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

“The Fourth Wall: Breaking Comics and the Fourth Wall”

The Fourth Wall takes bold creative risks, showcasing Titan Comics’ knack for experimenting with storytelling. This meta-adventure sees the Twelfth Doctor breaking the fourth wall to address readers directly, while the plot revolves around people being pulled into comic book pages—a concept eerily mirrored in the recent Season 2 teaser trailer, where a comic book character escapes into the real world. The premise feels reminiscent of The Idiot's Lantern, with Mark Gatiss’s Wire snatching people into televisions, but with a unique comic book twist.

A highlight is the playful commentary at the comic book store, where the Doctor critiques the male dominance of comics, and Clara cheekily points out he’s never regenerated into a woman. The parodies of iconic superheroes—Steel Man, Spidey-Guy—add a layer of humour. The Doctor discovering a comic featuring himself nods to the superhero-inspired The Return of Doctor Mysterio.

The return of the Boneless from Flatline as the antagonists is a perfect fit for the comic-centric story. These two-dimensional beings use comics to draw people into their universe, making them a clever and sinister choice for this medium.

While the adventure is fun and fast-paced, it prioritises action over depth. Characterisation and worldbuilding take a back seat, and the story rushes to a conclusion that feels abrupt and slightly unsatisfying.

📝Verdict: 9/10

The Fourth Wall is a visually engaging and innovative tale, but its pacing issues and lack of narrative weight leave it feeling like a missed opportunity.

Look, I know I'm biased, but this is just really fun.

Firstly, I've said it before, and I'll say it again, I absolutely adore a format screw, or a clever use of medium. Comics attacking people was sort of done in a free comic book day story, but that was super short and more using it as a reference to free comic book day than using the medium to its fullest. Here though it's done spectacularly, a mad mashup of Fear Her and The Unbelieveable Gwenpool, diagetic comic panels, the doctor breaking out to see the 'world' beyond the walls, communiating with Clara from inside the comic, it's all just a blast.

The return of The Boneless too is interesting, love a monster coming back and being used in ways that are both interesting and expanding on their original concept, and that's sure done here.

And then we come to my bias. I love the Forbidden Planet megastore in London, hell, at time of writing this review I was there just last week, a story set there is obviously going to entice me. But even moreso than that, you can just tell that the artist love that store as much as I do, there's careful attention paid to make it look as close as it can to the original and I appreciate that so so much.

Rachael Stott, thank you so much for making this comic for me.

Sometimes the word 'gimmick' is thrown around too often as a negative thing. 'Oh, it's just a gimmick', people say. 'It doesn't matter'. Personally, I don't mind gimmicks. Gimmicks are fun - and what's wrong with that? You don't hear people complain about watching films or television shows because they're 'fun' so why should a gimmick be seen as a bad thing? You may wonder how this relates to the review I am writing. Well, the  Twelfth Doctor strip The Fourth Wall is one of those gimmicks.

The Fourth Wall sees the Doctor and Clara arrive at a comic book shop, to find that customers to the comic store have been trapped in the very comics they have been reading. The Doctor's attention is drawn towards a comic book series baring remarkable similarities to his adventures - 'Time Surgeon' - and starts to skip through the pages when he is trapped inside the book. It's up to Clara and one of the comic store staff to team up to save the Doctor and the customers who have been trapped in the comic books.

The gimmick I refer to here is the Doctor's interactions with the comic strip environment. Not only does he communicate with the reader through the panels of the strip but he also interacts with the white bars that separate the panels. The way the narrative plays with the comic strip and the interaction with the environment is extremely clever and helps to enhance the story; at one point, for example, the Doctor breaks one of the white bars with his Sonic Screwdriver in order to escape a comic panel. It's fun to see a comic book story have its characters interact with the comic strip and display a Deadpool-esque awareness that they are inside one. I wouldn't want to see this done with every Doctor Who strip but as a one-off it shows real imagination and innovation from the writers.

The notion of people trapped inside comic books is also something that feels appropriately like a Steven Moffat story. Writer Robbie Morrison does a great job of taking an everyday object like a comic book and turning it into a credible threat. He also shows a clear love and dedication for the comic strip medium; at its most basic, the story is a love letter to comic books told by somebody who is clearly a comic book fan. This is the kind of story that I wouldn't just recommend to Whovians but also those who love the comic book medium.

You can also tell Robbie Morrison is a keen watcher of the show. The characterisations of the Doctor and Clara are perfect. I heard Jenna Coleman's voice when reading Clara's speech bubbles more than I did when reading any other Titan Comics Doctor Who strip and the twelfth Doctor feels like he was actually written by one of Doctor Who's current writers. The Fourth Wall is a comic that you could easily imagine being told on-screen; I don't know if it would have worked as well as a television episode but it does seem like an adventure that fits into the current era of the show.

The Fourth Wall also contains some of the best comic book art of the Twelfth Doctor series. Some of the panels are extremely vibrant and really bump off the page, especially the comic panel where the Doctor and his new friend Natalie have broken from the comic panels and travelling through dimensions of comic history (featuring some nice floating panels of the previous twelfth Doctor year two story). It's visually pleasing to look at and captures nice likenesses of the Doctor and Clara.

If I had one complaint of The Fourth Wall, it's the decision to make the monsters of the strip be the Boneless. Whilst the Boneless make sense as monsters yet again breaking out of the two dimension plane of comic book pages and in turn trapping readers within the panels, it just feels too soon for a returning monster after the Sea Devils returned only a monster before. I would have liked to have seen a new monster for a change or perhaps this story later in the run, with new twelfth Doctor and Clara stories between Clara Oswald and the School of Death and The Fourth Wall. I hope the twelfth Doctor comics don't start to make a habit of bringing back returning monsters as whilst it is nice to see them in the comics medium if they do it too often it will become expected rather than a good surprise.

Overall, The Fourth Wall is a fantastic comic book story that uses the medium to its full advantage. The way the Doctor interacts with the comic strip environment is clever and well thought-out by writer Robbie Morrison and the story feels like it belongs in the Moffat era of the show. The Fourth Wall does what the best Doctor Who stories do: it takes an everyday object like comic books and turns them into a credible threat. The characterisations and likenesses of the twelfth Doctor and Clara are at their best here; you won't find a more accurate version of the twelfth Doctor and Clara's adventures together in the Titan Comics range than this one. My only complaint is that the story features yet another returning monster so soon after the Sea Devils in Clara Oswald and the School of Death but it doesn't stop The Fourth Wall from being one of the twelfth Doctor's greatest comic adventures so far.

A nice way to experiment with its Medium. It's a bit too overcomplicated at times, I'd argue, but I enjoyed it regardless. And I am very glad it was a shorter one, if it was longer, I think the Gimmick (let's be honest it's a very gimmicky Story) would wear off very quickly. (I probably sound a bit more negative than intended, I enjoyed it a lot, don't get me wrong, but it does miss a something, which I am not sure how to properly articulate it).

I thought this was the perfect story. It looks amazing, the plot was so unique and it has a lot of heart too. This works so well in a comic format. The boneless reveal was fab too and made so much sense!! I wasn’t expecting it at all.