Ripper’s Curse

Well, after really struggling through Spam Filtered, I am very pleased to say Ripper's Curse ~ Part 1 is a massive improvement on just about every count.

A Doctor Who story set during the time of Jack the Ripper, Tony Lee and a few artists really bring the era to life with a moody comic book. The colouring by Phil Elliott really gives this comic a nice feeling of dread and melancholy. While not every panel is perfect - some have no background at all while others still have very awkward facial expressions, the book does a great job at drawing you in and making the Whitechapel area feel dynamic and alive. There are other police, a very clever Inspector Frederick Abberline who amusingly blows through Rory's cover story in about an instant, and even press sniffing around, yet the story manages to balance all these characters and competing interests nicely in a way that doesn't feel chaotic even though all of this is going on in a single comic book issue.

On the whole it is very impressive even with the occasional line from the Doctor that just felt like we were force quoting Eleven from the television series. Ripper's Curse ~ Part 1 feels like the kind of story that feels missing from the Eleventh Doctor era in a really positive way. Moffat was never great at historical so something like this is always pretty welcome for Eleven, Rory, and Amy, but more significantly is stuff like Rory and Amy getting to take more direct agency over the story, or even a little moment like the Doctor asking for Rory's opinion on a medical matter knowing that Rory is a nurse with a more active experience dealing with human medicine. It's the sort of thing I always wished the Moffat era did more of with this TARDIS crew, so seeing it in this comic is very welcome indeed.

Part 2 of Ripper's Curse falters a bit in my eyes. Both the art and the writing do have interesting moments here and there, but otherwise it feels like we are scrambling to follow up on all of our interesting ideas in these comics. On the one hand, I do like some of the ideas present in here, and there is some good fun to be had along the way, as the whole story starts to involve some alien politics.

But, there is something uncomfortable about how alien we make the story of Jack the Ripper here. This is a real human that murdered real people, and an early example of a documented, traditional serial killer in human history. It throws me off here, while the most interesting aspect of this comic - Amy trying to save one of Jack's victims - is a very human dilemma. It really feels like Ripper's Curse could have been a pure historical or at least let the sci-fi content take a back seat, and been oh so more effective. Especially with Tim Hamilton's art. While not on point equally in every panel, Hamilton does an excellent job at consistently keeping a tense mood and atmosphere.

Ripper's Curse comes to a somewhat satisfying end. There's a certain level of quality to the artwork that is mostly consistent throughout the book, but still feels cheap or maybe a little rushed at times like the rest of this comic book trilogy.

There are creative elements to Part 3's story and on the whole I found it a pretty satisfying resolution. Amy is slated to be the next victim of Jack the Ripper, but instead of just being something the Doctor and Rory have to rescue she ends up doing that on her own, which I appreciated. Rory also got a good laugh out of me when he admitted to not being a real detective to Abberline, to his palatable relief.

All told Ripper's Curse is a big step up from Spam Filtered, but so far, as I kind of remember it, these IDW Doctor Who books, at least for 2011, were only ever just alright, and that memory is largely holding up.

This is exactly what you'd expect from a Jack The Ripper Doctor Who episode. The Doctor and companions land during a famous historical event, alien happens to be the reason behind said event, Doctor and co can't interfere...

I really love the tense atmosphere of this strip, and the creepy design of the alien that's revealed to be Jack The Ripper. The codenames the Doctor's companions take are pretty funny too - Amy Pond is Miss Marple and Rory Williams is Inspector Clouseau, two of course very iconic detectives.

This is basically The Fires of Pompeii for Amy Pond. She really gets to challenge the Doctor here, and why he can't just save one person from a terrible fate. It's such a fantastic exploration of the dilemma of 'What would you do if you knew the fate of somebody destined to die?'...and then the comic story goes and puts a twist in the tale later into the story. Brilliant stuff.

This is such an inspired and unique take on the historical. Here, everything is in flux and you have no idea who's safe anymore - even Amy is in danger, as history changes so she becomes one of Jack the Ripper's victims. You're on tenterhooks throughout this issue wondering how the Doctor and Rory are going to solve this, and that's no mean feat when usually you know that the Doctor/companions will survive anyway, because it's not the TV Show and they're still around on TV.