The first volume of Titan’s Tenth Doctor adventures was the best in a mixed bunch of titles from the publisher. Writer Nick Abadzis really hit the nail on the head with the Tenth Doctor while also telling a fun and enjoyable story.
Volume 2 sees Robbie Morrison take over writing duties (alongside his work on the Twelfth Doctor) for a main storyline featuring, as you might guess from the title, the return of the Weeping Angels, and set in Mons during the First World War.
New companion Gabby is still finding her time-travelling feet, and the grim war-torn landscape really affects her. Allowing the story four parts gives it room to breathe and alongside a subdued Gabby we get to spend time with a number of the soldiers. We meet Corporal Jamie Colqhoun and his mates (the character’s name is a nice nod to the artist of the seminal World War One comic strip Charley’s War). And as characters get sent back in time (that’s hardly a spoiler – that is, after all, what the Angels do!) there’s even room to follow the soldiers in their new lives.
Like Abadzis, Morrison is able to hit the Tenth Doctor’s ‘s character and mannerisms spot on. While the Angels have less character traits to latch on to, they still come across as a creeping, ever-present menace. The writer takes a lot from Blink, the Angels’ first televised appearance, in terms of how to structure a story around these monsters, as well as how characters react when they meet them – and that’s no bad thing. The comics give the Weeping Angels a menace and presence, and they have a clever reason to be in the trenches, feeding on the unfulfilled futures of the soldiers.
Daniel Indro’s gritty art is excellent throughout, with a scratchy, cross-hatching style perfectly suited to the trenches. His Angels are hideous and snarling, if frozen monsters – the static frames of the comic work well for a creature that can only move when unobserved.
Finally, there’s also a fun little one-parter with art by Eleonora Carlini, which sees the Doctor and Gabby return to her native New York, just hours after she was whisked away. Entitled Echo, it’s a clever little story about sound set in one of the noisiest cities on the planet. Sound effects and word balloons are very much part of the art and get across the idea of sound in a purely visual medium.
All the books in this series:
