The Time Witch - ★★★☆☆

Brimo, the titular character, have a lot of potential. It's not the intention of this story to do so, and therefore that's not the perspective that I look at The Time Witch; but it's easy to read the openning pages and question if her punishing was fair. It doesn't seem so. Anyone in her position would have gone mad. There is a longer version of this comic that put the morals at the center and builds an engaging character piece; but that's not the version that exists.

It's innofensive.  Imaginative enough, given its premise, and very fun to read; but in my opinion we see a better realised version of this concept later on DWM publication, with a much stronger character conflict played out (that chapter in The Glorious Dead, if you ever read it you'll get the comparison). I still love the art and my favorite part is the guardian of Brimo's dimension; I love his design.

This is the start of doom for Sharon. On its own the decision to age her could lead to interesting stories; but I know that what follows is just weird. The weirdest "coming of age" ever.

Sharon does more in this one but I’d still say she is written as more of an observer of the story than a fully fledged companion who gets involved in events.

My main takeaway from this story is how similar the Time Witch’s journey is to Wanda’s in Wandavision!

Now this is another just delightful story (provided you don't think too hard about the villian having gone through an eternity of torment and just take the comic's word that she must've been evil enough to deserve it.

The idea of a 'blank universe' where anything you think gets created is great, I've seen similar things before but how it's done here is delightful. The back and forth conflict between The Witch and Four almost reminded me of The Oldest Game from Sandman. The ending with Four tricking her into imagining her imprisonment, trapping her again, is inventive and works really nicely.

Sharon again doesn't get too much to do here, but is at least present which is a change from the last one.

The very end of the comic does feel really weird though, aging Sharon up from 16 to 20 is... an interesting creative choice. I'm a little worried for what it means of the future of the comic, are they going to give her romantic interests and that because she's still mentally just 16. It's a really weird thing that is just kind of glossed over

The Time Witch is a comic strip adventure for the Doctor and his companion, Sharon. It opens on a planet existing before the Earth was formed and sees Brimo banished to an eternity capsule for her crimes against the planet Nefrin. She eventually ends up in a blank dimension (after millions of years in captivity) and finds that her will can create anything she wishes. To do this, though, she is drawing energy from our universe, something which affects the TARDIS and drags it to the dimension’s gateway. The Doctor and Sharon battle Brimo to prevent her drawing any more energy from our universe, which would ultimately destroy it, and trick her into trapping herself again.I have fond memories of this strip. I have owned the American reprints of many of the DWM comic strips for many years, since my early days of being a fan, and have always enjoyed these stories, particularly the presence of Sharon a fun, if under-developed companion.  Brimo is a fun villain. She’s like a less insane version of Omega. Able to create a world of luxury from nothing. It doesn’t seem she’s aware what effect her dimension is having on the rest of the universe but then why should she. She only turns nasty when she realises the Doctor is also able to conjure things up and is therefore a threat to her monopoly. The fact that the TARDIS is blocking the gateway and therefore the power means that, ultimately, she was always going to be defeated as long as the Doctor could distract her for long enough.

Sharon gets very little to do in this story but it does end with the rather bizarre epilogue where, because the TARDIS was split by the dimension leak, its two sections are four years apart by the end of the story. Recombining it is a simple matter but it means the Doctor and Sharon age 4 years each. For the Doctor this is unnoticeable but for Sharon it means she skips her teenage years. I think Sharon is supposed to be around 16 when she meets the Doctor in The Star Beast, which would mean she is now 20 years old. This is shown in the illustrations by a more defined, ‘cleaner’ face and by giving her much more obvious breasts!

Overall it’s a very slight tale but marvellously eccentric. Brimo has a Guardian of the Gateway but all it seems to want to do is drink tea with the Doctor and Sharon. There is a weird part where Brimo and the Doctor fight for control of the Guardian (Doctor vs Master style in the King’s Demons) and manage to split him into two parts –one wanting to kill, the other wanting to drink tea. There is a cliffhanger ending where Brimo conjures up a menagerie of monsters which the Doctor defeats by imagining a pit which they all fall into. It does reflect rather well the tone of Season 17 which was the most recent TV series.

The fact this initial scenes of this strip are stated as happening long before Earth was formed is quite interesting. The extrapolation is that there was quite an empire (the characters are not all the same species) that Nefrin is part of and it is millions of years before it all disappears and Brimo is left alone in space.

This dating doesn’t really tie in with much else from Doctor Who although recent audio, A Death in the Family establishes another planet with a fully developed civilisation at least 7,000,000,000 BC and there is also the scientific civilisation of Daemos, so it seems there were plenty of well developed planets and peoples long before Earth was even a glimmer in the universe’s eye.

A fun strip and certainly one which I have always considered fondly throughout the many years of my fandom and wasn’t disappointed in when revisiting for this marathon.