Script: Al Ewing, Rob Williams Art: Simon Fraser, Boo Cook
Alice in the Dogworld by Noe Geric 20/5/21
Creating a new companion for the Eleventh Doctor, bring back the show's basis, introducing a new story arc and doing an interesting adventure in 22 pages isn't an easy job. But After Life is the proof that it's possible. Even with some flaws, the story works, and even the Eleventh Doctor I hate is likeable! But what happens in it?
Technically, if it wasn't an introduction, the story would be rubbish. The adventure of the space dog and his lost best friend are the sort of kid-friendly stuff I dislike, if not to say I really hate it. But Alice's story, her sadness and how all this enters into the Doctor Who universe is perfectly written. The Doctor trying to help her and show her the world in a new way is the sort of New Who idea I love. Character development will be present during their adventures, and the death of Alice's mother will be the central point for most of it. Her introduction to the world of Doctor Who is so cliched and original at the same time that I wonder if Rob Williams and Al Ewing should've been writers for the Moffat era.
Characterization is on top form, the dialogue is often excellent but... BUT... Halfway through the story, it turns into a pile of rubbish. The Prime Minister talking like a kid is horrendous, the UNIT soldiers' lines are also crap. ''The Doctor regenerated into that squid'' yeah, it could've been funny, but in the middle of other lines as ridiculous/funny as this, it looks more like a parody. Yeah, the story turns into a parody once we enter into the House of Commons. And even if the end is interesting, it feels too easy.
Haaaa... Simon Fraser, I wonder how you draw your stuff because it burn my retina. The characters looks like bad 3D model rather than drawings. The colours are OK, the background is OK (and I wonder if it's really Fraser's work), but the characters are terrible. It spoils everything, and some drawings look amateurish. It get better once Fraser is gone, but After Life looks like a cheap episode.
Finally, I would recommend that story as an introduction to the Doctor Who universe. It would've been better with another artist and without that ''comical stuff'' at the end, but After Life explains the Doctor Who universe easily, without any budgetary limits and without Moffat's incredibly complicated plotlines. Alice is good enough to be a companion; her encounter with the Doctor is logical and feels like an RTD episode. Without watching the TV show, you could discover the series through these comics; the plots are excellent, and After Life is put at the beginning so you don't even notice it's an always-love-your-best-friend-for-life type of story that you find in children's book.
The eleventh Doctor is better than on TV, and the mysterious appearance of a Time Lord add to the mystery of the main arc (well, if you introduce someone to the show with that comic, of course he won't get the reference). An 8/10 for that, hoping I'll never see anymore ''Best Friend Forever'' stuff in Doctor Who, because who knows how rubbish it could be if it was written by someone who doesn't know how to handle this sort of relationship. (Ha, yes, the BFF character arc is one of the central points of Series 11, it's used badly and it now feels like if a Nickelodeon show had taken over the Doctor's mind.) Even if I've mainly pointed out flaws, this is highly recomended to begin the Doctor Who comic adventures.