THE TEN DOCTORS - great DOCTOR WHO fan comic

Thursday, June 4, 2009


Rich Morris is a professional storyboard artist who recently completed The Ten Doctors, a truly epic Doctor Who fan comic bringing together all of the Doctor's various incarnations so far, along with many of the Doctor's companions and villains from the show's long history.

The drawing can look rushed (the first few pages are particularly rough-looking) and it takes a little while to get used to seeing the Doctor's adventures filtered through Morris' cute, Chuck Jones-ish drawing style. But as the story goes on, you grow to really appreciate Morris' skills as an artist. He's managed to caricature each Doctor so he is both instantly recognizable and visually appealing. He even makes Tom Baker cartoon-cute, which is a rather impressive achievement.

The overall plot is busy and scattered - how could it be anything else, with a cast that huge? - but Morris takes things in exciting and surprising directions, coming up with a Dalek scheme so perfectly fiendish it's kind of amazing they've never tried it on the actual series. Perhaps most importantly, Morris expertly captures the personalities of these characters. He gets the speaking style of each Doctor just right, so much so that it's easy to hear the actors in your head as you read the lines. I'd never noticed the very specific way David Tennant's Doctor will sometimes sweep into a room and cheekily introduce himself as the Doc-ta, but when Morris has him do it, it's uncanny. He nails the sly theatricality of Tom Baker, the intense volatility of Christopher Eccelston, the chivalrous dandyhood of Jon Pertwee, the fretful amiability of Peter Davison... He even finds something interesting in Paul McGann, the George Lazenby of Doctor Who.

Morris has just started Forever Janette, a new series which seems to be a crossover between Doctor Who and Forever Knight. While it's hardly a promising idea, it's a measure of just how good Morris is that I'm still excited to see where this new story goes. If this guy can cram four decades of Doctor Who into one story and make it all work, who knows what else he can do?

Perhaps Morris' strip sounds like something you wouldn't understand unless you were extremely familiar with the TV series. But there are entire decades of Doctor Who I've never seen, and I had no trouble following the strip. Actually, Morris' story inspired me to look up characters I hadn't heard of. And as I learned about the Rani and the Meddling Monk, it made me want to go back to the original series and see their stories.

Start reading The Ten Doctors, and you might just get lost in a time warp yourself.

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"Science fiction plucks from within us our deepest fears and hopes, then shows them to us in rough disguise: the monster and the rocket." - W.H. Auden

Who is he, this one who is called "Greg Stacy"?

Greg Stacy began the MONSTERS AND ROCKETS blog in April of 2009. Prior to that, he was editor of the popular sci-fi/horror news website DARKWOLDS.COM. He has also written for LA WEEKLY, OC WEEKLY, UTNE READER and LOS ANGELES CITYBEAT. He always feels weird writing about himself in the third person.

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