Remembering David Bowie

I was both shocked and saddened by the news that musician David Bowie had died on January 10th at the age of 69 from cancer. While I would not say that I was a huge fan of his, I definitely enjoyed listening to his music.

“Visionary” is a word that gets thrown around with great frequency; “unique” is another. But in the case of David Bowie those two descriptions very much applied.  He wrote and performed numerous amazing songs over a career that spanned nearly half a century.  Bowie also devised so many incredible, bizarre, innovative looks for himself throughout the years.  He was undoubtedly one of a kind.

My girlfriend Michele is a longtime fan of Bowie. She created a very nice tribute to him on her own blog.

For me, on Monday my thoughts kept returning to Bowie’s awesome 1995 song “Hallo Spaceboy,” the lyrics and tune playing in my head. Co-written by fellow music pioneer Brian Eno, the song features a collaboration between Bowie and the duo of Neil Tenant & Chris Lowe, aka the Pet Shop Boys.  I cannot recall if I’ve mentioned it here before, but the Pet Shop Boys are one of my all time favorite music groups.  So it was a genuine thrill to hear them performing with Bowie, a bona fide rock god.

Of course, I would be remiss if I neglected to mention another collaboration of Bowie’s, namely “Under Pressure” which he recorded with Queen in 1981.  Bowie and Freddie Mercury singing together was magnificent.

A good example of the massive cultural impact that David Bowie had can be seen in the Doctor Who universe, of all places. Last year in the comic book series The Eleventh Doctor, writers Al Ewing & Rob Williams and artist Simon Fraser introduced a character who was very much an homage to Bowie.

The Doctor takes his companion Alice back in time to London 1962 to see the debut performance of John Jones, a legendary rock star. Much to Alice’s dismay, Jones turns out to have zero stage presence and even less charisma.  However the drab wannabe-musician ends up accidentally joining the Doctor and Alice in the TARDIS.  As the year-long story arc progresses, Jones is majorly influenced by all of the strange, otherworldly places he visits with the Doctor and Alice.  By the time he returns back to 1962, Jones is ready to embark on a revolutionary music career.

Of course, in real life David Bowie was even cooler than that. He didn’t need to travel through all of time & space in order to come up with his amazing music and cutting-edge looks.

Despite his illness, Bowie was active right up until the very end. Blackstar, his twenty-fifth and final studio album, was released on January 8th, his birthday, a mere two days before his death.

Bowie’s passing has gotten me thinking. At 69 years he wasn’t exactly young, but neither was he very old.  It’s a sobering reminder that you never know how much time you will actually have.

For a few months I’ve already been considering devoting my energies towards writing fiction.  I dabbled in it when I was in my early 20s.  Over the last three years I’ve been working out an idea for a novel in my head.  Maybe now is the time to finally commit.  After all, I’m going to be 40 years old in June.  It just doesn’t seem like a good idea to keep procrastinating at this point.  I’ll still keep this blog going, perhaps switching between it and my fiction on alternate weekends.  I just don’t want to put off my dream until it’s too late.

In any case, my thanks go out to David Bowie for all of the wonderful music he created. He will definitely be missed.

Doctor Who reviews: The Comfort of the Good

The first “season” of Doctor Who: The Eleventh Doctor from Titan Comics comes to its conclusion with issue #s 14-15.  The two-part “The Comfort of the Good” by writers Al Ewing & Rob Williams, artist Simon Fraser and colorist Gary Caldwell satisfactorily brings to a close many of the plotlines set up within the last year.

After the events of the last few issues the TARDIS has rejected the Doctor, leaving him, library assistant Alice Obiefune and the shape-changing ARC stranded in Rome in 312 AD.  Elsewhen, future prog rock god Jones has merged with the amorphous Entity.  Jones believes he is dead, but in fact the Entity is rocketing backwards in time towards the beginning of existence.  Through ARC’s telepathy, the Doctor and Alice are able to contact Jones, who merges with the Entity.  Rescuing his friends, Jones brings them to London in 2015, in search of the TARDIS.

Throughout the prior 13 issues, Ewing & Williams had done interesting work exploring the Doctor and the disparate qualities of his personality that had been set up within the television series itself.  Simultaneously a lonely god and a deeply flawed fool, the Doctor allowed his long-buried yearning to reunite with the Time Lords to be twisted and used against him by SERVEYOUinc and their Faustian agent the Talent Scout.

Ewing & Roberts open issue #15 in a scene that parallels their very first issue.  In The Eleventh Doctor #1 we saw Alice in a grey, rainy graveyard, attending the funeral of her mother.  Now a year later it is the Doctor in that same cemetery, mourning his own “death.”  He may still be alive, but he has lost faith in himself, and he has lost what is (in certain respects) his oldest friend, the TARDIS.  He is marooned on one planet in one time, unable to explore the whole of time & space, which is for him the thing that makes life worth living.

