Across the Pond: The 4-Colour Doctor

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It’s funny, the things that come to mind when watching 1980’s Dr Who shows. For one thing, that the Eighties weren’t the brilliant decade I’ve always assumed. 1980 to 1990 had to be the best of decades, since I was 17 at one end of it and only 27 at the other. It was the decade in which I had adult earning power without any need to act like an adult. Looking back, I’m staggered by how much time I wasted, but it was fun with a capital ‘F’: nightclubs, substance abuse, music and obsessive nerdiness (variously, the Saint novels, James Bond, the Prisoner and Dr Who). I also got to be in an independent movie and see Uluru. I still have a soft spot for the music then; The The, Heaven 17, PiL and so on. Consequently, I’ve bristled at the increasing tendency to see My Best Decade as innately funny and style-free merely because it was a while ago.

Then I celebrate being back in Australia with a Dr Who binge and – smack! The full on awfulness of Dr Who after Tom Baker, complete with over-bright bits of plastic, crap acting and that purposeless stabbing at keyboards that took up so much screen time then (you know the kind of thing. People stand around looking concerned while someone with a mohawk hits a keyboard at random whilst trying to look like a computer whiz). Ouch! Maybe we have moved on, I thought, and prepared to either do the dishes or at least procrastinate in a way which didn’t involve watching Peter Davidson.

Whilst wincing, I remembered Alan Moore, curious, because I had absolutely no idea who he was in the 80s. I must have read some of his work, because I used to buy Dr Who Monthly and always read the comics. But I read them reluctantly, seeing them as a distraction from pictures from the show itself and synopses of shows that didn’t exist anymore. The comic of the show/movie has always seemed kind of empty to me. I imagine that the logic behind it is that if people like the show, they will pay money for anything to do with the show, overlooking the absence of any of the things which made the show worth watching. The presence of Dalek boxer shorts in my local Kmart, proves that the merchandisers were right there (although boxer shorts are a bit of a giggle anyway). But in general, it’s a soulless business from the start – everything for the money. I once read a comic of the cult TV show ‘Prisoner’, which seemed pretty good and featured an aging Patrick MacGoohan returning to The Village years later. I think that any exceptions would prove the rule though. Readers of this column, feel free to let me know what, if any exceptions are out there. The characters go through the motions, but aren’t the real thing.

Has there ever been a good ‘comic of the show/movie/opera’? If the shelves of comic shops are anything to go by, a lot of people must be answering ‘yes’ to this question. There are comics based on Star Wars, Star Trek, Dr Who, the X-Files, and all sorts of other horrors. My beloved 2000 AD had a go with an absolutely woeful adaptation of ‘A Life Less Ordinary’, rendering a crap film even crappier. Curiously enough, in all the ‘comic of the’ comics I’ve seen, the characters don’t look at all like the actors they’re based on. They look more like them than I do, but not a whole lot more. It’s like Madame Tussauds in London, the famous wax museum where Clive James noticed a waxwork that looked nothing like Jimmy Carter being replaced by one that looked nothing like Ronald Reagan. This is odd because the point of these comics is to recall the show at moments when you can’t watch it, you’d think they’d at least have a go at the likeness. But, for the hard-core fan, it’s enough that the drawing of Han Solo looks different to the drawing of Princess Leia. They don’t have to look like Harrison Ford and Carrie Fisher.

There is a subset of this genre which is even more exploitative; comics based on things which actually happened. Thus, there is surely a ‘life of Benedict XVII’, from Hitler Youth to Pope’ out, for lazy uncles to inflict on nieces and nephews in intensely Catholic families. I don’t know, but I bet there was a Princess Di comic. I do know that some company produced a pair of comics about the O.J Simpson case; one from his point of view, one from that of the murdered wife. I cringed when I saw the comics about the September 11 atrocity.

I haven’t read any of the celebrity tattle-tale comics, although I’d love to read one about someone who actually mattered. Just think; Bernard Shaw, a life in comics. Aneurin Bevan and the invention of socialized medicine in 50 exciting colored pages, Richard Wagner the graphic novel (a term I despise, but it seems to suit him). It could happen, Oh yes.

Anyway, exceptions keep flocking to my mind, now I’ve opened this can of worms. Like the Jon Pertwee Dr Who comic, which had beautiful painted artwork and a lead who actually looked like Pertwee. Like the Buckaroo Banzai comic, although I may have loved that because at the time we all thought we’d never get to see the movie again. And that Prisoner comic…..but I’ll leave it here. Any tales of either great ‘comics of’ or awful ones I’ve never heard of are most welcome.