Gordon Rennie

For many longtime Doctor Who fans, the era of the Fourth Doctor holds a special place in our hearts. Tom Baker, an actor with a style as unique as his appearance, played the Doctor for seven seasons and 172 episodes from 1974 to 1981. And if you were an American kid watching Doctor Who on PBS in the 1980s, he was almost certainly the first Doctor you saw. Some of his seasons are better than others, to be sure, but long before David Tennant put on his own overcoat, this era set the standard by which all Doctors were judged. So it's with a hopefully healthy amount of Fourth Doctor nostalgia that I approach Titan's Doctor Who comics. I haven't read a lot of Doctor Who comics before, but the just released Doctor Who: The Fourth Doctor Vol. 1: Gaze of the Medusa seems like a good place to start.

This year, Titan Comics have been killing it with its line of licensed titles, especially when it comes in to video game tie-ins. Titan's line of Assassin's Creed comics have been going from strength to strength, and the publisher now hopes to duplicate that success with the launch of a new Dishonored comic by Gordon Rennie and Andrea Olimpieri.

First-person video games make me dizzy to the point of nausea, and as a result, I often feel left out of the conversation when everyone's excited about something new and different. Dishonored, for instance, is a game that sounds right up my alley. A stealthy steampunk adventure from the publisher behind Fallout? That sounds rad as all heck, but I know in my heart of hearts that if I ever play it for more than five minutes, I'm going to end up laying down on the floor for an hour while I wait for the room to stop spinning. So obviously, the solution is for me to experience those games through a medium I'm more comfortable with: Comics! I mean, it worked for Doom, right, and gave us one of the great literary masterpieces of the 20th century in the process, and now, it's happening with Dishonored, courtesy of Titan Comics.

The received wisdom about your favorite Doctor from the various iterations of Doctor Who is that most people prefer the one they grew up with, or the first one they encountered. Your first Doctor is the one who established what the Doctor is meant to be. In that regard, Tom Baker's Fourth Doctor has an advantage, simply because his unmatched seven year tenure in the role made him a presence in more people's childhoods. Even without that statistical advantage, Baker's Doctor still towers above his peers from the original series in terms of reputation and affection --- and his most enduring companion, Sarah Jane Smith, is still one of the most popular companions, brought to the screen by the late and beloved Elisabeth Sladen in multiple series. So it's no surprise that Titan's next Doctor Who mini series, following on from those spotlighting versions of the Doctor most recognizable to modern audiences, will bring back the Fourth Doctor and Sarah Jane for brand new adventures.

I'll admit that I'm a pretty easy mark when it comes to high concepts, but I'd like to think that I'm at least a little picky about how they actually play out. Like, if you were to tell me that there's a story about an old but hard-boiled cop in charge of upholding a 500 year-old treaty between London and Hell, I'd be intrigued, but I'd have to admit that it could go either way. If, however, you then told me that the story also involved a kid fighting demons with a combination of parkour and Gymkata --- the famous martial art that combines the skill of gymnastics with the kill of karate --- then that's pretty much that. I am in. Fortunately for me, a story matching that exact description is hitting shelves this week in the pages of 2000 AD in Prog 1934: Absalom: Under A False Flag, the newest installment of Gordon Rennie, Tiernen Trevallian and Simon Bowland's supernatural crime drama --- and you can read the entire first installment as a preview right here!

On June 24, 2000 AD is putting out the latest in their line of 48-page seasonal anthologies, and as you might expect, the Summer Special is set to feature all the usual suspects that you get in the weekly prog. There's a Judge Dredd story, of course and Rogue Trooper makes an appearance, and there are a couple of new offerings in there as well. Pretty standard stuff. And then there's the return of the Ace Trucking Company, which features an interstellar alien truck driver and his zombie pal haulin' goods across the cosmos, complete with sci-fi CB language. So, you know, this is obviously something you're going to want.