Reign of the Stone Monkey

A lot of the DWA strips are one shot, throwaway strips set on odd alien planets with odd looking aliens and fairly shallow plots and characterisations. Reign of the Stone Monkey, however, is much more involving. It is a two parter featuring the 10th Doctor visiting Ancient China and discovering aliens terrorising the locals.

The backdrop of Ancient China is nicely portrayed and the main character Li has a little more depth than usual. The implication that the Doctor has visited him throughout his life is a lovely touch.

The three aliens that have taken control of the village are, entertainingly a monkey, a pig and a ‘whatever’. The pig alien, in particular, has echoes of the TV series Monkey (beloved of my childhood Sunday lunchtimes).

The plot is fun to start with, the aliens having controlled the temple guards with telepathic transceivers. The Doctor makes short work of those however and the second part of the story is a bizarre ‘competition’ between the Doctor and the aliens.

The Doctor wins, obviously, and the aliens leave. A nice touch is the design of the alien’s spaceship, which is reminiscent of a Chinese dragon.

The only real problem with this story is that there isn’t really a logical reason for the appearance of the aliens or their ship, other than to ‘fit’ into Ancient China.

Overall, though, this is a fun little comic strip and it is good to see slightly more obscure places in time and space being featured in a children’s comic.