A Cold Day in Hell Checklist
The full list of strips featured -- every Seventh Doctor
strip from Doctor Who Magazine Issues 130-150 inclusive is as follows (links
flow to 'making of section of that strip):
On This Page
• Time
and Tide
by Richard Alan (Richard Starkings) and John Carnell; art by Dougie
Braithwaite & Dave Elliott
• Follow
that TARDIS!
by John Carnell, art by Andy Lanning, Kev Hopgood, Dougie Braithwaite
and Dave Elliott
• Invaders
from Gantac!
by Alan Grant, pencils by Martin Griffiths, inks by Cam Smith
Page One
• A
Cold Day in Hell
by Simon Furman, pencils by John Ridgway, inks by Tim Perkins
• Redemption
by Simon Furman, pencils by Kev Hopgood, inks by Tim Perkins
• The
Crossroads of Time
by Simon Furman, art by Geoff Senior
• Claws
of the Klathi
by Mike Collins, pencils by Kev Hopgood, inks by Dave Hine
Page Two
• Culture
Shock!
by Grant Morrison, art by Bryan Hitch
• Keepsake
by Simon Furman, art by John Higgins
• Planet
of the Dead
by John Freeman, art by Lee Sullivan
• Echoes
of the Mogor!
by Dan Abnett, art by John Ridgway
Links
• Seventh
Doctor Comic Strips (Wiki)
• The
Doctor Who Reference Guide
This site attempts to fit every Doctor Who fiction in with the TV series. Useful
synopses and credits for comic strips
• Reviews
of Doctor Who comic strips, mainly by Finn Clark
• Once
Upon A Time Lord: The Doctor Who Comic Strips (Alphabetical)
NEW BRITISH COMICS COLLECTIONS AVAIALBLE NOW...
This is the first Dan Dare collection I've edited for Titan Books, comprising work by Frank Hampson, Frank Bellamy and Don Harley.
Superb World War 1 strip first published in Battle and another collection edited by me for Titan
|
Panini UK released its first collection of
Doctor Who strips featuring the Seventh
Doctor, played on TV by Sylvester McCoy, in May 2009.
Here, creators who worked on those strips, edited by
Richard Starkings (who was interviewed for the collection), remember
their contribution to the Time Lord's enduring comics mythos...
This is an extended version of material provided for
the collection, including comments from Simon Furman and material cut
for space reasons.
The Doctor arrives on the planet Tojana, on the only island
which has not yet been swallowed by the incoming tides. The TARDIS is washed
out to sea while the Doctor is trying to work out where he is, and he is
then captured by the inhabitants of the island, who have accepted their
fate and are engaged in a hedonistic final party. Life is now cheap, and
the natives slaughter each other at the least provocation. The Doctor tries
to convince them that life is still worth living, but eventually gives
up on them in disgust and builds a raft for himself. The elderly "Worrier" accepts
the Doctor's arguments and joins him on the raft. As predicted, the tides
rise and the island is covered by the sea, and only the Doctor and the
Worrier survive. The Doctor finds the TARDIS floating nearby, and departs,
leaving the Worrier to drift on the tide and greet the uncertain future
with hope.
Richard Starkings used his pen name as
script writer on this story, the "Alan
Brothers" of Marvel UK often bemusing woud-be compilers of the company's
comics credits.
"'Richard Alan' was actually Richard Starkings alone," explains John
Tomlinson,
who would work on later Doctor Who strips including
The Betrothal
of Sontar with Nick Abadzis in 2006, "for the simple
reason that Alan is his middle name.
"For the record, the Alan brothers
were me (Steve Alan, because anyone who was any good in comics at the
time seemed to be called either Steve or Alan and I yearned to swipe
some reflected glory), Mike Collins (Ford Alan, which is - and I have
only Mike's word for this - a Welsh saying mean good, or cool) and
the aforementioned Richard Alan.
"So
there you go - some Doctor Who trivia, albeit
only of interest to the Alan brothers themselves and the desperately
starved of entertainment!" John
laughs.
"Heppeh, heppeh days though."
The strip is notable not just for two transposed pages
in the second episode of the original printing, which completely confounded
some readers ("I was mortified by the mistake," recalls Magazine editor
John Freeman), but also for the contribution of award-winning X-Men letterer
Tom Orzechowski, who Starkings discovered was
a Doctor Who fan
when he met him in San Francisco in 1988, and asked him if he'd letter
the strip.
The commission proved more than a little
hair-raising as transatlantic comic-making was, back then, entirely reliant
on couriers, not e-mail and electronic File Transfers like today. "Getting
those pages in was hell!" Richard recalls.
The Sleeze Brothers and the Time Meddling Monk feature in this zany
'jam' strip featuring a plethora of Marvel UK talent at the time.
"I thought we may piss off a few
hardcore Who fans,"
says Sleeze Brothers co-creator John Carnell of
the story, which saw the Doctor having to deal not just with the hapless
detective duo El Ape and Dedabeat but the Time Meddling Monk, in adventure
that features the SS TItanic and the 1908 Tunguska disaster. "But
it seemed like a good laugh - the bungling Sleeze Brothers, getting caught
up in an adventure and being none the wiser about their effects on space
time. I think we pulled it off okay. It was great to work with the other
artists, such as Dougie Braithwaite.
I think the story sums up Marvel UK at the time -- a melting pot of talented
nut cases!"
