After the lacklustre and generic Power Play, I was delighted to read the next story, Duel of the Daleks. This strip is glorious and had me laughing out loud at its eccentricity. This is the Daleks as you’ve never seen them before. This is a super-villain’s origin story told through the Daleks. The similarities between the Daleks presented here and those seen in the television series end at in the title frame. These are Daleks who are conniving, scheming, emotive and insane to a higher degree than is ever depicted on screen, particular in the later years when, with the introduction of Davros, they became little more than robots.

The story details the exploits of Zeg, a Dalek inventor who is trying to create a new, super strong, Dalek casing. An accident sees him imbued with super powers which make him indestructible, even to Dalek firepower, and he decides to challenge the Dalek Emperor for control.

Everything about this was a joy to read. Zeg is brilliant. When he receives his super powers he changes from silver and blue colurings to supervillain RED! He exclaims that he feels DYNAMIC! He is INDESTRUCTIBLE! He brazenly challenges the Emperor and proceeds to duel him to the death. If you don’t want to know Zeg’s fate, look away now – sadly, he fails in his attempts of conquest and is outwitted by the Emperor Dalek’s superior intelligence.

The Emperor Dalek is equally brilliant. At the beginning of the story he is explaining to the Daleks why they haven’t conquered the universe yet. It’s a gloriously prosaic scene as if the Daleks are a run of the mill business which hasn’t met its quota or something.

When Zeg challenges him, he asks the Brain Computer, what they should do. He realises that although Zeg may be stronger, he is the more intelligent and lays a series of traps for Zeg in the Skarosian wilderness. The best of these is a fake Emperor which Zeg exterminates and then, on examination realises isn’t the real Emperor but a copy made of, wait for it…INFLATABLE PLASTIC. Yes, I know! The Emperor, somehow or other, manages to make a life-size inflatable replica of himself. It’s just a shame the story didn’t give us a frame showing the Emperor blowing himself up… I just wonder if the Emperor has a collection of these inflatables stuffed in a cupboard somewhere and whether he plans to start selling merchandise of himself to his Dalek minions.

Zeg is finally defeated by the Emperor by LIQUID AIR which freezes Zeg and causes him to explode! The Emperor is victorious but vows to use Zeg’s research to find a more reasonable way of the Daleks becoming as indestructible as he was without tipping into absolute insanity.

This is the best instalment of the Daleks comic strip so far simply because it is so hilarious. The artwork is rapidly improving too and I adore the Emperor Dalek and his huge golden globe head and in this story we get a much better look at him from all angles than we had done previously. Zeg is drawn well too and, when he turns red, he contrasts nicely with the ordinary Daleks. Another character introduced in this story is the Black Dalek (or the DREADED Black Dalek as he’s described in the story) who is clearly the court executioner. He has a marvellous line in trash-talk when the Emperor commands him to destroy Zeg before submitting to the duel suggested by the Brain Computer. It’s this highly emotive aspect to this version of the Daleks which makes them so entertaining. One of the problems I’ve always had with the Daleks is I find them terribly boring as an adversary because they are so monotonous (in both speech and ambition). In the comic strip I don’t have to listen to their voices and, to be frank, there’s no way you can imagine David Graham or Roy Skelton, Michael Wisher or Nicholas Briggs delivering this script with any semblance of believability (but I do now want an audio adaptation of this comic strip from Big Finish just to hear what Briggs would do with it. His insane Dalek Caan from Journey’s End probably wouldn’t be a million miles away from Zeg’s supervillain rantings).

The next story, The Amaryll Challenge sees the Dalek’s finally launching into space in their familiar saucers for an encounter with, if I remember correctly, some rather unusual foes…