Within these two issues Ewing & Roberts bring to a close the trajectory of character development for their entire cast.  The Doctor is able to work on mending his ways and repairing his relationship with the TARDIS.  Alice, who was left adrift by her mother’s death, discovers the means to let go of the past and move forward with her life.  Jones is able to tap into his full creative potential, setting him on the path to becoming a revolutionary musician.  ARC and the Entity are reunited, once again becoming a single being.  Even the Talent Scout finds closure.

I enjoyed the scripting by Ewing & Roberts.  They do a good job giving each character a unique voice.  Their dialogue is both poignant and witty.

“The Comfort of the Good” ties everything together while laying the groundwork for future stories.  Alice has a new lease on life and chooses to continue to travel with the Doctor in the TARDIS.  And it seems likely that SERVEYOUinc are still lurking about somewhere, plotting their corporate intrigues.

I was extremely impressed by the artwork from Simon Fraser in these two issues.  Once again he renders these amazing cosmic vistas as we see Jones, merged with the Entity, gliding through the universe.

Fraser’s storytelling is excellent.  In issue #14, there is a two page sequence with the Doctor facing the TARDIS, first pleading and then demanding to be let in.  Cutting back and forth between the two, the “camera” slowly zooms in on each, and we see the Doctor become more and more distraught & angry.  It is very effectively done.

As I’ve mentioned previously, Fraser’s depiction of Matt Smith’s Doctor is not a photorealistic likeness, but it absolutely works.  Fraser superbly captures the personality of the Eleventh Doctor, his facial expressions and body language.  It is a very natural, organic rendering of the character.  Fraser also continues to bring to life Alice and Jones, two characters he designed, gifting them with nuance and subtlety that effectively complements their development by Ewing & Roberts.

The coloring by Gary Caldwell is wonderfully effective.  It works in conjunction with Fraser’s art to create tangible moods throughout these issues.

While the past year of The Eleventh Doctor comic book series was not without some hiccups, on the whole it worked quite well at presenting an interesting, compelling storyline.  Certainly these two issues serve as an effective denouement.  I’m looking forward to reading the entire series again to see how it works.  Much as with various television episodes of Doctor Who, I expect that there are further layers and meanings to discern from reexamining these stories.

Doctor Who reviews: The Eleventh Doctor #6

Things are not going well for the Eleventh Doctor and Alice Obiefune.  Their friend Jones, who was one day destined to become a Bowie-esque rock god, has been killed saving Alice from a power-mad Nimon, and the mysterious shape-changing robot known only as ARC has barely saved the TARDIS from being destroyed.  And that’s only on the first page of our story.  Or should I say the last page?

The beginning is the end is the beginning.

Writer Rob Williams and artist Simon Fraser turn matters back-to-front in Doctor Who: The Eleventh Doctor #6, published by Titan Comics.  “Space in Dimension Relative and Time” sees the time stream “running backwards in incremental jumps.”  Only the Doctor, due to his Time Lord nature, is able to perceive this.  “I’m aware we’re running backwards through time but no one else is,” the Doctor announces to himself.

With history repeatedly leaping back, the Doctor realizes that he has an opportunity to change events and save Jones from being killed.  However, an even more pressing issue is at hand.  As he tells Alice:

“We have to stop this… time can’t run backwards. It’ll destroy us. It’ll destroy everything.”

This is one of the most high-concept Doctor Who comic book stories I’ve read since Rich Johnson penned the Tenth Doctor adventure Room With A Déjà Vu, published back in 2009 by IDW.  Rob Williams’ plotting for The Eleventh Doctor #6 is mind-bending, tossing the reader right into the thick of things.  I’m still trying to wrap my head around the conclusion.

Appropriately enough, even the page numbering runs backwards in this issue!

Once again Williams does an excellent job at capturing the voice of Matt Smith’s Doctor.  I could so totally imagine him on television having a conversation with a geranium that he’s decided to call “Dave.”  Reading Williams’ dialogue for the Doctor, you can definitely “hear” Smith’s voice in your head.

This issue is more plot-orientated than the previous few.  Nevertheless, even with all the regressions back through time, Williams is able to fit in a few small moments to further develop Alice, Jones and ARC.  I’m interested in seeing where he goes with the trio and their relationship with the Doctor in upcoming issues.

Yes, Jones really is dead, but he’ll be just fine once we hit rewind again.

I am really wondering how exactly Simon Fraser illustrated this one.  How do you lay out a story where on each page events jump backwards?  He must have put a great deal of thought into deciding exactly how to pace this, as well as making sure all of the details lined up.  However Fraser went about it, the results are impressive.

