Hey you know what’s pretty good about this comic? I think what’s pretty cool is how they show what happens after being touched by an angel. It’s like that Johnny Morris book but with a lot of different creative scenario’s, and only some are copy pasted from other stories. I like that. I think it’s cool. 

I also think this is a very impactful story about the horrifying thing that is war. I think that’s very well done. And now I’m going to be mean about the rest of the story. 

For a change, I’ll start talking about the artwork. Because I don’t like it. Not just in a “not my thing kind of not like it”, but in a “genuinely find it distracting kind of not like it”. ESPECIALLY after Casagrande last book, this is total whiplash.

Look like, I get it, I get the war thing. I get that you want to make it look gritty. But the amount of shadows cast on the Doctor’s face every single panel made me burst out in giggles several times just for how ludicrous it is. Like I’m sorry, Indro and Mujiono, but I think it looks really bad. It works alright for me with all the side characters, but the Doctor’s face just feels so out of place. He doesn’t just not look like David Tennant (which I don’t really care about), he doesn’t look like the Doctor to me. He looks like some bloke who stepped out of a 90s superhero comic and was put in Ten’s suit. Because I can handle all your side characters being drawn quite ugly, because it represents that war is ugly, but the Doc? My guy the Doc looking like Frank Castle? Cannot help but laugh.

Generally, all characters look abhorrent, not just in their faces, but an overwhelming amount of panels are incredibly static and convey zero sense of movement, with characters, and especially Gabby, standing about in strange, unnatural poses. Though, this is actually a good thing for one element of the comic; being the weeping angels! They look horrific, unnatural, and static in the best way possible. They’re marvelously, almost ‘beautifully’ drawn. The angels have rarely looked better. Immensely creepy, and the overwhelming detail makes them super unsettling, plus they fit in perfectly with their environments.

That’s another point towards the art too, because all the places look really good. The different timezones, the grey war-torn fields of destruction, all the feelings they want to convey, they do greatly.

Like, the art isn’t technically bad per se, because it’s got a lot of those things right. But it falls into recurring tropes that I really dislike, and find it generally unpleasant to look at.

Right. Now Morrison. I’ve already said the good things, there are good things in this comic book. There are many people who can point out the good things. And I would agree, mostly, there’s some good ideas, lovely ideas even. I just don’t think they’re all executed in a proper way. And I find there’s a lack of care put into the plot, which makes that it doesn’t come together as well as it wants to.

Welp, let’s get some of my pettier complaints out of the way. I don’t like the Tenth Doctor. If you want to, you may take a looksie at my review for Revolutions of Terror, where I talk about this too, but I don’t like Ten. However, I did like how Abadzis wrote Ten. I said that he almost didn’t feel like the Tenth Doctor, more like Fourteen, but I liked that. The friendship he develops with Gabby was sweet as he warmed up to her, and there was a show of him developing emotionally. Big fan of that. This wasn’t here. Morrison characterizes Ten in a way completely inconsistent with the previous two stories, and makes you wonder how Gabby even got into the TARDIS if the Doctor has been acting like this much of a bitch the entire time. And it’s not just the moment where he decides to be a big ol’ bully and vents a rant with his feelings on humanity onto Gabby for no reason at all (which he doesn’t even apologize for, and Gabby takes no issue with for some reason). It’s his attitude of being more important than everyone else that was often a thing in his tv run that irks me. Abadzis seemed to have finally taken the Tenth Doctor in a new direction which showed development, and made the Doctor-Companion dynamic feel equal, which is just thrown out of the window here. Really annoying. I hope there’s still a chance for later issues to continue some kind of character arc for both Gabby and Ten. Really carve out its own era, and have him actually learn something, so it’s less Doctor Who Tv Show Tenth Doctor spinoff comics, and more The Titan Tenth Doctor comic book run, if you get what I mean.

Our other main character, Gabby. Ah. Yes. Loved her previously. She does nothing here. She’s entirely reduced to ‘companion stands around and asks the Doctor questions’ which is made even more insufferable by Ten being, well, Ten, and Gabby’s standing around being drawn like female characters in comic books are drawn way too often. She’s just here to move the plot along at certain points, and have a really contrived love story, yay.

The thing she has with Jamie not McCrimmon really annoys me. It’s not build up well at all, the characters have zero chemistry, like it doesn’t even feel like Morrison is trying to make me believe these two guys like each other naturally. They talk once, then don’t interact at all in the first half of the story, and then Jamie saves her, because of course he does, and then suddenly they’re in love. Robbie even tries to do a bit of teenage romance where they don’t tell each other because they don’t dare, and it borders on caricatural. I’m sure there are going to be people who’ll disagree, but this is just heteronormativity being seen as enough. Boy, girl, find out they’re around the same age, interact for 5 minutes, love at first sight. None of their relationship is naturally created from a situation, none of it is consistent with their characterization, all of it is done to have them kiss at the most dramatic moment Morrison could cook up.

Because that’s my real problem with all this. All the stuff happening just because the writer said so. Everything is so obviously made with the intention to get to ‘the cool scenes’. Why are the Weeping Angels here? Because it’s the perfect place to eat lots of time space stuff! Why are they so aggressive? Because it would look cool in the comic they are hungry and haven’t been able to eat well! Who cares that this doesn’t match up with the internal logic we just established by having the Doctor simply tell the audience! Come on guys, now we’re going to run to our next badass looking set piece!

I think one of the best examples I could give about the lack of plot here is the spoilers. The best I can do is: some of the characters you’re introduced to die/get sent back in time. And maybe I could spoil what happens to them there, which is largely not really significant, but it is what you’ll mostly remember, because the set pieces and melodramatic moments are the only real focus.

There is no actual story present. Outside of the really well done themes surrounding war, there is no greater thematic meaning to what’s happening either. Cynically of me, that’s why I think it’s so popular, because my brain isn’t going to remember the entire story. I just have so much memory, and my blinkus of the thinkus isn’t what it used to be. I’ll just remember the creepy image of someone having sewn their own eyes open so they won’t blink in front of an Angel (brilliant), or the striking images of those Angels, like in the amazing and hugely atmospheric opening sequence. I’ll remember the detailed illustrations, that left a great impact, because they were so striking. I’ll remember the passionate kiss between two characters that happens in the face of death itself, but where they don’t want to face death, but rather each other, where the inevitable end is ignored in favour of the beauty of love and life, while they are being engulfed by an explosion, making their dramatic sacrifice. I won’t remember the story beats. Of course I won’t, they weren’t there. But that doesn’t matter. The important part is what the reader does remember. And cynically of me, I think Robbie Morrison knows that very well. And so who cares if your comic makes no damn sense.

This isn’t even much of a critique on Morrison. It seems he knows really well what he wants and can accomplish it. I just don’t like it. Sometimes it’s as simple as that. But every simple thought has a whole array of complicated, smaller thoughts behind it. And the several smaller thoughts are usually more understandable than ‘I just don’t like it,’ even if it’s as simple as that.

Also the whole thing is derivative asf like wtf do you mean OH I’M soooooo clever hmm aha WINK aha, like stfu. Sorry, comic is good, me just not likey. Okay, like, look, like I like it, I like it enough to give it three stars, there’s that good stuff. I do not regret my time with it. But I also don’t like it. It clashes, like you get the middle, or somewhere like that. Does that, like, make like sense. I’m using subliminal messaging to make you like my review.