Wolves of Winter brings a return of The Flood while documenting their origins during the time of Vikings, and then even going on to also be a sort-of prequel to the Wolves of Fenric, essentially marrying that serial with the Waters of Mars episode from the new series. That really could have been cool but then we get to the story - the panel-to-panel dialogue and the execution of the plot - and it is a bit of a mess. This is a rare example of Doctor Who in prose where I just don't think the writer gave us a good sense of the characters and their voices.

Normally, a lot of Doctor Who writing that I've read really does a good job at replicating certain Doctors and the mannerisms each actor brought to their incarnation, but I really didn't get a sense of Capaldi out of this Doctor, more just this more generic, simplified version of the character. A lot of the dialogue and transition between scenes is just clunky. And then we spend too much time with stuff like Bill trying to find some Ice Warriors (cause yeah, they're here too, providing valuable backstory for the Flood and doing little else) only for her to go back to the TARDIS, regroup with the Doctor, and then just try again.

We waste a lot of time in Wolves of Winter even though it is only three issues long and barely has enough time to actually explore it's more interesting ideas. It's a disaster, really. The artwork varies quite a bit too. Brian Williamson and Hi-Fi do most of it, and they do a decent job. Hi-Fi really brings a lot of life to the comics with his colouring and making a lot of characters pop and stand out in a way they aren't serviced by the writing. Williamson is a bit more inconsistent and his work feels a little rushed. Some panels are beautiful images of the TARDIS floating in space, a massive volcanic eruption, or even something simple like the Doctor pulling a lever in a way that was creatively drawn. Others look terrible, especially around facial expression, which, in all three issues, often dip into the uncanny valley territory. By issue three, Williamson doesn't even do all the artwork, and the consistency to the quality of the artwork takes a viscous nosedive with it, leading me to suspect even more this comic was a bit rushed and made on a budget.

The worst of the artwork (I rate this under special effects by the way) is how the Flood is depicted. Gone are the terrifying version of the monsters from Waters of Mars, we just see a couple of Ice Warriors and Vikings drooling and dripping a little bit. You can barely ever see the characteristic black cracks around their bodies or anything intimidating like that. Outside of a pretty cool introduction to them, they are barely used at all in this story as the focus very quickly shifts over to Fenric. The Ice Warriors are basically forgotten, too.