Fraser even does a good job rendering the Nimon.  Now there is an old monster that I never thought I would see again.  Well, actually, if I had to pick the unlikeliest aliens to ever return to Doctor Who, it would have been the Macra, who appeared in a story that aired once way back in 1967 and which probably no longer exists barring a few seconds of footage that were saved from the scrapheap.  Yet low and behold the Macra popped up four decades later in “Gridlock.”  So if they could return from obscurity, I suppose the snicker-inducing Nimons were capable of doing so, as well.

Actually, the Nimons were used in one of the Doctor Who audio stories from Big Finish, which makes a certain sense, since their eerie, menacing voices were definitely their best feature.  Even the revived television series gave them an unexpected nod when the Doctor identified the Minotaur from “The God Complex” as a distant relative of the Nimons.  So, yeah, I guess it’s not too unprecedented that one of them shows up in this issue.

Credit where it is due: Fraser does his very best with what is a silly-looking design and manages to render the Nimon to look at least semi-menacing.  Fraser even gives the Nimon a handy suit of “temporal armor” which makes the creature appear slightly more imposing and less ill-proportioned.

No! Stop! You’re making me giddy!

There’s some nice work on this issue by colorist Gary Caldwell.  His palette of colors works very well with Fraser’s art, emphasizing the reality-bending, time-twisting elements.  Caldwell’s work on the opening page (or is it the closing page?) of the issue, with the TARDIS amongst the vastness of the cosmos, is beautiful.

This issue’s time-twisty cover is by Verity Glass.  The Escher-inspired piece features an endless series of TARDISes inside one another, spiraling inward into an infinite regression.  It definitely suits the story by Williams & Frasier.

Doctor Who reviews: The Eleventh Doctor #1

The Eleventh Doctor may be gone from television screens, but he is back in the pages of comic books, courtesy of the brand new ongoing series Doctor Who: The Eleventh Doctor published by Titan Comics. Written by Al Ewing & Rob Williams, illustrated by Simon Fraser, and colored by Gary Caldwell, the series is set during one of those periods of time when the Doctor was traveling without Amy and Rory (specifically between “A Christmas Carol” and “The Impossible Astronaut”). The first issue introduces a new companion: Alice Obiefune, a library assistant from London.

“After Life” opens on the mournful scene of Alice in a rainy churchyard, where she is attending her mother’s funeral. From that point on, it seems that life for Alice becomes ever bleaker: she is laid off from the library due to budget cuts, her few friends are all moving away, and her landlord wants to evict her so that he can build luxury flats (yep, gentrification totally sucks). Alice seems trapped in a downward spiral.

And then, while morosely making her way through the streets of London, Alice’s entire existence is turned upside down when she abruptly see the Doctor chasing after a giant alien rainbow dog.

Ewing & Williams do a superb job with this first issue. They really have the Eleventh Doctor down perfectly, scripting both his rambling stream of nonsensical babbling as well as his insightful, empathic moments when you glimpse the wise, caring individual underneath all the seeming eccentricity. They also do excellent work introducing Alice, making her an engaging, relatable character, and setting up the beginning of her relationship with the Doctor. I am very much looking forward to seeing how the dynamic between the two of them develops in future issues.

Scottish-born Simon Fraser is a long-time Doctor Who fan, so this must be a dream job for him. I’ve always admired the way in which he illustrates people so distinctly. He really excels at making the characters in his artwork expressive, and in giving them natural body language. There is real emotion to his people. Fraser is able to imbue his figures with a range feeling, from pathos to joy. Likewise, he is equally adept at rendering his characters in scenes both comedic and dramatic.

Fraser’s depiction of the Eleventh Doctor is not so much a photo-realistic depiction of Matt Smith as it is something a caricature. But it definitely works. Fraser absolutely captures the personality and nuances of the Eleventh Doctor in his rendition.

And then there is the aforementioned giant alien rainbow dog. Or, as the Doctor explains: “It’s a Kharitite. ‘Joy-Beast.’ Native to the planet Vreular in the Fifth Galaxy. I think this one fell through a dimensional rift.” I love the Kharitite.

There are some things that just do not work in live action. You could have the biggest special effects budget in the world, and they would still look ridiculous. But if you put pencil to paper, draw them into a comic book, they look incredible. The Kharitite absolutely falls into that category. If the BBC was ever crazy enough to try to bring something like that to life on television, it would probably be a disaster, and audiences would be howling with derision. But in the pages of a comic, rendered by Simon Fraser, the Kharitite looks amazing and funny and brilliant. And it’s great when the Doctor Who comic books do stuff like that.

Gary Caldwell’s coloring is top notch, an integral part of the storytelling. The first three pages of “After Life” are completely in grey, mirroring the events and emotions of Alice’s life. The first hint of color is in the very last panel on page three, a tiny blue spec in the background that is the TARDIS. Then, turning the page, there is an inset panel in the upper right hand corner, a close-up of Alice’s face still in grey. But immediately below that is the splash introduction of the Kharitite, and it’s rendered in an explosion of color, as Alice’s existence collides with that of the Doctor.

