14 July 2014

Review: Doctor Who: Agent Provacateur by Gary Russell et al.

Comic PDF eBook, 136 pages
Published 2008 (contents: 2008)
Acquired May 2014

Read June 2014
Doctor Who: Agent Provavateur

Written by Gary Russell
Art by Nick Roche, Jose Maria Berdy, Stefano Martino, and Micro Pierfederici
Art Assist by Joe Phillips
Inking Assist by German Torres
Colors by Charlie Kirkoff and Tom Smith
Letters by Chris Mowry, Amauri Osorio, and Neil Uyetake

IDW has put out a large number of Doctor Who comics since it acquired the American license in 2008, but I've avoided most of them-- this one because it was written by Gary Russell, whose Doctor Who novels I almost never enjoy. But in May IDW released digital downloads of everything they ever published as a Humble Bundle, and sixteen trade paperbacks for $15 is nothing to sneeze at.

Having finally read this, IDW's very first Doctor Who story, I feel justified in avoiding it. These are six largely self-contained single-issue stories, with a narrative threading through the whole thing. But if you can explain what that narrative actually is, you're a smarter person than me. They don't really work at standalones, either; Russell typically wastes the first 3-4 pages of each story on irrelevant banter between the Doctor and Martha, and then leaving him less than twenty pages to introduce a problem, complicate it, and solve it. Usually it's the solution that suffers; many of these endings are cursory at best. It must be admitted that he really captures the voices of the Doctor and Martha very well, but that is not anywhere near enough to make all 136 pages worth reading.

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