Doctor, Doctor

On Friday night, BBC1 will broadcast “Time Crash”, a seven-minute Doctor Who episode, as part of the annual Children in Need charity telethon. The rest of the evening will no doubt be given over to the usual mix of showbiz backslapping and maudlin handwringing. But the Doctor Who episode is likely to be worth a watch and a donation: it is by Steven Moffat, who has written some of the very best episodes of the revived series: “The Empty Child/The Doctor Dances”, “The Girl in the Fireplace” and “Blink”. The hook is that Peter Davison will be reappearing as the fifth Doctor, alongside David Tennant’s tenth Doctor.


There’s something about charity appeals that brings multiple Doctors running. True, the last Doctor Who contribution to Children in Need, two years ago, was Tennant’s first solo outing. But back in 1983, “The Five Doctors” was broadcast as part of the appeal, and in 1993, the then-dead series was brought out of retirement for the night of Children in Need with the bizarre runaround “Dimensions in Time”, which was sunk under the weight of its gimmicks. Not only did every surviving Doctor appear (plus truly tasteless waxwork busts of William Hartnell and Patrick Troughton), but so did as many of the old supporting cast as could be found, and every monster suit that could be dredged up. And it was a crossover with the popular soap opera EastEnders. And it was filmed in a new 3-D technique that required constant horizontal motion across the scene. Little wonder it was rubbish. But it probably raised some money.

The BBC’s other regular telethon is Red Nose Day, held every two years for the charity Comic Relief. Doctor Who cropped up in 1999 with “The Curse of Fatal Death”, an extended spoof which achieved the rare double of being both funny and faithful to the original, largely because it, too, was written by Steven Moffat. And this one, agin, featured multiple Doctors – all-new ones, this time, played by Rowan Atkinson, Jim Broadbent, Richard E Grant, Hugh Grant and Joanna Lumley.

Appropriately enough, Comic Relief has occasionally spawned comics. In 1993, Fleetway published The Comic Relief Comic. This too featured multiple Doctors, in a two-page crossover with Dan Dare, drawn by John Ridgway, a long-term artist on the comic strip for Marvel UK’s Doctor Who Magazine.



But more than that, the amount of crossover and collaboration on this comic beggars belief. The next few paragraphs are simply lists, because I can think of no better way of getting across the scale and scope of the thing. Remember, this was all in sixty pages, including covers.

The plot was by Richard Curtis (of Four Weddings and a Funeral), Neil Gaiman and Grant Morrison. The editors were Richard Curtis, Neil Gaiman and Peter Hogan.

The script was by (deep breath) Dan Abnett, Mike Collins, Richard Curtis, “the Dandy and Beano team”, Al Davison, Jamie Delano, Garth Ennis, Dick Foreman, John Freeman, Neil Gaiman, Melinda Gebbie, Bambos Georgiou, Dave Gibbons, Igor Goldkind, Lenny Henry. Peter K Hogan, Alan Martin, Mark Millar, Peter Milligan, Grant Morrison, Paul Neary, John Smith, Si Spencer and “the Viz team.

And then there were the artists: Jeff Anderson, Jim Baikie, Simon Bisley, Philip Bond, Robin Boutell, Dougie Braithwaite, Mark Buckingham, Dondi Cox, Steve Dillon, D’Israeli, Hunt Emerson, Phil Gascoigne, Melinda Gebbie, Dave Gibbons, Martin Griffiths, Jamie Hewlett, Graham Higgins, David Hine, Bernie Jay, Paul Johnson, Nigel Kitching, Barry Kitson, David Lloyd, Mike McKone, Steve Parkhouse, Edmund Perryman, Sean Phillips, Warren Pleece, Arthur Ranson, John Ridgway, Will Simpson, Bryan Talbot, “the Viz team”, Phil Winslade and Steve Yeowell.