Topping the issue off is a lovely painted cover by Alice X. Zhang. I am not familiar with her, but I already like her work. The preview image of her next cover also looks great, and I’m looking forward to seeing it full size when the second issue comes out.

All in all, Doctor Who: The Eleventh Doctor is off to a good start. If you are a fan of the show, this one is well worth picking up.

Mocca Arts Festival 2014: a convention report

Since I’m now working again, I was able to put together some extra money and attend this year’s Mocca Arts Festival, once again organized by Museum of Comic and Cartoon Art and the Society of Illustrators. Michele and I were there on Saturday afternoon. There were a lot of great creators and publishers with some really interesting books for sale. I wish I had more money (and room in the apartment) so I could have picked up more stuff.

It was also very crowded. On the one hand, that’s a pain, since it gets hot & difficult to move. On the other hand, it is awesome to see so many younger people of diverse backgrounds interested in comic books & graphic novels. As I’ve said before, most of the really interesting, innovative material nowadays is definitely coming out through smaller companies or self-publishing.

My one big purchase at the show was the new Dean Haspiel graphic novel Fear, My Dear: A Billy Dogma Experience featuring, naturally enough, Billy Dogma and Jane Legit. I’ve really enjoyed Dean’s Billy Dogma stories in the past. It’s been some time since he published a new installment of the endearingly bizarre misadventures of “the world’s last romantic antihero,” and so I’ve been looking forward to Fear, My Dear since it was first announced a few months back. Dean had done a drawing of Billy Dogma for me in my sketchbook a few years back, so when he offered to do a quick piece inside the graphic novel, this time I asked for Jane Legit.

I stopped by the Dare2Draw table and said hello to Simon Fraser, who has done a great deal to help organize & promote that program. Simon is a really good guy, as well as an extremely talented artist. He was kind enough to do a lovely drawing of the First Doctor in my Doctor Who theme book. He really captured the personality of actor William Hartnell. Simon had drawn the First Doctor in the Prisoners of Time miniseries published by IDW last year. Now that the comic book license is in the hands of Titan Comics, Simon will be the regular artist on the upcoming Doctor Who: The Eleventh Doctor ongoing series. I’m certainly looking forward to seeing his work on it. I also picked up a copy of the Dare2Draw Sketchbook, which has several beautiful black & white pieces by Simon, as well as a number of other artists, including one by my friend Fred Harper.

I also saw Charles Fetherolf and Justin Melkmann. I’m not sure if I’ve had the opportunity to go to any of Justin’s World War IX gigs in the past year, so this might be the first time I’ve seen him since the 2013 Mocca Fest. I know I hadn’t seen Charles in the last year, but we’d been in contact on Facebook. He really felt that he did not do that good a job on the Madame Vastra sketch at the show last year. In his defense, he was unfamiliar with the character, I had limited reference, and it was a quick drawing. But Charles insisted he wanted a second crack at the character, so I arranged a commission with him. He did an absolutely beautiful illustration of Vastra on the cover of his sketchbook, and I picked it up at the show. I definitely recommend contacting Charles Fetherolf for commission work. He’s an amazing artist.

One other creator who I was looking forward to meeting was Rachel Dukes. She was profiled on Comic Book Resources only a few days ago. Her mini comic Frankie Comics about her cat looked absolutely adorable, a really cute look at quirky cat behavior. I saw that Rachel was going to be at Mocca Fest, so I definitely wanted to stop by her table and purchase a copy of her book. She showed me a photo of Frankie, who looks very much like one of my two cats, Nettie Netzach. Judging by the antics Rachel portrays in her comic, they also act alike. Michele suggested they could be long lost sisters. You never know.

I also picked up the latest issue of Copra, a series by Michel Fiffe, whose work I first discovered several years ago in the awesome “Twisted Savage Dragon Funnies” back-up stories in Erik Larsen’s Savage Dragon. I stopped by Alisa Harris’ table and congratulated her on her successful Kickstarter campaign. I’m looking forward to receiving my copy of The Collected Counter Attack in the near future. I purchased one of animator & cartoonist Bill Plympton’s books as a gift for Michele. And, while we were walking around the show, Michele and I ran into Fred Harper, Jamal Igle and Steve Ellis. It was nice to catch up with them.

That’s about it. Here are a few photos I took at Mocca Fest with my crappy cell phone camera:

Dean Haspiel sketching in Fear, My Dear: A Billy Dogma Experience.

 

Rachel Dukes enthusiastically promotes Frankie Comics.

 

A giant Charlie Brown balloon hovered over the festivities

In conclusion, the 2014 Mocca Arts Festival was a lot of fun, as well as very well organized. As I said before, my only regret is that I wasn’t able to afford to purchase more of the cool books that I saw. But hopefully the large turnout of people meant that the numerous talented creators at the show did good business.

