After Life

A great companion introduction for Alice. Her contrasting 11 brings out a more emotionally mature side of 11 we dont’ really get to see all that often and I really like it.

This is excellent stuff. It really succeeded in making me feel sad, happy and the other emotions experienced by the new character, Alice. Alice herself is well written and seems interesting. The plot is fun and made me laugh out loud at its funniest moments. All in all, really good. I’m excited to see what else this range brings.

✅35/50 = 😊Good! = ✊🏼Skippable!

Thworping through time and space, one adventure at a time!

LOOK AT THE RAINBOW DOG!

We immediately meet Alice Obiefune, the new companion, and relate to her grey and tragic life. However, given that Al Ewing, known for his work on Immortal Hulk, excels in characterization and emotional storytelling, it's unsurprising that he successfully engages us.

I'm not a huge fan of Simon Fraser's art style. His Eleven looks like an old dude, and the overall style feels childish.

I enjoy the classic storyline where the new companion encounters the Doctor during an adventure, bids him farewell, and later reunites with him. The modern series frequently incorporates this classic storyline. In this case, it happens surprisingly quickly.

So, they do a nice twist on the "bigger on the inside" gag.

I appreciate how Eleven's comic adventures begin in a candid manner, and how he must confront a person who is grieving. Alice is relatable, grounded, yet sharp.

The colourful dog feeds on negative emotions, and I immediately think of the Psychovores introduced in Revolutions of Terror.

This weird little story includes a bonkers British prime minister and a giant baby squid. Why? I have no idea!

The art is particularly fantastic in After Life. We use colour to introduce Alice, our new companion, and it rather brilliantly echoes her mindset in an obvious way - the energy of colour only arriving with the Doctor is an obvious choice but a very effective one. Simon Fraser does a lot of little details like that in this first issue, which is very impressive on the whole. We get to see stuff like the TARDIS swimming pool (which is very well realized in my opinion) and some great panels of the TARDIS in space I found thoroughly impressive. Lots of little details and the exact sort of thing one ought to take advantage of when using the comic book format to tell a Doctor Who story. Compared to what I've seen out of the IDW comics for the Eleventh Doctor, so far these Titan books are looking a lot more impressive, and consistent visually.

I will also be focusing only on the comic story of the first issue, not the larger trade that is also called Alter Life for this review. It's a pretty standard story about an alien dog running around London that is feeding on human misery. There are some very easy and obvious jokes around Parliament that follows, and then a fairly simple ending where everything is brought to an end. Some of the dialogue and Eleventh Doctor hijinks are really bland in this book. Early on, the Doctor is acting like a full cartoon character, even including a moment where he gets distracted and runs full speed into a lamp post.

That stuff is annoying, but to the credit of After Life, there are a lot of solid moments to make up for it. The Doctor following up with Alice after their initial meeting because she seemed sad is a great scene, as this Doctor is always at his best digging a little deeper and showing some sincerity. Alice first seeing the inside of the TARDIS is also given the time and care to make it something worthwhile and it even takes advantage of the comic book form to make that scene at least look really memorable. Stuff like that and seeing the pool go a very long way in making this a special little comic, even if the scripting isn't perfect. Still, I love Al Ewing as a writer, and am eager to see what else he did with Rob Williams for these comics.