Adam Graham's Blog: Christians and Superheroes - Posts Tagged "idw"

Doctor Who Series III, Vol. 2: The Eye of Ashaya by Andy Diggle

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


This book collects Issues 5-8 of the IDW's Third Doctor Who Series, the second featuring the 11th Doctor along with a story from Doctor Who Special 2012.

First up is the Eye of Ashaya that finds the Doctor, Amy, and Rory on board a spaceship along with Lady Christina De Souza from the Planet of the Dead. This is a very fun romp/mystery on a ship with a surprise twist ending.

Next up is Space Oddity which finds the Doctor without companions running into a Russian Cosmonaut on a mission that history tells us was officially cancelled but maybe it was because the Vashta Nerada was about. This is my favorite in the book. It's a suspenseful tale with a lot of nice twists thrown in.

The story from the Special is okay. It involves a planet of would be time travelling Bird people and the apparent involvement of Time Lords (even though this was a time when the Doctor was the last of the Time Lords.) It's a fun tale, if a bit rushed in less than 20 pages of length.

Overall, this was a very fun book and better than most Titan books put out.



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Doctor Who Classics, Vol. 7 by Simon Furman

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


This IDW book collects the earliest appearances by Sylvester McCoy in Doctor Who Magazine from 1987-88 with each adventure tastefully colorized by Charlie Kirchoff.

There are a total of eight stories, with each ranging from 8-32 pages.

The lead-off story, "A Cold Day in Hell" features the Seventh Doctor meeting up with the Ice Warriors on a paradise planet that's turned frigid. The story is also Frobisher's farewell. The continuity on the story is a bit wonky and it leaves me wondering whether this story was written with Colin Baker's sixth Doctor in mind.

Another highlight is, "The Claws of the Klathi," which finds the Doctor uncovering a plot in Victorian England that tie into a series of unexplained burglaries. This story hits just the right spot with the Doctor in this era as that's almost always a winner. "Planet of the Dead," sees the Doctor landing on a planet where he runs into departed compansion and his former self. The story's okay, but the art is so much fun to look at. Finally, "Culture Shock," is a Grant Morrisson story that finds a discouraged doctor running into a sentient cell structure in need of his help. It's a very inventive story, that's pretty entertaining for being only pages.

The only story I thought was bad was, "Crossroads of Time" when the Doctor rams into a giant metal monster in the Vortex and it's handled like a fender bender. This is a story that tries to be funny but really isn't and at the same time, the ending has the Doctor betraying his character.

The rest of the stories are okay. Their decent enjoyable sci fi stories from an era when the Seventh Doctor was on the air and they were playing it safe.

Overall, there's enough good Doctor Who comics in this one to make it worth a read.



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Doctor Who Series III, Vol. 3: Sky Jacks! by Andy Diggle

My rating: 3 of 5 stars


This book contains two stories.

The first, Sky Jacks! has Clara waking up in the TARDIS and seeing a sign telling her not to press a button which she then presses. She fall through a hole and find herself in a world with a lot of stranded sky ships and the 11th Doctor.

This story isn't horrible, but it doesn't really offer anything special. It's hurt by weak art and also the lack of definition for Clara that plagued the character during Season 7B.

The second story, the one-part In-Fez-Station by Comics legend Len Wein which features the Doctor, Amy, and Rory arriving at a musical festival, where the Fez, that headgear most synonymous with the 11th Doctor but which he rarely gets to wear, is required. But when Amy and Rory put on the Fez something weird happens, and there's an old enemy behind it. This one is decent, fun, and a nice little diversion.

Overall, an okay, but unremarkable collection of Doctor Who Comics.



