Script: Mike Collins Art: Mike Collins, Dylan Teague, Roger Langridge
A Review by Finn Clark 20/8/05
Mike Collins isn't one of DWM's more famous names, but his involvement with the comic strip goes back a long way. Before both writing and drawing Art Attack (DWM 358), he'd written three stories and drawn five more, for a total to date of 153 comic strip pages and twenty episodes. He's created strips for all the Doctors since Colin Baker. What's more, he's one of a rare breed... a genuine all-rounder. Apart from him, DWM's only real writer-artists have been Steve Parkhouse, Sean Longcroft and Paul Neary.
The stories he's drawn are:
Doctor Conkerer! (DWM 162)
Party Animals (DWM 173)
The Good Soldier (DWM 175-178)
The Nightmare Game (DWM 330-332)
The Love Invasion (DWM 355-357)
Art Attack (DWM 358)
And those he's written:
Profits of Doom! (DWM 120-122)
Claws of the Klathi! (DWM 136-138)
Slimmer! (The Incredible Hulk Presents
11)
Art Attack (DWM 358)
Even at the new length of ten pages, one-episode stories like this are unlikely to be substantial. The format has thrown up some wild experiments in the past (The Fangs of Time, The Land of Happy Endings) but this isn't one of those either. It's not life-changing or anything... but it is quite good.
The TARDIS lands in the 37th century... and it's not just any old futuristic setting. Oh no. It's a transdimensional art gallery and the latest in a long line of the comic strip's wild and wacky visual treats. However in the light of Russell T. Davies's comments about making the new TV series a visual experience, Art Attack's Escheresque setting doesn't merely hark back to the fecundity of imagination of a Gibbons or a Ridgway. For once this kind of thing feels faithful to the TV series too. It's easy to imagine the Slitheen's designers getting enthusiastic about Cazkelf the Transcendent.
It's witty! There's Doctor-Rose repartee and some nice little gags. Trust an artist to have things to say about the Mona Lisa...
The story itself is likeable. Curiously we've now had two Eccleston comic strips and in both of them the evil alien invader... well, wasn't. The plot moves at a good pace, it has a nice twist or two and doesn't feel bland. The art is solid too. It looks nice on the page, with particularly good likenesses of Rose. (Eccleston looks okay, but personally I think he's deceptively hard to draw. He's not craggy, if you know what I mean. He's not as difficult as Davison, but he's no Hartnell or Pertwee.)
There's continuity and worldbuilding. World War Five, which by all accounts sounds pretty extreme, happened recently (this is the 37th century) and there's an Alpha Centauri in a wig. What's more there's a reference to the Doctor being the last of his people. That's obviously a nod to the new TV series, but it also had me thinking back to that throwaway line in The Curious Tale of Spring-Heeled Jack (DWM 334-336): "A dull grey world in a bottle he couldn't wait to break". In 2003 that was merely a olive branch to the books which only confused things. Did the comics come before, after or during the 8DAs, then?
However today the situation is a lot more complicated. When it comes to blowing up Gallifrey, the 8DAs are no longer the only game in town. To me this almost looked like a comics reference... we've got the TV series, the 8DAs and the comics, none of which fit together without a little work. Interesting!
Overall, this is a nice little story that's good for a laugh and never seems to be wasting your time. We've all read much worse!