Comic book reviews: Grindhouse #1-4

I was born a decade or so too late to have been the target audience for grindhouse movies, the kind of sleazy exploitation genre films to have played in second-rate cinemas back in the 1970s and early 80s.  By the time I was old enough to explore New York City on my own, most of those less-than-venerable institutions had closed their doors.  However, I caught quite a number of their successors via direct-to-video and cable TV releases.  And in the last decade, there’s been a surge in nostalgic interest in those old cheese-fests, at least partly brought on by the works of Quentin Tarantino and Robert Rodriguez.

Already being something of a B-movie aficionado, I’ve seen a handful of those “classic” grindhouse flicks on DVD.  Most of them fall into the so-bad-they’re-good territory.  They’re campy and violent and quite often sexist.  But at the same time, it’s interesting to see what those filmmakers working on a shoestring budget could accomplish with imagination & ingenuity in those long-ago days before anyone with access to a laptop could easily whip up some CGI effects.

So naturally my interest was piqued when the eight issue Grindhouse: Doors Open At Midnight series was announced by Dark Horse Comics.  Written by Alex De Campi, the series is comprised of a quartet of two-part tales, each an homage to the exploitation films of days past.  In the first four issues, we have a pair of over-the-top romps into sex, violence, sci-fi and horror entitled “Bee Vixens From Mars” and “Prison Ship Antares.”

“Bee Vixens From Mars” sees the women of a small Southern town taken over by an alien insect queen, transforming them into horny, bloodthirsty femme fatales linked to a hive mind.  With nearly everyone in the town either mutated or brutally slaughtered, it falls to Deputy Garcia and the owners of the local convenience store, Wayne & Sergei, to battle the alien infestation.

I really think that Alex De Campi’s background as a woman who has lived & worked on three continents allows her to write from a different perspective.  In interviews, she has commented that one of the more interesting qualities of grindhouse fare was that often the protagonists were women and/or minorities.  Yeah, a lot of those movies were “sexploitation” or “blaxploitation” or whatever you want to call them, meaning the main characters were probably on the stereotypical or one-dimensional side.  But it nevertheless did provide some sort of avenue for depicting heroes who weren’t white males.  In contrast, as De Campi points out, the majority of big studio action & genre pictures nowadays usually feature handsome, macho, WASPy men as the main characters.

In contrast, in “Bee Vixens From Mars,” we have Deputy Garcia, an older Hispanic woman with white hair and an eye patch, as the ass-kicking savoir of humanity.  Backing her up are Wayne & Sergei, a gay couple originally from Eastern Europe.  You have a small group of individuals who can be considered outsiders to the traditional, mainstream population as the heroes.

The art on “Bee Vixens From Mars” is by Chris Peterson.  I’m not familiar with him, but he does great work on this book.  Peterson really draws the hell out of the erotically charged, ultra-violent story.  His layouts & storytelling are extremely strong.

“Prison Ship Antares” is basically a women-in-prison story in outer space.  A group of hardened female convicts are sent away from Earth to settle Alpha Centauri, accompanied by their warden Kalinka and her contingent of cloned guards.  Yeah, I know, it doesn’t really sound plausible, trying to colonize another planet with only women.  But that’s the situation De Campi sets up in order to tell her second zany tale.  I’ve seen far more nonsensical scenarios in actual B-movies, so whatever.

In any case, Kalinka turns out to be insane, a sadistic religious nut who believes she is the reincarnation of a samurai warrior.  She decides to “burn away the sinful parts” of her prisoners, gruesomely killing them with acid and fire.  The convicts, led by a gal by the name of Spanish Fly, realize that they had better seize control of the Antares, and quick, before they all end up dead or mutilated.

With a set-up like this, you might be concerned that the book would devolve into “lipstick lesbian” pornography.  But, aside from a couple of cheekily playful sequences, for the most part De Campi writes the inmates as realistic, well-rounded individuals, giving them a certain amount of personality & background.  There’s only so much development she can fit into a 48 page story, but on the whole these women come across as real people, rather than merely objects of titillation. They’re sexy, but intelligent and tough.

Simon Fraser is the artist on “Prison Ship Antares,” and I could not have thought of a better choice to illustrate this tale.  Fraser is the co-creator, with writer Robbie Morrison, of the Nikolai Dante feature in 2000 AD.  Dante was, in his early tales, sort of a ne’er-do-well rogue, a hedonistic adventurer who got involved in all sorts of wacky sexcapades.  The first couple of Dante stories I ever read were “The Movable Feast” and “The Cadre Infernal,” which were set in, respectively, a gigantic brothel on wheels and a BDSM club.  So, yeah, Fraser knows how to draw smut… and I mean that in the nicest way possible.  No, but seriously, Simon is a fantastic artist.  He really imbues his characters with a great deal of personality & individuality through facial expressions and diverse body types.

