COMIC REVIEW: DOCTOR WHO – THE TENTH DOCTOR #2 / AUTHOR: NICK ABADZIS / ARTIST: ALICE X. ZHANG, ELENA CASAGRANDE / PUBLISHER: TITAN / RELEASE DATE: OUT NOW
You may remember our review of the first issue in Titan’s new Tenth Doctor comic series. We weren’t very kind to it (indeed, we were only one or two stars away from a complete hatchet job), but it’s great to see that the second issue is a huge improvement from all concerned.
This part of the tale sees the Doctor, having taken on feisty young Gabriella Gonzalez as a temporary companion, investigating the cause of recent weird events surrounding the Day of the Dead. We get the feeling that this would work quite well as a televised story, with its visuals of portals exploding forth from washing machines. The monster is also great and seems like the kind of CGI thing that would fit right in with modern Doctor Who and what it’s doing these days.
While the artwork in the previous issue was generally a cut above that in the Eleventh Doctor’s first issue (although that wasn’t a terribly high bar to get over), the art here stands out as being even better than before. In most panels, the Doctor actually looks like David Tennant this time, as opposed to the generic model that he resembled before.
The story flows a lot better this time around, although we stand by our feeling that Gabriella’s entrance could have been held back to the first couple of pages of this one (especially as we have to sit through her introducing herself to the Doctor when we’ve already met her). Now that the backstory is out of the way, the writers can concentrate on moving the plot forward and this is the strongest part of the issue. They’ve got a fun concept here and it’ll be great to see where they take it in future issues, although it does of course remain to be seen whether the storytelling will be better in subsequent volumes or whether this is as good as it gets.
