There is a famous panel of Frobisher the penguin loudly singing in a silly hat while threatening a crouching man with a rifle and never in a million years did I believe that image would have come from Jamie Delano but here we are.  “The Gift” is the second and final strip Delano would provide to Doctor Who Magazine, published in the spring of 1987 once again while Colin Baker had already left the role but still featuring the Sixth Doctor, Peri, and Frobisher.  This is Delano doing outright comedy: Frobisher is bored while the Doctor and Peri are on a holiday and demands to be taken to a party.  The Doctor has several invitations but they choose the birthday party of the Lorduke of Zazz to attend, Zazz being a planet obsessed with early 20^th century Earth.  This means that John Ridgway and Tim Perkins get to have a lot of fun drawing the main characters (bar Frobisher who according to The Holy Terror likes to mesomorph a black and white pair of pants that nobody can really see) in period dress.  The backgrounds are particularly great as Ridgway really gets to flex a lot of the city stuff before eventually the plot takes a diversion to the planet’s moon.  It’s a gorgeous moon complete with crazy robots and mad science.

Because the Lorduke of Zazz has an evil scientist brother in exile, of course the Doctor accidentally falls for the evil brother’s plan to bring a gift of self-replicating robots which wreak havoc.  This is eventually why Frobisher is brandishing the gun against the scientist is because he basically has to be held at gunpoint.  Now Delano does leave Peri a bit in the lurch, mainly she is there to complain about how annoying the party is but Delano does actually capture a decent amount of what the Doctor and Peri’s banter would become with further developments to the characters.  Delano also loves just creating a bunch of science fiction sounding names which are particularly fun even if the Lorduke is particularly outrageous.  The entire plotting of “The Gift” is outrageous, Delano is smart enough to fill four issues so there’s actually a sense of things moving forward and the cliffhangers being particularly exciting.  There’s also an addition of pre-credits pages like a more traditional, full 25 page comic book, something that while the strip doesn’t ever transition to, does eventually become more modern in terms of comics.  It’s clear editorial knew that the Sixth Doctor was on his way out and were trying to fill out the pages before the Seventh Doctor made his debut in the autumn.

Overall, “The Gift” could easily have ended up as a simple bit of fun stretched to bursting, but because it’s Jamie Delano writing there’s this sense of snappy dialogue and immediate wit.  Outside of the panel of Frobisher with the gun there are other Frobisher panels that genuinely deserve to be among those memed and remembered panels.  It’s a great little yarn that is slowly winding down the Sixth Doctor’s time on the strip.  8/10.