Doctor Who Classics Omnibus, Vol. 1 by Grant Morrison

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


This book collects nearly 350 pages of comics from Doctor Who Magazine, mostly starring the Fourth Doctor but with two sixth Doctor strips and a seventh Doctor strip thrown in. The comics were originally in black and white but are colorized beautifully in this collection.

The book begins with "The Iron Legion," the first Doctor Who comic story to appear in Doctor Who Magazine. In many ways, it had hallmarks of the previous TV comics strip that many Doctor Who stories appeared in previous with a companionless Doctor travelling into danger. However, this story of a Roman Empire in space is simply fantastic with so many great twists and turns. It's fast paced given the demand of weekly publication that there be some dramatic moment every four to six pages.

The City of the Damned into a city where emotion is a crime and the Doctor is set to have his emotions extracted. He's rescued by a ragtag group age of rebels who have a problem of their own, they can feel emotions but they can only each feel one. The story has some serious points but also some incredibly light touches with a great ending.

Time Slip is an eight page comic that creates an excuse for the Doctor to change back to his prior regenerations. With only four, it's a lot less impressive than stories involving ten or eleven. This story is noteworthy for featuring Canine.

Doctor Who and the Star Beast introduces the twisted evil of a very cute looking character called, "The Meep" and also gives the Doctor his first DWM Companion in Sharon, an English teenager.

Doctor Who and the Dogs of Doom features the Doctor battling Werelocks, a sort of Werewolf style creature and one of the Doctor's oldest enemies.

Doctor Who and the Time Witch has the Doctor and Sharon pulled into a pocket dimension controlled by the Titular Time Witch. This is an okay story but Sharon ages forward four years and is sort of non-plussed about the whole thing.

The Dragon's Claw plays off the popularity of martial arts films in the late 1970s and we meet yet another old foe in a believable and exciting story.

The Collector is a story reminiscent of War Games with someone kidnapping people from history. The ending is a bit of copout as it involves the Doctor travelling through his own timestream for a very weak the time stream for a very weak reason. It's the type of plot device that could be overused to solve every problem the Doctor faces.

The Dreamer of Death is a sort of a precursor to 1990s tales warning of Virtual Reality machines. It marks Sharon's unceremonious departure marry random person, reminiscent of how Leela left the TV series.

Then we get three Grant Morrison stories from the mid-1980s. "Changes" is an amusing but predictable tale of the Sixth Doctor, Peri, and Frobisher encountering another shapeshifter in the TARDIS. The story is fun but predictable. The Seventh Doctor talks to a cell culture and seeds a planet with life in, "Culture Shock."d

The Sixth Doctor reunites with Jamie in a mystery involving a dead Time Lord in a story that's interesting but with a sort of cynical edge that John Byrne brought to American comics with Man of Steel.

The Fourth Doctor Comics resume after this but with less of a Doctor Who feel and more of a genery. ral science fiction story, perhaps to match John Nathan Turner coming to helm Doctor Who on TV.

The Doctor meets Promethus and explores Greek mythology in, "The Life Bringer." in "War of the Words," the Doctor finds a clever way to stop a war. In, "Spider-God," the Doctor doesn't really anything but lecture humans for doing something foolish. In, "The Deal," ia criminal hijacks his way on to the TARDIS. In, the "End of the Line," The Doctor lands in a post-apocalyptic city and has an adventure with a very depressing ending. In, "The Free-Fall Warriors," the Doctor gets involved in a space race in a limited plot episode where the Doctor mostly takes backseat.

Overall, I thought the first 60% of the book was simply smashing with the early adventures of the Fourth Doctor in Doctor Who Magazine which told stories that were good and which worked great in the comic format (looking even better colorized). The rest of the book is okay, but just okay as we get some interesting stories, but many of them are also pretentious or don't really fit into the world of Doctor Who. So, it's a mixed bag but much more good than bad.



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