1 part (DWM 243) 25th September 1996
Writer & Art: Sean Longcroft, Editors: Gary Gillatt & Scott Gray
This is the story of a fan, every fan, whose memories of growing up are checkpointed by the ordinary events of their own life, and where those fit into the tapestry of adventures had by that wonderful traveller in time and space, Doctor Who.
We join young "Sean" behind his 1970s sofa on a Saturday night, listening to some very special sounds, thanks to a comic book chronicle from his future self...
These are memories that inform a new tale that unfolds alongside the childhood journey, a tale of a mysterious visitor from the stars...
...who arrives on Earth not far from a school room with a sinister new teacher.
The Doctor reappears in our lives at the most unexpected times. It's always nice to have him back, but... if we're honest, haven't there been times when we've... avoided him?
His stories always captured our minds, and our hearts...
Once they were the most important thing there was...
...but later, we had other priorities and for a time, we called this "growing up".
Of course, we know better now.
The story doesn't ever have to end there, though.
In fact, the really great stories have cliffhangers...
...and the best ones...
...Never end.
Obviously what we have here is not your average Doctor Who comic strip. For one thing, it's a story that rather unusually is about Doctor Who. It's as big-hearted as it is honest, and as perceptive as it is nostalgic.
This very personal examination shares DNA with Toby Hadoke's Moths Ate My Doctor Who Scarf in rooting itself to our primal memories of Saturday evenings of yester-year and the terrifying experience of those boring bits in-between, and to a lesser extent Russell T. Davies' own (controversial) Love and Monsters.
It lacks that TV tale's examination of circles within fandom, dealing as it does, with a childhood in a time when it wasn't so easy to share the experience of being a fan, when the internet and cosplay were as futuristic a concept as the TARDIS itself.
Instead this is 1996, a time when new old stories come out on VHS or in print, from the pens of writers just like "Sean Longcroft", and brought Doctors who had slept in our minds back in front of our eyes...
It was a time, after all, when something we all thought could never happen - the Doctor coming back at a time when we all thought he'd gone away forever - had come and gone in the blink of an eye, "for one night only" (TM), and Paul McGann's 8th Doctor (himself to arrive in comic strip form in just the very next issue) had reawakened a joy and love in fans who remembered their own time, staring up at the skies and seeing all those colours...
The slightly ramshackle artwork is goofily loveable and hewn of the same love, the same half-dream-half-memory golden arrow pointing at the core of anyone who's ever been touched by the dread hand of the monster under the bed, the creature in the wardrobe, the devil in the dark corner under the stairs, and then run with the Doctor.
It could only have been one part, but in that one part it covers everything and touches every corner of why our relationship with the Doctor is one that will always survive, and always be there when we need it. It's something that wraps around you like a comforting blanket when you need it to, but fits in your pocket when you want it to.
This is a tale that knows that, shows that, and wears its' heart on its sleeve, to deliver the perfect love letter to Doctor Who. Then turns into an android while that theme tune plays out...
10/10
TTFN! K.
Coming Soon... The Power of the Daleks
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