While some readers still found the many attempts to capture
Sylvester McCoy's likeness lacking, Daniel Slater of Rotherham was kinder
in a letter publisjed in Issue 149. "Congratulations on producing a rather
‘different’ comic strip in recent months," he wrote. "With the humour rapidly
disappearing from the tv series, it is a relief that it is kept where it
belongs – in your comic strip. The two recent ones, Time
and Tide and Follow
That TARDIS were especially great. I particularly like the creation
of The Sleeze Brothers and I hope we haven’t seen the last of them. The
only thing it is lacking now is Frobisher."
The Sleeze Brothers, co-created by John and Andy Lanning,
also featured in their own comic as part of Marvel's creator-owned Epic
imprint.
by Alan Grant, pencils by Martin Griffiths, inks by Cam Smith
Trying to reach his his friend Bonjaxx's birthday party
on Maruthea, the Doctor arrives in London in 1992 - the entire planet
under the subjugation of the hive-mind linked Gantac, who are rrounding
up its entire population for questioning. The Doctor interrupts the capture
of a homeless man, "Leapy" (so-called because of his flea
infestation), and is captured by the aliens and taken to Hyde Park for
interrogation where they demand to now the location of the fabulous treasure
of Zantar Wrouth. The Doctor informs them that they've invaded the wrong
planet. Leapy attempts to rescue the Doctor, just as Yaga, the over-mother
of the Gantac species, arrives to take personal charge of the mission.
The Doctor manages to explain to Yaga that Zantar Wrouth is an unflawed
diamond the size of a planet, on the other side of the galaxy. Yaga decides
to destroy Earth anyway to avenge his humiliation, but as he attempts
to kill the Doctor, Leapy intervenes -- and his fleas attach themselves
to Yaga and begin feeding. Yaga assumes he's being assaulted by invisible
aliens and orders his guards to open fire, which they do without hesitation
-- killing Yaga, and thus themselves.
Invaders from Gantac marks
the first time the Seventh Doctor mentions his friend Bonjaxx, who is
having a birthday party on Maruthea. It takes him several years to get
to it, finally arriving in Issue 172's Party Animals,
written by Gary Russell and drawn by Mike Collins.
"Although I know that I wrote a Doctor
Who strip, I have
absolutely no memory of doing it," Alan
Grant freely
admits. "I quite like the sound of fleas as the saviours of the Earth,
though!
"I don't know if I'm alone among writers
when I say, before I write any story, I have to make a conscious effort
to dispel my previous work from my mind. If I don't, I tend to get characters
mixed up, or plagiarise my own plots. So almost all memory of Leapy and
Doctor Who would have been driven from my brain by whatever I was working
on the following day or week.
"Richard Starkings called and asked if
I'd do a story for them," he does recall. "I've never been much of a
Doctor Who fan, not even as a child, so I can't
claim to have been fulfilling a long-held dream of working on the character.
I've always had a policy of trying to broaden my story-base, so tend
to say "yes" when
people call with requests like this.
"Alex Trench was a character I used in a couple of Tharg's Future
Shocks for 2000AD;
he was based on the ice-cream van driver in the village I hail from," he
reveals. "Presumably Leapy came from the same place... though I honestly
don't know."
Invaders from Gantac remains
Alan's only official contribution to the Doctor
Who mythos
to date. "I don't tend to write many licensed strips," he explains, "mainly
because of the hassles that are often involved with them: the character
has to be exactly as laid down, and I'm not too good at following other
people's rules. John Wagner and I did Computer
Warrior based
on computer games for many years for Eagle,
but the license holders more or less left us to our own devices. When
we tried to do the same thing with various toy companies, we soon got
sick of it and gave up, returning to stories and characters we created
ourselves.
"If memory serves - which it often doesn't
- I don't think I enjoyed myself very much on Doctor Who,"
Grant reveals. "But in all honesty, I don't know if that's a genuine
memory or something I just made up.
"In many ways not being able to remember is a blessing; at times like
this, it can be a real hassle!"
Alan recently parodied
Doctor Who in the first issue of his new humor comic, Wasted,
but it won't happen again. "I've tried to avoid parodies as far as
possible," he told DenofGeek.
"In my opinion, a parody only works once - then you're retelling the
same joke over and over again."
"I did enjoy working on Doctor
Who, although
shortly after being given the go ahead on the strip I had to move house
which made me late on deadline, for the first issue anyway," artist Martin
Griffiths recalls. "I saw the artwork recently
and it makes wish I could do it all over again - as I do on most strips
I worked on in the 1980s!
"I'm not sure if I did capture Sylvester
McCoy's likeness," he admits. " I would not trace off from photographs
- I would just have pictures of McCoy around me for reference. But I
remember it was tricky trying to get it right!"
"It was always exciting to land a Who job, a welcome change from
the more cartoon based stuff around at the time," recalls inker
Cam Smith. "Gantac was my first Who work, was early in my career
and I'm certain I should have done a better job! Still, I remember it
fondly, along with the several later Who strips
I inked and/or pencilled. It will be like a trip in the TARDIS to see it
reprinted!"
• A
second volume of Seventh Doctor is planned, but is unlikely to be scheduled
for 2009. If (and when) it’s published, it’s intended that the stories
will continue to be released in order (starting with Nemesis
of the Daleks featuring Abslom Daak, Dalek Killer, co-written
by John Tomlinson).
A third volume, featuring strips
from the Storybooks, Hulk Comic and later issues of DWM may
follow.
• Making
Of Cold Day in Hell Part One
• Making of Cold Day in Hell Part
Two
• Making
of Cold Day in Hell Part Three
• Buy
A Cold Day in Hell from amazon.co.uk
• Buy
A Cold Day in Hell from amazon.com
A
Cold Day At Marvel UK: Doctor Who Comic Memories Part 3 
Strip
by Strip: 
Invaders from Gantac!