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Atomic Robo: The Hell and Lightning Collection by Brian Clevinger

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


Everyone's favorite robot tech. tycoon and adventurer extraordinaire is back in three Atomic Robo stories in this collection. My thoughts on each of the three stories:


The Flying She-Devils of the Pacific: While flying an experimental plane in the early 1950s Atomic Robo encounters women who've continued to live and fight in the Pacific and live on their own island. They'll need to team up to fight a die-hard mad scientist determined to restore the glory of Japan. This story is fine. It works on its awesome high concept ideas, but it's probably the least funny of any Robo story and the characters outside of Robo are very generic. The "Strong Independent Woman" archetype has rarely been used so often. Still, the coolness of the plots makes it a decent read even if it's the weakest in the volume.

The Savage Sword of Dr. Dinosaur: Doctor Dinosaur is back and he has a plan to use his army of rockmen and atom bombs to restore dinosaurs to ruling the Earth. To be honest, I was nervous about this one because Dr. Dinosaur is a great villain, but it could be really hard for him to carry a whole story. No worries. He doesn't have to. We have a seperate plot of a government siege of Tesladyne while Robo's away. While this is more often than not, just an "okay" B-plot, it does avoid Doctor Dinosaur overload. This story has some great humor with Doctor Dinosaur stealing every scene he's and superb action.

The Knights of the Golden Circle: Picking up where the last book ended (believe it or not), this story finds Robo in the Old West as he fights an outlaw badman whose actually working for a nobleman bent on world domination. To stop them, Robo teams up with Doc Holiday and the awesome Bass Reeves (who is not enough fiction.) There's some great Steampunk elements in this, but more than anything I appreciated how Clevinger managed to capture the spirit of the Old Westerns in Robo who is facing the end of his life. A very fun read.

The book also includes the three Free Comic Book day offerings for 2013-2015. The 2013 is pretty good and has a nice twist that does set the stage for later events. 2014's is okay. 2015 features Doctor Dinosaur and while not as good as the previous Doctor Dinosaur FCBD offering, this is still pretty fun.

Overall, a solid enjoyable collection of Atomic Robo stories.




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Star Trek: Ongoing, Volume 1 by Mike Johnson

My rating: 3 of 5 stars


For the Start of the Kelvin Universe Star Trek books, we get a re-telling of two stories from the original series in the new Universe.

The first is, "Where No Man Has Gone Before" where an old friend of Jim's obtains incredibly dangerous powers and must be dealt with. This one is almost exactly like the original story except for losing the romance angle and emphasizing on how Gary had helped Kirk.

The second is, "Galileo Seven," in which the shuttle "Galileo Seven" is brought down during a side-trip while the Enterprise has a pressing engagement they have to get to with lives on the line. On the positive note, I think the Federation Commissioner is a lot more reasonable and a lot less annoying than in the TV show. On the negative, it highlights how insane it was to send out a Shuttle with the first officer, ship's doctor, and chief engineer while the ship is on a vital mission. Further, it messes with the overall tone of the story. The TV show highlighted was a character spotlight on Spock that highlighted how he, as a Vulcan, related to a largely human crew and what his style of command might be, and it was Spock's story of how he found a way to save the day. Instead, another character (who wasn't even on the shuttle) became a Mary Sue and we got a cheesy bit of innuendo from Kirk instead.

These aren't bad stories, but they are rather pointless, particularly if you've seen the original series. Retelling stories with very minor alterations isn't a good way to run this comic book series and looking ahead, they do get away from this, but overall, this is a lackluster start for the Kelvin Comic universe.



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Atomic Robo: Atomic Robo and the Temple of Od by Brian Clevinger

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


We get an Atomic Robo story set right before World War II as Robo goes to occupied Manchuria in 1938 to rescue a scientist captured by the Japanese who has discovered an energy source that could change the course of the war.

As a story, this is a pretty good Robo tale. There's plenty of robot hitting mad science things action, and we get some fun supporting characters in the Ghost Bandits. The re-appearance of Robo's ex-girlfriend Katie McAllister and her new boyfriend don't actually have a whole lot of impact emotionally, but they don't detract from the story either.



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