Truthfully, there is actually a lot more violence than sex in “Prison Ship Antares.”  Some of it is horrific.  Other parts are just plain hysterical, such as when the prisoners riot against the clone guards while singing the “Toreador Song” from Georges Bizet’s Carmen.  Frasier does a superb job with that sequence.

There is another distinct quality to both of these tales.  Since each of them are stand-alone stories, sometimes it really seems up in the air whether or not various characters will live or die.  Without a status quo to adhere to, you half-expect De Campi to bump off one or more of her lead characters.  It really does keep the reader a lot more on edge.

The covers for the first four issues of Grindhouse: Doors Open At Midnight are by Francesco Francavilla and Dan Panosian.  Both of them have designed a couple of nice, striking pieces, sort of faux movie posters which also have a rather retro, pulp feel.

If you are a fan of genre films and B-movies, you’ll probably enjoy Grindhouse: Doors Open At Midnight.  It’s a fun, strange homage to exploitation films, with something of a tongue-in-cheek feminist slant given to the old genre formulas.  I’m looking forward to seeing what De Campi and her collaborators have in store for the next four issues.  It should be crazy.

The Big Bad of Doctor Who: Prisoners of Time revealed

Over the last nine months I have really been enjoying IDW’s year-long Doctor Who: Prisoners of Time miniseries written by Scott & David Tipton, and illustrated by a very impressive line-up of artists.  In each issue, a different incarnation of the wandering Time Lord has been spotlighted.  And at the end of every installment, a mysterious cloaked figure bearing an unspecified grudge against the Doctor has appeared out of nowhere, altering the time stream by kidnapping the Doctor’s companions.  For the first several issues, I really had no idea who the heck this enigmatic foe could be.  And then issue #s 7 and 8 came out, featuring artwork by Kev Hopgood and Roger Langridge.  In these two issues, the Tiptons offered up a pair of very important clues.

In #7 the Seventh Doctor and Ace encounter the Master who, as per his usual 1980s shenanigans, was hiding behind a very transparent & pointless disguise.  Once unmasked, the Master tells the Doctor that “I’ve been working with a new partner. He’s an old friend of yours. Or should I say… companion?” The Doctor responds that he has no idea what the Master is talking about, which causes his old foe to tauntingly add “Of course not, because you haven’t met him… yet!”

Then in #8, after the Eighth Doctor and Grace Holloway have finished an adventure liberating an alien world from its oppressors, our mystery man once again pops up.  In answer to the Doctor demanding to know who he is, the cloaked figure states “I’m your mistakes come to life, Doctor. I’m your past come home to roost.”

Having read these two sequences, it suddenly occurred to me: what if this mystery villain was Adam Mitchell, the Doctor’s very short-lived companion who was seen in the episodes “Dalek” and “The Long Game,” now much older, and still majorly pissed off that the Ninth Doctor & Rose had left him with all of that alien technology from the far future installed in his head?  It would explain why Adam was among the numerous companions who artist Simon Frasier drew on the display screens back in issue #1, even though the character had barely traveled with the Doctor.  Adam could have been included there as a subtle reminder to readers that the character was still out there.

So this week Prisoners of Time #9 came out, illustrated by David Messina & Giorgia Sposito. The Ninth Doctor and Rose have (as is par per the course) just narrowly escaped an explosive death on an alien world.  However, before they can make their way back to the TARDIS, they find someone waiting for them, someone who is very familiar to the both of them.

Yes, it is Adam Mitchell, now old and embittered, seeking vengeance against the Doctor in his numerous incarnations.  (As soon as I read this page, I actually said aloud “I knew it. I knew it!” This was on the M Train, during rush hour. I have no shame.)  And, you know, the way Scott & David Tipton have Adam lay out his motivations in this issue, it is very easy to see that, from his viewpoint, his grievances and resentments against the Doctor actually seem very reasonable and legitimate.

The thing to remember about the Doctor is that, yes, he is brave and heroic and brilliant and he travels the universe saving entire worlds from tyranny and injustice.  That said, throughout his numerous regenerations, the Doctor has often demonstrated that he can also be very arrogant, egotistical, headstrong, and rash, with little to no consideration for the long-term consequences of his actions.  There have been a number of television stories that have addressed what happens when he doesn’t think things through.  “The Daleks,” “Planet of the Spiders,” “The Face of Evil,” “Bad Wolf,” “The Sound of Drums” and “The Waters of Mars” all show just how incredibly bad a situation can turn out when the Doctor screws things up.

And, from the moment that the Doctor condescendingly kicked Adam out of the TARDIS at the end of “The Long Game,” I could not help thinking to myself that eventually this could come back to bite the Time Lord in the rear end.  Yes, Adam made a huge mistake, deciding to get alien tech installed in his head & then use it to send information from 198,000 years in the future back in time to the present day in an impulsive scheme to get rich quick.  But the Doctor handled the situation really poorly, leaving all that ultra-advanced technology in Adam’s head, believing this would teach him a lesson and forcing him to lead a low-profile existence.  Even if Adam was selfish and foolish in his actions, the Doctor’s punishment seemed unnecessarily cruel.  I also immediately saw how spectacularly wrong this could turn out.  What if some group of alien invaders or the Torchwood Institute or someone else did stumble across Adam and plundered the futuristic secrets in his skull?

Scott & David Tipton obviously were thinking along similar lines, having Adam Mitchell turn out to be the Big Bad of Prisoners of Time.  And, now that he’s been revealed, I’m certainly looking forward to the concluding three issues of this series.

In any case, Doctor Who: Prisoners of Time is a fantastic series which I highly recommend.  If you want to get caught up to speed, the first eight issues have been collected into two trade paperbacks, topped off with really cool covers by Francesco Francavilla, the super-talented illustrator who has been providing the cover artwork for this series.

By the way, a few weeks ago I e-mailed Scott via Facebook with my guess about Adam, which he coyly commented was “a cool theory.”  After I read Prisoners of Time #9 on Wednesday, I contacted him again, and he informed me I was the only person to have guessed successfully.  That’s definitely gratifying.  Hmmm, I can’t manage to balance my checkbook or remember where I put my tax returns from last year, but I can solve the mystery of a Doctor Who villain.  Go figure!

Richard Matheson: 1926 – 2013

Horror author Richard Matheson passed away on June 23th at the age of 87.  I was a pretty big fan of his work.  He wrote some incredibly imaginative, genuinely scary stories.

My first exposure to Matheson’s work had to be this anthology of short stories that someone gave me as a gift in the mid-1980s.  The Twilight Zone: The Original Stories collected together all of the previously published short stories that were subsequently adapted into episodes of Rod Serling’s classic Twilight Zone television series.  Matheson was the co-editor of the book, and it also contained several of his stories.

The most famous of those was “Nightmare at 20,000 Feet,” the one featuring the monster on the airplane wing.  Originally written in 1961, it was filmed two years later starring a young William Shatner.  Of course I had heard all about this one previously, but I’d never actually had the opportunity to view it on television.  Reading the original Matheson story was quite a harrowing experience, so much so that a couple of years later when I finally did catch the Twilight Zone episode, I was pretty much biting my nails, dreading the upcoming moment when Shatner was going to whip open the curtain over the airplane window to find the monster’s face glaring right at him.  Inevitably the monster that my mind conjured up when reading Matheson’s actual story was infinitely more terrifying than the man in a panda bear suit that made it to television screens in 1963.  (Matheson reportedly critiqued the on-screen realization of his gremlin as “a surly teddy bear.”)  Nevertheless, the flawless direction by a young Richard Donner, combined with Matheson’s adaptation of his own material, made “Nightmare at 20,000 Feet” a truly scary episode.

Another of Matheson’s great works was his 1954 novel I Am Legend.  In the book, Robert Neville is the last man on Earth… but he is not alone.  Every other human being across the globe has been infected by a plague which has transformed them into vampires.  Neville spends the novel struggling to survive an unending onslaught of the undead, as well as the threat of madness & despair that threatens to engulf him in his solitude.  I Am Legend is an extremely bleak, downbeat, apocalyptic novel.  It is regarded as having been a major influence on the horror field, particularly the zombie sub-genre.  The book has been adapted into three different movies: The Last Man on Earth starring Vincent Price (1964), The Omega Man starring Charlton Heston (1971) and I Am Legend starring Will Smith (2007).  I haven’t seen that most recent one, but the Price version is quite atmospheric and remains pretty faithful to the original novel.  The Heston version plays much more fast & loose with the material, and at times is sort of cheesy, but still entertains.

(As a side note, The Omega Man, with its scenes of Charlton Heston running around toting a machine gun, shooting at anything that moves, does almost come across as his audition tape for President of the NRA.)

Matheson also penned the chilling, atmospheric novel Hell House, which was published in 1971.  Hell House details an attempt by a group of parapsychologists and psychics to investigate the infamous Belasco House, which is described as “the Mount Everest of Haunted Houses.”  All of the previous individuals who have sought to explore the mysteries of Belasco House have met with either death or insanity.  Matheson wrote the screenplay for the 1973 film version The Legend of Hell House, another one which I have not had the opportunity to see.

Hell House graphic novel adaptation by Ian Edginton & Simon Fraser

Hell House was adapted into a graphic novel by writer Ian Edginton & artist Simon Fraser, which IDW published in 2005.  I have to admit, I hadn’t actually read Hell House before that point in time.  But I was a fan of Fraser’s art, and intended to get the IDW book, so I picked up the original Matheson novel in order to read it first.  Edginton & Fraser did a very good job on their version.