Had enough yet? Tough, ‘cause here’s a list of the celebrities and characters featured (at least the ones I recognise): Roger Mellie, the Man on the Telly, Lenny Henry (as himself and as Theophilus P Wildebeeste), Jonathan Ross, Griff Rhys-Jones, Alfred Hitchcock, Charlie Drake, Edmund Blackadder, Judge Dredd, Dan Dare, Captain Britain, Desperate Dan, Bruce Forsyth, the Teenage Mutant “Something” Turtles, Michael Caine, Dawn French, Ben Elton, Cliff Richard (the singer, not the Buffy artist), Alf Garnett, Anneke Rice, Thunderbirds, Digby, the Mekon, Treens, the first seven Doctors, Ace, Leela, Susan, K9, Ice Warriors, Cybermen, Draconians, the “Rover’s Return” pub from Coronation Street, Dennis the Menace and Gnasher, the Bash Street Kids, Esther Rantzen, Noel Edmonds, Terry Fuckwitt, the Fat Slags, Sid the Sexist, Johnny Fartpants, Biffa Bacon and family, Spoilt Bastard, Buster Gonad, Billy the Fish, the Pathetic Sharks, Superman, the Hulk, Spider-Man, Wonder Woman, Doctor Strange, the Fantastic Four, Green Lantern (Hal Jordan and Guy Gardner), Thor, Daredevil, Swamp Thing, Captain America, Blue Beetle, Fire, Iron Man, Batman, the Silver Surfer, Wolverine, the Young Ones, the Spanish Inquisition (Monty Python version), Tommy Cooper, Benny Hill, Lurcio from Up Pompeii!, Sid James and Barbara Windsor, Mr Humphries, the cast of On the Buses (God help us!), Tony Hancock, Vic and Bob, Norman Wisdom, Morecambe and Wise, Basil Fawlty, Sybil Fawlty and Manuel, Dick Emery, Buster Keaton and WC Fields.

So, with all that, was it any good? Well … no, not really. Too many cooks, and too many ingredients make for an indigestible mess.


But, hey, like it says on the cover, “all proceeds to Comic Relief.” And it is certainly a curiosity.

There’s no statement about where the proceeds were to go from sales of this year’s Comic Relief tie-in, Beano Max Issue 1, and it’s tempting to conclude that publishers DC Thomson had cynically bought a license as an exercise in promoting the launch of their new comic, a monthly spin-off from the Beano. Notably, there is no collaboration with other comics publishers here. Jonathan Ross and various other BBC presenters appear, but the only fictional characters to be seen who are not owned by DC Thomson are Wallace and Gromit, who share a poster with Dennis the Menace and Gnasher, and, yet again, Doctor Who. In “The Invasion of Bash Street”, Class 2B is menaced by a Dalek teaching assistant. The Dalek is overcome when the kids force-feed it school dinners (bringing it out in red nose-shaped boils), and the Doctor drops by to pick it up.


Despite my suspicious grumbles, this is a much more enjoyable read than the Comic Relief Comic. It’s a good, solid, straightforward children’s humour comic with a few guest stars.

The lesson of all this? Even if it is for charity, keep it simple. Don’t go overboard on the crossovers.

Unless you’ve got Steven Moffat writing.

Review: The Best of Look-In – The Seventies

The Best of Look-In – Junior TV Times – The Seventies, compiled and edited by Graham Kibble White, Prion Books/Carlton Publishing, 55 pages of strip (out of 144), £12.99
Features:
Crowther in Trouble by Geoff Cowan (story) and Tom Kerr (art)
Please Sir! by Angus P Allan (story) and Graham Allen (art)
On the Buses by Scott Goodall (story) and Harry North (art)
Catweazle by Angus P Allan (story) and unidentified artist
Michael Bentine’s Potty Time by Robin Tucek (story) and Arthur Ranson (art)
Les Dawson is Superflop by Geoff Cowan (story) and Arthur Ranson (art)
The Adventures of Black Beauty by Angus P Allan (story) and Mike Noble (art)
The Tomorrow People by Angus P Allan (story) and John M Burns (art)
Man About the House by Angus P Allan (story) and Bill Titcombe (art)
Flintlock by Angus P Allan (story) and Bill Titcombe (art)
ABBA by Angus P Allan (story) and Arthur Ranson (art)
The Bionic Woman by Angus P Allan (story) and John Bolton (art)
The Benny Hill Page by Geoff Cowan (story) and Bill Titcombe (art)
Sapphire & Steel by Angus P Allan (story) and Arthur Ranson (art)
Cover art by Arnaldo Putzu, montaged by Alistair McGown

Untidily spilling out of the racks in the children’s comics section of newsagents throughout Britain are publications that combine comic strips based on licensed properties from other media (including television, film and toys) with articles, puzzles, posters and competitions. They are all the spiritual children of Look-In, born in 1971 when its publisher decided to take two pitches – for a children’s magazine about TV and for a comic in the style of TV21 - and combine the two. Whether this formula proved to be the salvation of children’s publishing or cost comics their soul is a matter of opinion.

