Old Girl - 8/10

Old Girl is really fun if you read it just completely without the context of Empire of Death, in that context it brings up some funky continuity issues, but yeah, without, it's really fun.

I loved how well they show Sutekh's power here, the two Sutekhs from different points in his life, the earlier controlling Anubis, is a great way of showing the characterisation, and the ease with which he destroys antagonists from earlier in the run shows his power extremely effectively.

The moment where he destroys the King Noctune is great for both showing his power, taking down an enemy that's repeatedly caused trouble for The Doctor a couple of times, and doing so with a moment that shows the character really well, talking about how he hates music as it's full of life. And then fairly easily taking down a Death Lord (which to be fair we don't know much about), a God of Ragnarok, and imprisoning The Destroyer to stop his return to the vortex is also a great show, the line in the fight about them being gods and still no match was great.

There's some really fun character stuff generally here too, and seeing the alternate(?) early Gallifrey is really interesting (especially the robots), hoping that comes back. I like that Cindy gets a lot more to do here, I like the moments of her doubting her place on the team and then feeling a bit better as she's listed as a companion, I like her confession to Gabby. That stuff's just great.

On the one hand it does almost feel Sutekh is taken down too easily at the end, but on the other, there's established reason for it working the way it does, and it comes at the cost of a character sacrificing herself to do it in a way only she could, plus the events of the story effectively kill Anubis, sure Newbis is there, but he doesn't remember anything at all.

Overall, a much stronger end to this year of comics than the previous