In addition to adapting his own writings for film & television, Matheson wrote screenplays based on others’ works, such as Edgar Allen Poe and Fritz Leiber.  Among these was the script for The Devil Rides Out, based on Dennis Wheatley’s 1934 novel.  Released in 1968, and starring Christopher Lee, it is definitely one of my favorite Hammer films.

 All this is only the tip of the iceberg when it comes to Richard Matheson’s prolific pen.  If you are not familiar with his work, I encourage you to seek out some of his writings.  Hell House and I Am Legend are both extremely haunting, unsettling reads.

Comic book reviews: Lilly Mackenzie & The Mines of Charybdis

Okay, so I was originally going to do a write-up on Lilly Mackenzie & The Mines of Charybdis in an upcoming post on graphic novels that I’ve been reading.  But then I realized it didn’t quite fit into that category.  Written & drawn by Simon Fraser, The Mines of Charybdis originally appeared as a weekly web comic on ACT-I-VATE in 2009, and subsequently appeared in print as an eight part serial in the Judge Dredd Megazine.  In 2011, Fraser released a limited edition trade paperback collection of the story, and I was fortunate enough to score a copy of that.

The Scottish-born Fraser is probably best known for co-creating with Robbie Morrison the swashbuckling Russian rogue Nikolai Dante in the pages of 2000 AD.  Fraser has worked on a number of other features for that famed British anthology, including flagship character Judge Dredd.  Among his other works was an excellent comic book adaptation of the Richard Matheson novel Hell House done with Ian Edginton at IDW.

Lilly Mackenzie is Fraser’s creator owned series.  Lilly is a sexy space adventurer, seemingly bubbly and carefree, but with a dark family past.  Her best friend is Cosmo Judd, a brilliant scientist who happens to be a midget, and so is consequently underestimated by many people.  Cosmo carries an unrequited attraction to Lilly.

The Mines of Charybdis sees Lilly attempting to track down her long lost, ne’er do well brother.  The trail has led to the brutal mining world of Charybdis.  The planet is surrounded by an EMP field, meaning that all electronic equipment does not work.  Settlers and prisoners are sent down in unpowered space capsules, where they are expected to spend the rest of their lives.  The only way of launching the mined ore & minerals back into space is via a mass accelerator.  Due to the enormous acceleration needed to escape the planet’s surface, this would kill any human beings attempting to travel on it.

In other words, Lilly and Cosmo need to find a way to sneak onto a planet with no advanced technology, find Lilly’s brother in a desolate wilderness, and then come up with some sort of method of escaping the planet that won’t leave them pulverized.  The problem is pretty well summed up in an exchange between the two, when Lilly asks “Can’t we just, I dunno, improvise something,” and a disbelieving Cosmo shoots back “Improvise? Improvise what? Physics? Maybe Newton, Einstein and Sinclair got it wrong?”

Of course, Cosmo eventually does come up with a plan to get down to Charybdis safely and, in turn, theorizes a brilliant, yet incredibly dangerous, method of possibly getting the pair of them off the planet.  Possibly, because even if he can get it to work, there’s still no guarantee it won’t end up killing the pair of them.  And before they can even attempt this, they have to locate Lilly’s brother while dealing with any number of desperate thugs and crooks who are imprisoned on Charybdis.

Fraser does a superb job of blending two often disparate aspects of science fiction, namely space opera and “hard science” speculative fiction.  He appears to have conducted a thorough amount of research into physics to have devised Cosmo’s ingenious scheme.  Fraser also adds in what you might consider to be high-octane, adrenaline-packed action sequences, with Lilly doing some major ass-kicking.  And at the same time, he makes sure to really develop his characters, to show the depths of their personalities.

It’s unfortunate that economics only allowed Fraser to release the collected edition of Lilly Mackenzie & The Mines of Charybdis in a limited print run, because it is an excellent story, one I highly recommend.  But you can read it in the pages of Judge Dredd Megazine #298 to #305.  Those may be difficult to locate here in the States (you can always try to find them on Ebay or something) so if not, then definitely go to the ACT-I-VATE website and read it there.  Fraser’s sequel, The Treasure of Paros, is also online, along with various other excellent series by a number of talented creators.

In 2009, IDW published The ACT-I-VATE Primer, a hardcover anthology featuring 16 new stories.  Among the creators whose work is featured in The ACT-I-VATE Primer are Dean Haspiel, Roger Langridge, Pedro Camargo, Molly Crabapple, Tim Hamilton, and Mike Cavallaro.  Fraser’s contribution was “When Lilly Met Cosmo,” a prequel tale that reveals how Lilly Mackenzie and Cosmo Judd first met.  It’s a good story in an excellent collection of material, and I highly recommend purchasing a copy.