Doctor Who: Black Sun Rising

by Steve Moore, David Lloyd (artist), Mike McMahon (artist)

Genres: Doctor Who, Science Fiction, Comics, Graphic Novels

116 pages, Paperback

Published January 14, 2025

About the author

Steve Moore was a British comics writer known for his influence on the industry and his close connection with Alan Moore (no relation). He was instrumental in guiding Alan Moore early in his career and collaborated with him under pseudonyms in various projects.
Moore contributed extensively to British comics, particularly in anthologies such as 2000 AD, where he helped shape the Future Shocks format and wrote for Dan Dare. His work extended to Doctor Who Weekly, where he co-created Abslom Daak, and Warrior, where he revived Axel Pressbutton. His involvement with Marvel UK included writing for Hulk and Nick Fury, Agent of S.H.I.E.L.D..
Outside of comics, Moore had a deep interest in Chinese history, mythology, and the I Ching, which influenced much of his writing. He edited Fortean Times and contributed to works on the unexplained. His novel Somnium explored his fascination with the moon goddess Selene.
Later in his career, Moore scripted Hercules: The Thracian Wars, which was adapted into a film in 2014. He ultimately retired from mainstream comics to focus on non-fiction and research, maintaining his lifelong engagement with esoteric studies.

Reviews

[Dan · Rating 3 out of 5]

The second collected volume of Doctor Who Weekly and Monthly back-up comic strips! Includes that creepy Auton story which freaked me out as a child, the appearance of a character that would later turn up in some Alan Moore Captain Britain comics, more from the Cyberman With A Soul, and so much more. Essential comics nostalgia for any Doctor Who fan of a certain age.

[Monster X · Rating 3 out of 5]

This really deserves 3 1/2 stars but Goodreads doesn’t do that so it gets three

This is the last volume of original comics from Doctor Who weekly, Doctor Who, a marvel monthly and finally Doctor Who magazine

It features stories of the doctors foes with intros by the 4th doctor monsters like daemons yeti the great intelligence cybermen sontarans the dominators with their robotic servants quarks sea devils the nestene consciousness and its autons (though in this story, it’s called nestene intelligence) the toy maker and more

Some of the stories are written by Alan Moore but the best ones are by Steve Parkhouse

And great artwork by Dave Gibbons, Vincent Danks, David Lloyd, Mike McMahon, Mick Austin and more

It also features Sarah Jane Smith K9 U.N.I.T. and famous gallifreyans from the TV series in some of the stories

All in all a satisfying bronze age read for the Doctor Who fan

[DrAshleyWho · Rating 4 out of 5]

For the other volume of back-ups, there’s a stronger variety of writers (in comparison to the first volume, Steve Moore only contributes a Great Intelligence story and one with the Sandminer robots from The Robots of Death) and a varying page count - the first three from this volume are in four two-page instalments and the others are mostly one four-to-six page affairs. John Peel, apparently renowned for his gratuitous OTT fan-reference memberberry shlock, acquaints himself far more than I was expecting given his reputation, bland Dominator story notwithstanding (wish the Androids of Tara follow-up was published instead!) mostly putting enemies in historical times like a Sontaran being trapped in an Egyptian pyramid - he’s even named Styx after the Greek goddess in a move that was seemingly unintentional - and a Sea Devil being entangled with pirates which produces a better story in four pages than Legend of the Sea Devils did in a whole episode’s runtime, Paul Neary gets a chance to write two; a brief and silly K9 romp and one where a crew of Dæmons reach the edge of the universe and suffer the psychologically-harrowing consequences. Even main-strip writer Steve Parkhouse contributes two detailing the further adventures of Doctor Ivan Asimoff and the Free Fall Warriors from his own stories, and Gary Russell’s City of Devils gives a better realisation of K9 and Company than the TV version ever did.

But the big selling point of the volume is, as I suspect, the ones written by Alan Moore (credited here as The Original Writer partly due to his beef with the comic industry) - David Lloyd even draws all of his stories bar one. Black Legacy (another one I remember via the Altered Vistas animations … wish the non-Dalek Chronicles productions showed up on YouTube one day!) has some fantastic horror motifs which overcome the fact that Moore doesn’t get the Cybermen since he has them showing emotion front-and-centre, but he gets the Autons spot-on in the equally-spooky Business as Usual. The most fascinating, however, is his stories set during ancient Gallifrey, initially depicting the Time Lord experiment that sent Omega to the antimatter universe and with the first visual appearance of Rassilon before revealing itself to be about a time war between the Time Lords and the Order of the Black Sun. They’re like tasters of a grand epic that I wish Moore had been allowed to do a twelve-issue miniseries on, they’d have probably been regarded as some of the richest grandest comic material in Who history.