Whereas the likes of The Simpsons, Doctor Who Adventures and Transformers have a single brand to play with, Look-In had access to almost everything shown on ITV, which was then one-third of all programmes broadcast in Britain. The range of strips reproduced here, wide though it is, is only a selection. Some series were omitted because they were too adult, and one or two were licensed elsewhere. I remember being most put out when I learned that Marvel UK had obtained the rights to Planet of the Apes, because I so much preferred the artwork in Look-In.

Editor Alan Fennell, late of TV21, had hired many of the best boys’ comics artists in Britain, including some of my favourites from Countdown, such as Mike Noble, John M Burns and Martin Asbury, as well as humorous artists like Bill Titcombe, whose work I admired on Dad’s Army in TV Comic. He had also brought with him TV21 writer Angus Allan, whose stories now seem thin and perfunctory, but which appeared to my pre-teen self as being much more faithful to the television originals than the overwrought melodrama of Marvel.

If the writing for these strips doesn’t carry too much appeal for an adult thirty years on, the artwork remains a major draw. Noble, for example, makes Black Beauty a far more dynamic and visually expressive story than it ever was on television.


It’s fun to see the veterans apply their mature skill to these strips. But there is even more interest in watching future stars in development. Here is John Bolton, working chiefly in line rather than his more familiar modelled tones.


Particularly startling is the range of styles deployed by Arthur Ranson, before beginning, with Sapphire & Steel, to develop what would become the highly detailed hatched realism familiar from Button Man and Anderson, Psi Division.





Reproduction is occasionally grainy, and at least some pages have been scanned from published copies (a number of pages, particularly those in black and white, show a tell-tale darkening towards the spine). But on the whole everything looks acceptable.

And what of the magazine content? Well, the articles were always pretty thin at the time. There may be some nostalgic buzz from reading a day’s TV schedule that is no longer being broadcast, working through competitions for prizes that can no longer be won, and gazing at adverts for products that can no longer be bought, but once you’ve skimmed through that stuff once, it becomes clear that it’s the comics that have the greater and more lasting value.

But, then again, I thought that at the time.


Relevant links
Alistair McGown’s Look-In: A Tribute to the Junior TV Times
Bear Alley article about by Alistair McGown about compiling The Best of Look-In
Look-In Picture Strip Archive

Buck Rogers in the Workers’ Paradise

The Look-In Picture Strip Archive is a splendid enterprise aimed at collecting the comic strips that appeared in the so-called “Junior TV Times” in the 1970s and 1980s. Look-In was a mix of strips and articles, the former mostly based on TV series that appealed to boys (though I do remember a strip based on Follyfoot Farm), the latter being generally about pop groups who appealed to what we would now call “tween” girls.

Some of the comic strips were in black and white, but others were full-colour, printed on good quality paper in the photogravure tradition of Eagle, TV21 and Countdown. Look-In would be the last comic produced this way until new technology drastically reduced printing costs.

The Look-In Picture Strip Archive contains prime comics work by John M Burns, Mike Noble, Arthur Ranson, Martin Asbury and Jim Baikie. So far it only covers examples from Sapphire & Steel, Space:1999, The Tomorrow People and Terrahawks, but the archive now has a complete run of Look-In’s adapatation of the TV version of Buck Rogers in the 25th Century. Given that there were only two pages a week to play with, the stories, by Angus P Allan, were inevitably crude and the characterisation perfunctory, but in this case that was a good match with the TV show. The art, by Asbury, Ransom and Noble, was mouth-watering. Here is a sample page by Ransom (as ever, click to enlarge). The archive pages are bigger, being 300 dpi scans.



One thing always struck me about the TV series. It was fairly clear that the Earth of the 25th century was a totalitarian state. It was ruled by an oligarchic council of computers. Press blackouts of emergencies were commonplace. Food was provided by a food directorate, energy by an energy directorate. All trade had to pass through a strictly policed narrow corridor through the planet’s force field. We saw no independent economic or political activity on Earth. Buck had no job – he turned down employment by the defense directorate – but he still had an apartment, clothes, food and a robot servant, so either there was a generous welfare state or, more likely, senior apparatchiks like Wilma and Dr Huer could work the system to provide for their toy-boy.

And what did Buck do? He tried to teach people to boogie and play table tennis, albeit not at the same time. Wouldn’t Jim Kirk have overthrown this society in, oh, about 45 minutes?