlijk dan ook het voordeel van de nieuwe companions waar nog helemaal geen beelden van bestaan. Blijkbaar vindt de uitgever het niet belangrijk dat de Doctors goed lijken en misschien ook wel de lezers niet want die willen alleen maar dat hun Doctor Who-honger gestild wordt. En dat is voor een groot deel eigenlijk ook wel waarom ik deze strips lees.½

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 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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This opens with a timey-wimey issue, which didn't entirely succeed for me in practice, but I liked the idea, because it played with time and the comics page in much the same way that Moffat played with time and television on screen. It captures the spirit of its era without feeling like it's trying to recreate it slavishly in another medium. The next two stories bring us back into the SERVEYOUinc story arc, as Alice deals with the apparent resurrection of her mother and the destructiveness of grief. It's good, character-based stuff, showing how much the character of Alice has come to life in half-a-dozen issues of this title. (I do wish ARC and Jones were taken more seriously, however.)

The last story here serves as a mini-climax to the SERVEYOUinc story arc (though I think there is more to come), with the Doctor momentarily taking over the company and being corrupted by power. I liked the idea, but didn't think the execution entirely rang true. Still, of the four Titan Doctor Who strands I've read so far (those featuring the ninth through twelfth Doctors), the eleventh Doctor one is clearly the most interesting and most successful. It's the only one I think is trying to do something other than ape its screen era.

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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 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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Another spectacular visual and storytelling device in these comics sees the four main characters split into different parts of the TARDIS, with distinctive art for each concurrent story. The Doctor also goes through the humbling experience of having the TARDIS turn against him for his misbehavior. There are also Cybermen in ancient Rome and a motorbike race on the Berlin Wall in 1976.

This volume ties up the threads in the SERVEYOUinc and Talent Scout stories, as well as the Jones and ARC, uh, arcs. I look forward to reading more adventures of Alice and the Doctor.

This volume starts off with a terrific story of the Doctor figuring out how to escape the destruction of the TARDIS while repeatedly hopping backwards in time. ARC joins the TARDIS crew for a distinctively odd trip of companions: grieving human, parody of David Bowies, and blob of something that's not quite defined yet. Other stories put the TARDIS Team in the middle of an endless war that threatens to capture Earth in collateral damage and the gravest threat yet from SERVEYOUinc, which appears to take over the Doctor. It's a bit of a step down from the first volume, but still a rollicking good adventure.

The first set of Eleventh Doctor comic adventures introduce a new companion (between the Ponds and Clara), Alice Obiefune. I immediately love Alice, because she's:

1. a library assistance, and her job skills are shown as valuable on adventures with the Doctor.


2. she's a character who is depicted as grieving and depressed, and her storyline is handled accurately and sympathetically.


3. she stands up to the Doctor's condescending ways and challenges his assumptions.

There adventures include picking up another companion, John Jones, who is a thinly veiled David Bowie from the late 60s before he becomes famous. Basically he's there for running Bowie gags while the focus remains on Alice as companion. They also visit with Robert Johnson in 1930s Louisiana, who happens to already be acquainted with the Doctor. But the main conflict in various places in space and time is standing up to the evil SERVEYOUinc, and not always meeting their agents in chronological order.

The Eleventh Doctor comics are refreshing and fun, and I hope keep up the good work, because the Tenth Doctor comics kind of became as slog.½

Great to read with Jackson!! Less "scary" than the show!

I liked the idea of the first story going backwards in time as a different twist. Otherwise this was not nearly as strong as the previous volume. I am glad I checked it out from the library and didn't buy it. It is still Doctor Who and I like that Alice was a Library Assistant so points there. I will still check out the next volume but will wait for the library copy.

Surely I would have gotten started on Doctor Who if I didn't have kids making me watch it, right? Sometimes I just feel appallingly out of it. But not when I'm reading or watching the Doctor; then I feel out of it in an amusingly clueless way. Sure, bowties and fezzes are cool. How does anyone ever survive their own parents?


Library copy

Even though Matt Smith is no longer the Doctor on the television show, this graphic novel series is a great way to have even more adventures with him as the Doctor!

Unfortunately, I did not enjoy this volume nearly as much as I did the first volume for Ten. This one isn't necessarily bad, it just didn't seem to hit its stride for me. Eleven is written well, and I could easily hear his voice in my head the entire time, but he looked more or less like a caricature of himself thru most of volume. Including an underlying mystery that was present thru the first five issues was a nice touch and a nice nod to the television series, however, it felt way too rushed (although that may have simply been a result of reading all five issues in one sitting, without having the month in between the issues when they were being originally released).

While I enjoyed Ten's volume so much more, this was still a fun read, and I'll definitely be picking up the subsequent volumes and follow along with Eleven on his future adventures.